Ai Ais

For a rather ordinary hotel in what could be an Australian country town, we had surprisingly delicious food. Last night they cooked what we liked in the way of stir fry, fish, pasta and more while we watched. Made smoked salmon sandwiches from breakfast for our lunch and left from the multi storey car park.

We did three trials, all on gravel, with gravel in between. They were so tight that we had to drive all day as though we were on a trial. Luckily they do have excellent gravel roads here and getting up to 90mph not too much of a problem, except for the nerves! On the last trial we came over the hill and the control wasn’t there. Confused, we pressed the yellow brick and carried on, not at full pace and finally found them a couple of miles on. Everyone had the same problem, obviously, and reacted differently, so they cancelled that trial which we think is a pretty poor outcome.

We think someone hit a calf.

We drove through stunning country. It is dry and deserty with fantastic flat topped hills which we wove our way through then climbed up onto a plateau. Ai Ais is by Fish River Canyon which is dark volcanic rock which we seem to have driven down into a bowl and it is sweltering with hot springs so we swam in the hot pool. Our first swim of the rally which we really needed after a very long and dusty day