Day dawns over Laayoune and all the cars and crews have made it safely through the night.
We have also picked up another fellow-traveller for our convoy, George from Peterborough is doing a solo trip from the UK to South Africa on his motorbike and has asked if he can tag along with us down to Banjul. We first met him at the Battle of the Embassy back in Rabat (which now seems an age ago) and recognised us when he pulled into Laayoune. The more the merrier...
Another day, another challenge; Andrew pops the bonnet for the daily oil and coolant check and sees that the shock absorber has punched its way through the top mounting and is hanging free, the bonnet is now the only thing stopping it coming out and the top thread is in the process of slamming a dent outwards in the bonnet each time we hit a bump or brake hard as the whole weight of the car is thrown downwards onto it. Poor old Phoebe is poorly.
We have a choice; stay in Laayoune on our own and try to find a mechanic, or bodge it to enable us to stay with the convoy and keep our fingers crossed for the next 500 odd kilometres through the desert. Bodge it is then as there is a rest day tomorrow in Dakhla where there is a Banjul Challenge-friendly garage. A few more diverse opinions and rummaging through car boots to see what equipment and odds and ends are knocking around and we hit on a solution. We need to keep the shock absorber down until we can weld a strip of metal over the top of it to hold it in place, so we need to find something to fit between the top mounting and the bonnet to distribute the force so that it doesn't punch a hole in the bonnet, although this will mean that the weight of the car is only being held by the bonnet hinge mounting nuts.
George finds a square bit of 2cm thick plywood that already has a hole drilled in one corner that is big enough for the thread to fit through and then rests on the top washer. Jenks then saws a corner off the ply with an old carpenter's saw from Bobs' boot so that it fits inside the recess inside the bonnet when it's closed and Brim helps out by doing what he does best, hammering the dent in the bonnet flat again with a lump hammer (we're going to call Brim "Clarkson" from now on...). Job done and Andrew jumps up and down on the bonnet to make sure that everything is holding, which it seems to be, so taking it slow with fingers crossed and buttocks clenched everytime we hit a bump, we all head off to Dakhla. (A few cars back in Idiotz Abroad Steve tells John not to follow behind those Desert Rats blokes too close as he doesn't want their bonnet coming through his windscreen.)
Apart from a short stop at Boujdour it's the vast nothingness of empty desert all the way with the temperature hovering around the 35 degree mark and the monotony is only broken by the occasional police checkpoint where they always pull us over to check papers. Given the roads are so empty of traffic apart from the occasional slow-moving HGV and European motor homes heading towards the surfer's paradise at Dakhla, we are probably the highlight of their day so you can't begrudge them it and they are always very friendly, apart from when Mike tries to video us all driving off from a checkpoint and they call him back and make him delete the footage.
The roads are so empty now and we are feeling a bit more confident (the bonnet is only flexing a little bit when we hit a big bump (Andrew was asleep at the time and is rudely awoken when as Phoebe hits it she wallows heavily and I let out an involuntary Aaaargh! and lift myself in the drivers seat to try and make the car lighter) so it all seems to be holding together ok) so to the irritation of those behind (Bob has a choice word or two to say about the two fellows in the Audi as they disappear over the horizon) we have a bit of a play with the Dukes and having found that the road is smoother if you drive right slap-bang down the middle of it, crank her up to 120-130kmh.
After stopping at a desert petrol station that doesn't actually have any petrol or diesel there's one final police checkpoint for everybody to catch up and we finally cruise down the peninsular and into the coastal resort of Dakhla.
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