Gershina

The above is a picture from last night's camp. Is that not what dreams are made of?! That tiny blue dot is Cassie.

Graeme:
Gershina is one name we're testing for our car. Car in Russian is Machina, and Ger's are a nomad's house in Mongolia. It's our nomadic house car! Technically it's probably spelled Gerchina. I feel decent names just happen organically, so we'll see how this fits.

I just jumped under the car to refill the front diff but to my suprise, it's most certainly full. erm. Not sure what happened there, I obviously misread the oil level. It must have been perfect body temperature because I couldn't feel it, and what I saw on my finger I assumed was just residue from the filler hole. And the oil doesn't look contaminated either. I think the breather may be blocked, or it's just closed off at the moment because the bolt came out with a little bit of back pressure. What a mystery! Oh well, we now have 4L of front diff/gearbox/transfer case oil! I'm really not worried at all.

Cassie fit right in at Moron ;-) We had lunch at a hotel which was scrumptious. Cassie had stirfry lamb and rice, and I had 'Fried Pepper Meal'. Terrific. Opposite was an auto shop where we bought the oil and wiper blades from. Three gents inside were watching the olympics. I think it was an early heat of a hurdles event. A USA lady won by a fair lead. We were all joyed in some kind of 'yay, someone won, it doesn't matter who'. We talked about Mongolia's medal tally and Australia's and told them we watched the wrestling the other night on TV between a Mongolian and a Korean with much enthusiasm as if rooting for our own contendor. They invited us to sit and watch. We hung around for a minute but were eventually on our way.

After lunch and several stunning mountain passes later, we stopped by a river for a swim. The water was alright, but now we're all washed - awesome. Ulanbator aside, 90% of Mongolians are soooo excited to meet us.

Today yielded another example of the 'general direction' navigation rule. We veered right at a fork in the road when in hindsight should have been a left. We drove for maybe 30 minutes and ended up at the same place that the other road went. Another weird element is the fact that if there is no road, you need to just drive there. As you can tell from our location, we're within 10 minutes of a small town. We approached it from one side, but needed to leave on the same side, just further over... so we just drove straight. It's a foreign concept for us, but it's totally cool here. Same with our camp site, we saw a saddle in a mountain, so we just drove to it. Our altitude is 1917M - Our highest yet. Cassie is feeling a bit queasy which is sad. There's nothing I can do unfortunatly, so I'm just trying to keep busy and not get in her way. Hopefully it will pass soon.

PS. She's feeling much better. We've kept a 500ML lemonade in our fridge to sip if we feel crook. Well, Dr. Graeme saved the day, she's had a burp or two and now feels on top of the world. Warranty not included.

Cassie:
Thanks to Graeme for the update on my wellbeing, burps included. I'm sure you were all thrilled to bits to read about the details.

Today has been yet another wonderful day in Mongolia. Haha, yes moronically Graeme thinks I fit in well at the town named, Moron. Everyone has been genuinely warm towards us. In the town of Moron I waited in the car at one point and people would look at the car as they were passing by and as soon as our eyes met I would smile and there would be a quick and warm smile in return. At one point a Mongolian guy about our age stopped us in the street, all smiles. All he wanted to do was shake each of our hands then he continued on his way down the street. All the kids we've met are so cheeky! Today there were three boys on two horses, maybe ranging in age from 9 - 12 (totally guessing) and they were clearly meant to be hearding their family's livestock. But as soon as they saw our car approaching down the road the horse that had two boys on it trotted into the middle of the road and blocked our way. As we approached I grabbed the video camera because these kids were playing chicken
with us! Haha awesome! When we got to them we stopped and they were mounted up on their horse giggling away like little urchins. We were in the game so moved the car to the left and they blocked our way. To the right, they blocked our way. Haha classic! After that they moved off to the side of the road. The car was in a muddy patch so Graeme lit up the back wheels and spun mud everywhere and they were laughing and carrying on, loving the "horse play" - 'scuse the pun, honestly none intended. Ahh, such innocent fun.

Lunch in Moron was indeed tasty and I refuse to believe that's what made me feel ill a moment ago. The menu had some funny sounding delights on it, aside from Graeme's "Fried Pepper Meal" which turned out to be stir-fry pepper beef, there was also "Chicken with Tricky". I wasn't game enough to order that, even for a laugh because Graeme was already ordering a weird sounding thing. I thought at least stir-fry lamb with rice is a good fall back, worst case I could just eat the rice. Anyway I really want to know what "Tricky" is. There were a few other things on the menu that were a laugh but I can't remember them. Sorry, you just had to be there for the giggles. The beverage menu did have the staples of hot or cold water specifically.


Position: 12-08-06 18:55:00 +0800 +0000
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