Budapest to Volgograd

A little more time to write this time around so put the kettle on..

Well with fuel tank woes out of the way we left Prague and found our way to Budapest by night - don't ask me which night it was as I can't remember - sleeping in the cars and while Greg is driving has meant that all the days have merged into one. In Budapest we found Terra Hungaria - the JCB dealership for Hungary where our colleague Mr Clarke had kindly forwarded our V5 which had arrived at my house a couple of days after we left. We slept in the cars again, in a car park outside the city centre.

When we got to Terra, the V5 had not made it so we had to go back in the morning to see if it was there again. We found a service station with showers, then cooked some omelettes up on our camp stove and spent a third night sleeping in the car!

Thankfully the V5 was at Terra when we got there in the morning. We said our goodbyes, checked the cars over and hit the road hard, headed for Ukraine. Once over the border, which was quite quick, we found money, fuelled up and headed for L'viv.

Storms moved in though as it got dark and we had to stick to the back of a truck just to see its lights for where the road was going. Add to that the roads began to deteriorate once we hit the Ukraine and some areas were starting to flood. For some time we could only manage an average speed of 25-30mph dodging fallen trees and negotiating washed out roads.

Once in L'viv we found the reasons for the many jokes the Ukrainians have about road signs. i.e. there pretty much aren't any and what there are, are in cyrllics. We found ourselves lost in L'viv centre looking for the road to Kiev and trying to avoid the local constabulary who are well know for pulling you over for whatever they feel like. We then ignored some advice of not speaking to the army by asking a soldier for directions, this was quite fortunate as while we were talking an English speaking lady and her friend showed up. It was one o'clock in the morning at this point so she offered to put the four of us up for the night in her house. Such an act of kindness and the chance to stay in a Ukranian house which had barely been touched in the last 25 years was a amazing and we were all really grateful.

Rayna took an instant shine to Greg as he apparently looked like her son and she began matching him up with her Daughter who was away in the US.We slept for maybe 6 hrs and woke up at 7am thinking we would be on our way quickly. Rayna had already been to the market by that time though and showed up with bags full of food. By 9 o'clock we had lost control of the situation and found ourselves all making Borsch, the girls dressed in aprons and everything!

Rayna was overwhelmingly generous and insisted that we stay for another day and she would take us to the city centre to learn about L'viv and Ukrainian history. The situation was awkward because we were already a few days behind and looking to make up the time with some shift driving through the next couple of days and she did not seem to understand the concept of the rally. We were also risking really offending her with our ignorance of Ukraininan history and refusing her offer to rour the city. We listened attentively though to her annectdotes and stories of Ukraine and her family and learnt loads. Finally we managed to explain that we needed to leave and that we needed to meet up with Jenny's sister who, we found out that morning had crashed the mini into a concrete barrier on a wet road in the Czech republic at around 3am and written it off.

They were not having a good time having already blown a head gasket in Luxembourg, missed the castle party and spent 3 days in a village getting it repaired. They weren't ready to go home though and would eventually get a flight to Volgograd to meet up with us.

We managed to get away then at around 11am, promising we would come back and visit Rayna again and stay in her hotel once she has converted her house and with 3 jars of Borsch sitting on the back seat of the car. We made a bee-line for Kiev and reached there by dark, cooking up the Borsch by the road side and also becoming aquainted with the Ukranian police along the way.

The Police in the Ukraine are totally corrupt, they will pull you over and show you a speed gun saying 86kph and when you argue that you were infact not above 80, they will say that the limit for this bit of road is actually 50. They will then tell you that you will be taken to court or that they may be able to come to another arrangement. This arrangment of course is in dollars so $10 we are on our way. The corrpution is sickening but the roll play and negotiation is facinating.

Past Kiev when the roads got smaller we all pulled over ina petrol station for a few hours sleep - then pressed on again - we drove all through the next day only stopping for fuel, another speeding ticket scam and to eat Borsch from the camping stove again. By evening we got to Lugansk where we fuelled up at a service station staffed it seemed by a team of models. From there is was less than 100km to the border. We pulled over along the way to eat a meal of Shashlik at a roadside cafe and shop. The locals who mainly all worked in a nearby mine took great interest in us - many of the older guys were really drunk and gave the girls ice creams while holding their waists a little to long for comfort. They were friendly enough though and the younger guys didn't drink and were just really keen to interact with us.

We hit the border at around 11pm and then more fun and games started.

Firstly were we pulled over and offered Russian insurance (necessary to drive in Russia and bought per car) for an extortionate rate. They insisted that we must be covered before we enter Russia and that we would be braking the law to try and go in without it. We were not convinced. Jenny had been into Russia driving before and had paid around $30. We were being asked for $250.We refused but the Ukranian guard refused to let us through to the control point, fabricating a transit stamp which was necessary and not present in our passports. We were then offered insurance again which, if we took it, would seem to make the transit stamp problem go away. We became suspicious and argued that we didn't need the insurance yet again. This took some tme as it appeared that the guards and insurance sellers were all in on the act. Whenever we refused the insurance, the transit stamp problem re-appeared. We cut the insurance man out of the deal and decided that in order to get across we should deal with just the guard, he was of course after a bribe. First he wanted $100 per car and Greg negotiated well down to $50 for the two cars. We thought this was too much still though, so as Greg started to befriend the guard a little more, I took the opportunity to raise the tension and play the angry co-driver who wants to go to another border. As I began shouting at Greg to get in the car and lets go while attempting a three point turn right on the check point the guard started to panic a bit. He had already asked for money so he was already potentially in trouble and also risked getting nothing. I shouted at Greg some more that we were leaving and to get in and Greg took the cue to drop our offer to $10 per car which he took and we carried on.

Next we hit some more Ukranian guards on the border proper and suprise suprise they wanted a transit stamp. The CCTV camera pointed at the floor told the whole story and we quickly got on to the negotiating again Greg played the friendly and I played the pissed off team mate to keep the pressure on. Greg did a stirling job from stories about the charities and all the children through to reading statements out of his passport. Eventually Greg managed to fob him off with some Brazillian cigars and we managed to get through to the Russian side.

Getting into Russia didn't cost anything, just the insurance for the car which we could and did get that side and only cost $35. We found some other teams waiting there who had just paid $250 to the Ukraninans, they were gutted.The rest was boring paperwork and searches, we were kept for an hour or two - then we were in. Phew!

We found the right road to Volgograd and parked up in a petrol station to sleep again. We drove all yeaterday and got here to Volgograd in the afternoon, met up with Jen's siter and some other teams, got a hotel with a proper bed, showered, went to a restaurant, drank Vodka and went to bed. Slept like a baby!!!

Now we are getting som laundry done while the girls work out how to get 2 more people and kit into the panda and what route to take into Kazakh and then Uzbekistan. As we don't have an Uzbeki visa we may split up today but there is another guy who's team mate bailed out on him and got dropped by another convoy so we think we might continue with him and maybe some others. This rally is just more fun when you are travelling in a convoy and meeting new people.

Until the next time...

Mike