26 october 2008, sunday, Akakus

Got up at 07.00 after again a night under the stars. we had breakfast, packed the cars. After that a few of us practiced dune driving, but that did not work out well. Maria wanted to take her first dune and launched our Landrover, who landed to hard. No personal damage, but a lot of damage on our car. Front axle bended, 2 wheels broken etc. We needed a lot of time to repair the car, but Khaled did a magnificent job. He managed te make the car runnning again. So we started late this morning: 11.30. We started with soft sand and all went well, until I came over a dune and the car landed again to hard. More damage. Good lesson. Khaled repaired the car again. After that our criple car could still run. We went on a little further and reached the Akakus mountains. There we had lunch at one of the arches in the mountains. Stunning scenery. After lunch we left our Landrover there and were guests in the cars of Terence and Khalid. Also in this part a beautifull surrounding. And a really big arch where we played around with the cars. Khalid drove with all the cars over there. He does that with ease, he danses with the cars over the sand. We went back to our lunch place and took our Landrover again to go to our overnight stay. it was not a very long distaance. When we arrived there we talked with Khalid, our guide and Ibrahim, our doctor, about the plans for the next days. Our Landrover has to go on transport to Tripoli to replace the front axle and the rear differential. But first we will leave to Al Awaynat in the morning. Khalid our guide will accompany me with his car. The rest of the group will visit the rock paintings and graffiti in the Akakus. Later on they will go to Al Awaynat too. The plan is to repair the Landrover in Tripoli after putting him on transport on a truck and join the group again somewhere on the trail.