Day 55 Almathy-Almathy 62/13.437 km

Today was car repair day. After the noisy night on the parking lot of the shopping mall (at least they had a toilet and washing basin) Rudy went to G-Motors and Jamaliah went with the ladies exploring the town. It was a whole day at the Mercedes garage. Sergei does the maintenance of Mercedes trucks as well as normal cars. Living in Almathy he also has a lot of experience in 4WD and suspension systems. We removed the old gas cap, which was full of sand and difficult to unscrew. Fortunately the tank did not have to be emptied because there were non-return valves so the pressure hose could be removed without problems. A hole was drilled in the car chassis from the outside and also from the inside. A new longer pressure hose was fabricated and all put back together again. Sound short but it still took 7 hrs to get it all done. On top of this the worn rubbers of the stabilization rod were replaced with durable Mercedes ones. Thanks a lot Sergei and your team for the excellent work at a very reasonable price and also allowing me to catch up on all my e-mails, Skype with the boy’s back home and read up on the fantastic victory of the Dutch team over the Spanish team (5-1!).
After doing the sights of the town the ladies drove from 800 m up into the mountains (2400 m). It was a heavy climb. Well worth it because it is nice and cool, especially when compared to yesterday. Along the drive up we saw several stretched limousines for weddings and roadside garden restaurants were full of wedding guests. Saturday is wedding day apparently. On all possible parking spots there were families picnicking. It is good to see that the people make use of their beautiful surrounding.