Prague - Volvograd

Dear All,

Finally some time and awake enough to give you the latest news of our travels.

Friday - Saterday 27/07/07 - 28/07/07

Wake up at 5:30 a.m...
These past days have been pretty intensive driving through Ukraine and passing the Russian border...

We drove non-stop from Kiev to Volvograd in Russia stopping only a few hours before russian border in a guarded gas station as we were being followed by several ukrainian cars and did not want to continue on isolated roads in the night feeling very insecure.

Furthermore, ukrainian roads were very challenging and cost us 4 tires and a few liters of oil. At dawn, we took the road again and headed for the Russian border. After 3 hours, a mountain of paperwork and a couple of stamps we finally crossed over to Russia.

One of the Fiat 500s broke down 250 km from Volgograd. Local police and pump assistant were not able to help. Fortunately for us, a Russian trucker stopping to fill his tank had one empty spot on his truck. After 30 minutes of Italiano/Belgo/Russian epic conversation we managed to explain our problem and he accepted to bring our car to Volvograd. Luca got on the truck with our new russian friend and the UlaBelga and the Defender and remaining fiat 500 raced to stay behind the truck. 125km from Volgograd, we stopped for some rest and were offered dinner from all local truckers before continuing on to our destination. A real epic experience!!

Bad news: We are now stuck in a garage at Volvograd with the UlaBelga car while the Land Rover + the italian car continued on to Atyrau in Kazakhstan last night. Indeed, the Italian team needed to reach the kazak border before 29th of July as their Russian visa expired on this date.

We are now trying to fix the car and meet up with the rest of the team.

We must say that all the russians we have met have been very kind and helpful.

Who thought this would be simple :o)!

Pictures coming soon...

Thursday 26/07/07

Rise and shine at 5 a.m. and 2nd attempt to cross over to Ukrania through another border and reach Kiev before nightfall and pick up Chichon. At leat 2-3 hours of waiting in line but all in line with us coming over to talk and admire the Fiats and share a few Polish beers to encourage us. Everyone we meet cannot but stop and smile when they see our cars and laugh out loud when they hear that we are headed to Mongolia. Finally into Ukraine, roads are either under construction or quite a challenge for our Fiats. Ukranians also ride quite fast on these bumpy tracks and we are glad to have the Defender to open the way. On the way, we are stopped by local police for exceeding speed limit (... with our Fiat 500s which do not go faster than 85 km ... :0) ...) . The Ukrainians we had met so far not being the easy-going, good sense of humour type, we offer him couple of dollars without disucssion and continue on to Kiev where we stay the night.

Ciao

Tuesday - Wednesday 24/07/07 - 25/07/07

Leaving beautiful Prague behind us and off to Rzeszow via Cracow in Poland. Polish people are extremely sympathetic and almost every single car, truck, person we meet on the road greets us with a honk or a cheer! Our arrival in Cracow for dinner does not go unnoticed and everyone cheers us from the sidewalks and takes pictures of the cars. Never minding the fact we do not speak a word of Polish, they share their impressions with us leading to comic situations.

A dopo!