Speed: Averaging 30MPH
Status: Convoy of three, torrential rain with rocks in the road, awful conditions.
1400 miles down, only around 7500 left!
We've finally named the Gobi Ambulance – she's now officially called "Blossom" – we christened her with a Baadog (Mongolian beer) over the bonnet today.
So after departing Zagreb we turned South East towards the Serbian border it started raining. Arriving around lunch time this was our first none-EC border so we figured it might take some time. We were in a convoy of five, we all made it though but three of the vehicles required a green card – including us!
Basically a green card is a piece of paper that states you're insured. Our insurance company said we didn't need one; the cover note had all the details on. Well the Serbian border guard didn't think so – rubbish company!
The next half hour was spent traipsing between various buildings with all the documents. One place to get the green card, one place to pay then back to the green card building before hitting the currency building for money, what a palaver! I guess it'll get worse as we head East so we shouldn't complain. Anyway we got stung for 130 Euros…. Kerrrching, I'm sure there's more of that to come!
So here we are nearly eleven hours later, still driving on the E70 heading South now towards good weather apparently. It is still raining very heavily; we've slowed to 40MPH (ish) because of standing water in the pot holes on the motorway. It's actually quite hard, we've all driven for over three hours today and the conditions have made it difficult. Stu is driving at the moment with Russ as co-driver, we need two pairs of eyes to actually see in all the rain, glare and surface water. They seem to be spending more of their time preventing accident by mad Serbian drivers over taking on blind bends!
The good news though is for the first time out VMG (velocity made good) is in positive figures. Simply put we're now heading (all be it at 12 MPH) towards Mongolia now rather than away.
More good news, we'll be in Greece by Wednesday where it's reportedly 30 degrees and broken cloud – hurrah! We're planning a two day very chilled out (250 miles a day) drive along the Dalmatian coast with a few beach stops and a night out. Then it's off to Istanbul for the convoy to Iran, we're joining up with around ten cars and quite probably the mad Russians in the red London bus!
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