Team Basic Cruising Goes to Mongolia

De camino a Bratislava, capital de Eslovaquia, tomamos una breve desviación por Austria. Lo que pensamos sería simplemente una insignificante desaviación resulto ser un hermoso paisaje entre la campiña Austriaca.

El primer día del rally cruzamos el Canal de la Mancha en ferry de Dover a Calais para arribar en el continente europeo.

Inglaterra nos despidio con los impresionantes acantilados blancos de Dover… 

… y así nos recibieron tierras francesas.

The Gazelle has uploaded some pictures to Facebook, which is honestly the best way to publish them.

Check them out Here.

I’m trying to edit these in the road but I didn’t have the proper software so it was nearly impossible to do so. I believe I’ve acquired what I need now so hopefully better videos will follow!

Anyway, you can hear as we cross the start line the announcer saying “The first Mexican team ever! This is the first Mexican team to do the Mongol Rally” Then it repeats in slow motion and then you can hear our “La Cucaracha” horn — which, admittedly, if you’ve heard “La Cucaracha” before, it sounds like the Arabic version of it, but as far as these teams go, it could be the Mexican National anthem (most people can’t even recognize our flag).

Anyway, enough said… Enjoy it!

Czechout Party
Yesterday we spent the night at The Klenova Castle where the Mongol Rally organizers threw a Czechout party attended by most teams. We arrived late, as usual, but we were greeted by teams screaming “the horn, the horn!” Our “La Cucaracha” horn made its loud chant in the Czech countryside.

We proceeded to feast and drink at the Castle where we thoroughly enjoyed eating a roasted boar that must’ve been walking two hours before. Delicious. We talked to a bunch of teams and met some fine and crazy people. All in all it was good fun… It was also our first night camping, which proved to be quite the breeze.

First Interaction with the Police
After a night filled with full extensions, histories of adventures, no showers, and lots of dudes, we woke up early, and started driving towards Budapest. The first stop was the Pilsner Urkell brewery. While circling around the city looking for the brewery, we were stopped by the Police. A lot of hand gesturing and smiles were exchanged but we still had absolutely no idea what the hell was going on. Finally we realized that it was mandated by law to drive with your headlights on. The police were really friendly and we continued to Pilsner Urkell were we enjoyed some great food and beer.

Losing Keys
We went back to the car only to find that we were missing our one and only key. Mr. Marcos was definitely to blame since all our memories recalled him as the last key-holder. We proceeded to follow the old advice of “retracing your steps” only to find the keys comfortably sitting next to a set of Polo shirts at the Gift Shop.

We crossed the Czech Republic, touched Austria, traversed through Slovakia, and finally arrived to Hungary where we were greeted with a fantastic exchange rate, friendly folks, good pizza, and good vibes.

Mongol Rally Handbook

The day of the launch in the UK we received a small booklet with lots of useful information. We want to share some of it, straight out of the handbook:

To even get this far you’ve done really rather well. Many more mere mortals are too afraid to sign up and stay at home instead.

On this year’s Mongol Rally there are about 300 teams between the two start lines. The adds are that 4 teams will not make it beyond Europe and 1 team won’t make it even as far as Czechout. 70 remaining teams will not make it to Mongolia. 49 of these teams will break down in Kazakhstan and a further 21 scattered generously across a third of the Earth’s vaguely drivable surface. 225 teams will make it across the Mongolian border but 76 will not make it to Ulaanbaatar with their vehicles. So, as we point your granny-mobiles eastwards, we wish you the very best of luck…

There is a reasonable chance you will find yourself sitting in a desert somewhere having driven in to a pot hole the size of a semi-detached house. All your wheels have fallen off, the car has burnt to the ground and a wily local has stolen the charred remains of the steering wheel.
At such wonderful moments one should of course scoop up the remains of the car and carry on.

Yesterday we drove about 850 kilometers from Belgium to München, Germany. With an initial ETA of 8PM, we were first delayed due to a closed highway in Luxembourg (pushing our ETA to 10PM), and then we continued to be delayed by traffic (pushing our ETA to 11PM). Finally, at around 11:45PM we finally arrived to München.

In München we were greeted by one of the finest men in the world, Sir Iñigo Villamil, who greeted us with homemade pasta and 4 ice-cold Franziskaner Weissbiers – exactly what we needed after almost 9 hours in the car. It had been some time since I had last seen him, so we spent a couple of hours catching up. I thoroughly enjoyed his company. Gu, thank you very much for your amazing hospitality. I look forward to the time when I can return the favor… You are indeed a very fine lad!

Yesterday, as we were about to arrive to München, our engine light came on. We then noticed that the temperature gauge had completely dropped. We stopped the car to see if there was anything obvious, but since it was dark and we were less than 10km from our destination, we decided to keep on going to address the problem the following morning. We found a mechanic about 4 blocks away, so at 7AM, the Gazelle and myself took it for some analysis – “You’re driving this thing to Mongolia?” was the first thing the mechanic asked. “Yes we are.” A little laughter followed.

The car didn’t have anything, it was just driven past its limits last night. After a little fiddling the light came off and the Punto looks like it’s ready to rumble.

Yesterday’s drive on the Autobahn:
Top Speed: 149 km/h
Average Speed: 95 km/h

Edit: As we thought there was nothing that Iñigo could do to outdo himself, he woke up and cooked breakfast for us. What a fine gentleman. Gu, many many thanks! See you soon brother!

Here’s a general update for everyone:

Thursday night I took a direct flight from San Francisco to London. At about 3pm I was picked up by our (still nameless) Fiat Punto and the rest of the Basic Cruising Team. For the first time since we became a team we were actually in close physical proximity, having planned most of the trip while Enrique was in Ithaca, Andrés in Palo Alto, and myself in San Francisco. It felt good to be able to have conversations where Skype and cellphones weren’t cutting off.

We had to shuffle the things around the car a bit to fit all the stuff I was taking and I asked to drive the car. It was my first time in a right-hand side car but it was all good… I had gotten a bit of training from my English boss on how to handle English roundabouts but I must admit that it still got to me the first time around, getting a mad honk and screams from the driver behind me, oh well.

After about 15 minutes, Enrique asks “where did we leave the thinner?” I honestly didn’t even know we had a jerry can of thinner but soon realized after hearing the incessant screaming from both of them that something was up. Enrique climbed out of the window only to find the jerry can completely loose on the top of the car. I carefully made my way to the left most lane, stopped, we got the thinner in the car and kept driving general direction south – no time for London.

Halfway through we stopped at Halfords to buy some material to install our spotlights and “La Cucaracha” horn. The lads at Halfords were quite nice and lent us a bunch of tools. Unfortunately it was getting late and dark and we still were far from our hotel room so we decided to stop the installation service to continue it at our hotel. We packed our things, I handed Mon a box with our halogen spotlights, and took the driver’s seat again. After about a minute of driving I saw the box I had just handed to Mon fly out – he had left it on the roof. We stopped the car and try to salvage as many parts. As we were making our way to the box, a car drove right over it, destroying practically everything.

So now we have a strict routing of checking the roof for loose parts. Lesson learned, we hope.

We were up until about 3:30AM on Friday finishing off the installation of the electrical installation for the spotlights and painting the car. The next day we woke up at 9AM, drove to the nearest Halfords, bought a new set of spotlights, finished off the electrical wiring for them, installed our “La Cucaracha” horn, and finished the paint job. It was 1:05PM. The deadline to arrive at Goodwood for registration, passport pickup, and launch was 2:00PM – we still had to clean up the car and paste the decals from all of our sponsors.

We arrived to the Festival of Slow, were the last team to register (most teams had gotten to Goodwood at 10AM), picked up my passport now with visas to Iran and Kyrgyzstan, and started pasting the decals. We got the job done, were ready just in time for our lap around Goodwood (were “La Cucaracha” horn was a complete sensation!), and took off to Dover to cross the English Channel.

After almost running out of fuel on France, we successfully managed to glide our way to a gas station, implemented a new policy for refuels, and took of to Belgium where we are now. After two long days, we slept in late and will make our way to München now.

We want to thank everyone who has made contributions to our charity. We can’t begin to explain how great it feels to receive them and we want to thank you all from the bottom of our hearts.

Alright, off then! We’ll try to post more pictures soon, but in the meantime, check our Twitter feed where we’ve posted some!

Friends,

Sorry for lack of continuity in our posts and the general lack of order in their timing. We have been traveling all over the English countryside and we have found it very hard to have constant internet access, and so we have been writing our updates offline and then posting them in bursts once we find internet. We will work from here on to have our updates be more synchronous.

Cheers!

We had a vey frustrating day at the Iranian embassy today, but it is neither noteworthy nor really interesting, merely tireless dealings with bureaucratic incompetents who possess not an ounce of judgment and are mindless followers of a set of incomprehensible and conflicting rules and regulations. We got angry, we tried some sweet-talking, we begged a little, and managed to get the ball rolling. We should get our visas by Friday.

We had a nice chips dinner with our main mechanic Andy, AKA GTB, the “Globe Trotting Bastard”. Andy’s been to rallies all over the world working as a mechanic, from the Pekin-to-Paris to the London-to-Capetown, has seen every type of failure imaginable on a rally road, can do mechanical wonders to any car in record time, has the most impressive road map collection I’ve ever seen, and is an all-around cool dude.

He gave us three really important tips:

1.     Distribute weight evenly throughout the car

2.     Have a routine check every night – never ignore irregular noises

3.     Don’t push the car’s limits – drive at a steady pace that doesn’t force the car too much

Andy’s general advice was that no matter how well prepared your car is or how much you pimped it out, the most important thing is the driver, and how you treat the car over a long period of time. We are going to be in the Punto for at least 35 days and driving well over 10000 miles, so we need to make sure that our driving habits are not slowly wearing away our trusty steed.

After a very long day, we finally got home to a stash of ice-cold Stella’s in our mini-fridge. It had been a long day.

There are few things in this world like a carefully-prepared-fully-home-made English breakfast. We woke up today to English bacon, poached eggs, mushrooms, sausage, tomatoes, brown toast, and some freshly squeezed orange juice and piping-hot English tea to wash it all down.

After breakfast we thanked our gracious hosts and headed to Greenwood Motors, where we had to hammer out the final details of all the modifications that needed to be made to the Punto. Our main contact at Greenwood was Julian, an awesome guy from Central London who had a lot of experience in fixing up cars for rallies (and has an unnerving resemblance to Dave Atell). We had a long conversation on what would be the necessary things for our car, and then we had to make that fir our budget and our schedule, since we only had 5 days to do all the modifications. We cut the fat and focused on the most important stuff.

This is the final job list that :

–       Waterproof the air-intake

–       Waterproof the exhaust

–       Reinforce the engine mountings

–       Complete engine overhaul (change spark plugs, cam belt)

–       Replace radiator thermostat with a blanking sleeve

–       Create a manual override for the radiator fan (wth a switch inside the car to turn it on/off)

–       Drill holes in the bumper for additional air flow

–       Raise the back of the hood to maximize airflow

–       Add sump guard on the bottom of the car

–       Add a roof cage for spares (tyres, springs, etc)

–       Add spring assisters (to raise the car)

–       Create a spares kit, with additional fuses, spark plugs, cables, belts, etc.

After all the modifications had been decided, we headed to the local tourism office to find adequate accommodations for the Basic Cruising team, and after a few phone calls we secured a room at a local farm. The ball was finally rolling.