The expedition diaries Tunisia (15-28 April 2003)                               If you want to have photo or video materials about Tunisia - write us a letter.

Great race over the Sahara In the morning we strongly decided at the briefing to hold great race who will come faster. A large half of teams were looking forward to bringing back their young days and trying horse-powers on the African lack of roads. These small, but self-confident cars involve particular feelings. It will be right to give them a first name or a surname. Any of them hold their individual features. For instance, one may have a comical grunting klaxon. Another one is swollen with pride of possessing a limit of speed up to 280 km per hour on the speedometer. Certainly, for fun. The majority of cars put irreproachable black colour. A wide range of sponsors' labels of this rally and the pervious one are pasted on all their sides that you might consider them to be sacs of expertised travellers of the last century. As we were informed, the initial colour of the given trade mark is black. So the vehicles carry the other colours due to their owners' efforts. However, Citroens have a stylish look in any colour scale. We come across a "tasty" car of vanilla ice-cream colour, the twins of irreproachable grey color, up-to-the-minute black-and-white car, recalling half-boots of bootleggers to you, and eye-beguiling bright yellow one. It is likely to have been in the past sports auto, contrasting its other "collegues". Now we are being offered an opportunity to watch them working. Till now the serpentine roads did not allow getting up speed, but we came down the hills to arrive at the place where the desert took root. To start with we chose a hook of some dozens of kilometers. It consisted of two appropriate directions at acute angle and bends in the middle of the way. The area scenery is flat like a table with small hummocks and sparse prickly bush. In fine, the landscape is fitting for the forthcoming competitions of speed and of cross-country ability. Our rally team was united during the journey as if we were a big family. We stopped to take a liking to the nature, to photograph the surroundings, to communicate with friendly locals. And today an unexpected excitement embraces everybody. These touching cars are going to show, what they are capable of. The oldest of them (1938) has been holding for 65 years a motor of 7 (!) horsepowers. Before the start the teams are given a sheet of paper with indicated time. The paper is to hand over to the organizers waiting for the participants at the finish. The Citroens and their teams didn't deceive us, having rushed for more than 130 km per hour at some parts of the plain road. They passed through the bends with squealing brakes and clouds of sand and dust in the air. After calculating the scores it was known, that a German team had held the first place, the third - Eric, one of the rally organizers, with his young spouse. The second one - the team of the Parisian Sylvie with her father and our Kseniya. She was the talisman and navigator of the race. Then Kseniya took the steering-wheel of their Citroen and trained herself in driving within the following stages. According to her words, the vehicle turned out to have some peculiarities of steering-gear, but it's powerful enough and high-speed. As a matter of fact, we should homage the rally organizers and their cars. The expedition didn't give us any serious breakage. All cars are in a fine condition. Moreover, a maintenance crew - a group of red-shirted young guys followed our caravan. Every evening on our arrival to hotel they succeeded in examining Citroens carrying out some repair if necessary. Next: >>>  Salt lakes and oases

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