London to Auckland

Fuel is turning out to be our biggest nightmare. It is so difficult to find it and it’s very expensive. We can use 750L in a day. Here in Turkey it is 2 Euros per liter. That’s 4 NZ dollars. You do the math. Even if we did have the money to pay for it, its difficult to obtain. On day 16 we called in at Giurgiu in Romania and were stuck there for 5.5 hours while our trusty ground crew ferried drums from a service station some km away. And this all in 40 degree heat. Frustrating and painful.

We did achieve some good there in Giurgiu as we met up with Olga Cridland and her husband Frank from P.A.V.E.L, the Romanian children’s cancer organisation. Thanks for your hospitality Olga and Frank. You made our day brighter.

After the refuel we headed down river for a night in Tulcea near the border with Ukraine and just 70km short of the Black Sea. The river riding was good and we covly 600km for the day. We had dramas along the way with both Jed and myself sucking debris into the jets and wasting some 20 minutes, plus a wrong turn which wasted another 10. This resulted in an arrival into Tulcea in the dark. So what’s new?