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Timbuktu

It's hard to get to and between us it's really not worth the trouble, but none the less we said we'd drive to Timbuktu and we did.

Arriving in Timbuktu

In Mopti we unloaded one of the Landcruisers and fuelled it up with the last remaining drops of biofuel. It was touch and go whether we would make it on the remaining 50 litres so we filled up a Jerry can at the local filling station as a reserve and set off.

300km later with only 30 km to go the car was full of sand, we were coated with a layer of brown dust but more importantly the fuel gauge was hard against empty!

We might have been able to limp on to Timbuktu but we were worried that we'd suck all the much out of the fuel tank and block the filters if we ran the car dry, so reluctantly after a total of 8458km in the Biotruck expedition vehicles and with only 30km to go we put 10 litres of fossil diesel into the tank to ensure we could finish the journey safely.

Crossing the Niger river to reach Timbuktu

Looking back we could have saved that 10 litres so many times over, if we'd fixed that fuel leak in Mauritania earlier, if we'd not taken a wrong turn out of Segou and driven an extra 100km in the truck, if we'd not been so generous helping out stranded truckers with a few litres here and there along the way…

But that's the way it went. In the end we used 2000 litres of biodiesel, 10 litres of petrol (as a solvent when the biodiesel froze) and 10 litres of fossil diesel. I think we've proved the point.

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The Expedition set off from the UK on the 26th of November and arrived in Timbuktu on the 26th of December 2007.

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