Yellow Truck to Liwa drive report

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tompa-bjorka
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Yellow Truck to Liwa drive report

Post by tompa-bjorka »

4 Drivers:
Myself, Kevin, Mark and Zak.

This was a planned exploration of the area between the Yellow truck south of Madinat Zayed, and Liwa. We met at Madinat Zayed gas station 8AM, and filled up our cars, then drove on to the deflation point. The plan was to drive first about 50 km to the Yellow truck, then go south toward the Liwa Strategic water reserve, and then if time allowed, continue down to Liwa to finish the trip. The drive on to Yellow truck can be easy, or very difficult depending on the route. The sand was very soft so we soon had to stop to deflate the tires a bit more. We found on the way dune after dune shaped like “half-bowls”, some of them really big and we had a lot of fun. Most of them had very flat approaches so we could use high speed when starting the climbs, without worrying too much for bumps.

We reached the Yellow truck and hung around there some time and tagged it with the AS4x4 sticker, then took direction south towards the Liwa Strategic Water reserve, which we reached around noon time. Nearby, we found an oasis where we stopped for an hour making lunch under the palm trees, as well as “repairing” a faulty passenger side window on one of the FJs.

After lunch, Zak decided to follow the road out from the water reserve plant and the remaining three FJs took a new waypoint 20 km south on Liwa oasis. On the way there, we found another half-buried truck in the desert, I assume that is not the only one either. The last part of the drive was very technical, in super soft sand, but eventually we reached Liwa around 3PM after driving about 110 km from the start point.

It was an interesting drive and we found some really cool dunes on the way. Worth the effort to go there. Thanks to the drivers that joined, no issues at all during the day (except maybe Kevin’s broken electrical passenger door window). Special thanks to Zak for the pastries and the tea.

/Thomas

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