Pajero is fixed, a painful night in Barra

Day: 11
Location: Barra, the Gambia
Weather: hot
Kilometers: 150km
Hours: 4
Health: dehydrated, greasier
Accomodation: hotel Barra
Price, room: 10K CFA
Price, water: 25 dalasi
Shower: false advertising
Morale: 2
Total spend: 154K CFA
Song of the day: "It was supposed to be so easy" - The Streets

AW: we left at 7:30am for Farafenni to get the gasket and some cash. We ended up with neither. The bank couldn't handle credit cards and had no ATM. We walked the burned gasket from shop to shop, while each owner remained sure that we could find the part at the next shop. In the end, it just reinforced the fact that Toyota and Mercedes are the only marks that can be repaired anywhere in Africa - Mitsubishi, not so much.

We had to go to Kaolack, Senegal across the border 90 km in order to find what we needed, so it took closer 8 hours rather than the 2 we expected. Howe ver we got the parts for 40K CFA, including the new gasket, blue glue, bearings, bolts (the wrong size), bread, water, and money.

RH: Adam and Guillaume left me in the village all day with 40 Gambian dollars. But that is only $1.50 US. Also I bought a mango from a lady and when she went for her fanny pack she gave me a peek at years and years of no support.

AW: The mechanic fixed the car by 8pm, leaving us 3 hours to get to the ferry at Barra. The car was overheating and losing lots of water by the time we made it to Farafenni. There, fools that we are, we paid 3K CFA for someone to fix the fan (it later became clear that this was the AC fan, which serves only to drain the battery).

We had excellent steak and onion sandwiches, and then continued to Barra, stopping every 20km to add water. Something was still very wrong with the car. We missed the 11PM ferry by an hour, so we were forced to spend one dire night at the hotel Barra. I can't remember ever sleeping in a worse place, and I certainly won't forget using the blackberry backlight to confirm that there were indeed bugs crawling on the bed and pillow, and then giving up and going back to sleep.

GB: The hotel Barra was indeed as close to a deathtrap as a hotel will ever be. Bugs everywhere, no running water, and the usual crowd of thieves, hustlers, and villains you expect to find at a ferry crossing in Africa. All this considered, being just above the generator feeding the nearby casino was the least of our worries. The next morning woke up feeling like I had Malaria. Turned out it was the beginning of a diarrhea. We are not sleeping in that place again. Even Momo was wrapped up like a mummy when we found him the next morning, bitching about trop des moustiques.

The second mechanic had fixed the head gasket problem on the car, with an efficiency that amazed us. We felt all the more let down when we found out that he forgot to connect a fan to the battery. Little did we know, that wasn't the problem, but we would soon get a better idea.