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Once again unable to upload pictures, so I'll try and include a couple here.

As we drove up to the border of Azerbaijan in Georgia, the road sign hanging above the highway said it all: Good Luck. The Georgian border guards were incredibly friendly, writing on the pink polka dots pasted all over the Mongol Kings' car. The border into Azerbaijan was a different story however. We made the mistake of pulling out musical instruments at the border, Andrew a harmonica, and our friend Graham a ukelele. Graham played a little Tears in Heaven for the guards, and the next thing we knew he was pulled into the small blacked out room in the first shack at the border. The guards kept trying to make us give the instruments to them, but we weren't having it. After about 30 minutes Graham finally reappeared, saying that the head customs guy took him into his private office and just kept telling him to keep playing anytime he stopped. I must note that Graham cannot actually play the ukelele, he had merely just learned a couple cords and could fumble through two songs.

Once again Andrew had to go through the pedestrian line while I took care of the car stuff. I had to go into the office with another Mike, a tall Brit, and then be processed through. The customs guy made Mike arm wrestle him, but the guard cheated by grabbing onto the desk for extra leverage. Mike then pointed at me and signaled that I should arm wrestle, but the guard took one look at me and laughed. Shortly after, another guard came in, and the first guy made him sit down to arm wrestle me, and I actually beat this guy, which only made me have to wrestle the first one later on. I sat in this office for 2 hours waiting for him to process Mike, and then myself, meanwhile being extorted for 40 dollars each. Everytime a Georgian or Azerbaijan guy came in, he would stop doing my paperwork and process them through, and then get back to me. He finally got it all done, then sent me next door where I had to pay another 10 dollars to sign my name. I was finally through when the guards at the gate took my passport and said I had to walk up the road to another building and get some other sort of paperwork.

I came out to see Graham and Andrew waiting in the rain, wondering what they were doing to me, and what had happened to Mike, as they hadn't seen him in an hour. Apparently during this wait Andrew was playing harmonica, again having about the same skills as Graham on the uke, but everytime he would stop, they would yell at him to keep playing. I walked up the road to this other building where I was surrounded by the menacing crackle of crappy electrical wires overhead. Once in the building it wasn't long before someone came and took my papers, and I finally saw Mike again. He had waited for an hour for somebody to take his stuff, and was just finishing up when I arrived. To get these processed I was once again extorted for money, this time 30 dollars. We finally got all the papers needed, were able to get our cars out of the border crossing, and started into Azerbaijan.

We had run into another team at the border after I had waited for 2 hours, and I guess the guard was tired of screwing with us, because they got right on through. We got a text from another team saying if we were headed to Kazakhstan, then we needed to get to the ferry right away. The new team we met said they would drive all night into Baku with us (it was already nearly midnight), and Mongol Kings decided to find a hotel somewhere, as they were going Turkmenistan. One of the guys from the other team hopped in my car, and Andrew into theirs, and then we started our 14 hour journey across the country (250 miles). These were the worst roads I had ever come across in my life. It was incredibly frustrating because you would see a beautifully tarmaced road next to you, while you were driving on terrible dirt ones. At one point some large dogs ran in front of the car, and I swerved harder than I ever have to avoid them, nearly taking out a car in the process...but I missed them. The roads were terrible, and I had already had my fill of the country after the border crossing.

Once in Baku we met some nice people, and I must say that the people in general are incredibly friendly, but all officials are worse than dogs. Speaking of dogs, that's basically what we were to them: dogs with money. We got to the port and met over 25 teams waiting for ferries that nobody could tells whether they'd come. One team had been there for a week at that point, and other people had been there anywhere from 3-5 days. Everybody had tents set up in the port, and the customs people treated us like dirt. A ferry had left for Turkmenistan a couple days before, and we heard rumors of them being stuck on a boat for over 30 hours in the port since the Azeris were trying to extort them for another 500 dollars just to get off the boat they had already paid for. Luckily Andrew and I only had to wait one night in the port, and were able to get out before our Visas expired.

I was awoken after my night in the port to a puppy biting me and wanting to play about 7 in the morning. I had been out drinking til 5:30 with this Pakistani bar owner, and I wasn't too pleased. Then it started raining on me (my tent doesn't work on concrete). I had a few fitful hours in the car, then woke up to find some internet. We weren't gone long before we got a call that we could finally buy tickets for the kazakh ferry, so we all rushed back to the port to take care of it. Regretfully, the guy that had waited there longest was a 70 year old know it all who has traveled to over 100 countries and apparently has pockets lined with gold. He straight up refused to bargain with the thieves in the port, and paid whatever they asked for, just because he wanted to get on the boat. He missed the memo in the adventurist handbook about not letting people extort you or paying large bribes because it screws every single person behind you. What cost teams in the past about 100 dollars total for a ferry crossing, cost us 470. If anyone tried to bargain, they would just point at what the first guy paid.

Once we finally got on the ferry, it was obvious that absolutely everybody had a bitter taste in their mouths after their Azerbaijan experience. That's when we decided to make it hell on the ferry for all the people that worked there. There were about 10 teams on the ferry with us, and we had a party on the roof, blasting Michael Jackson into the wee hours of the morning. Every drawer in the rooms became ashtrays (although we weren't the first people to have done this), a mirror was removed and horrible things written behind it, and a portrait of their dead president, Hadar, who is revered as a god, got swaffled. Swaffling is a Dutch term, and if you're really curious, I would look it up. Nobody would tell us anything on the boat, and it looked like we might be stuck outside the port for possibly 24 hours, since the boats don't dock until new cargo is ready to be loaded, and everybody started getting drunk. Next thing we know the fat cleaning women started screaming at us to get out of the rooms. Literally screaming. There was absolutely no friendliness coming out of them, and one even tried to steal our Danish friend Kim's computer. I have a number words I could use to describe Azerbaijan, but I don't think any of them are appropriate.

Once we finally got off the boat in Actau, we had even more adventures with new customs people. We were bussed to one room and processed through, then the drivers had to go back to retrieve the cars. The guards kept telling us to wait and come back in 30 minutes, or ten minutes, or twenty....then all of a sudden trains started loading cargo onto the boat. Our cars were in the lowest hatch of the ferry, under a panel that lifts from the floor, and they were putting cargo on top of the cars. The guards finally asked what we wanted, and we said that our cars were under there. We then had to wait while the trains unloaded the cargo they just put on, so that we could get the cars out. I guess they just forgot to tell people that our cars were under there, but I have no idea. Then the azeri boat workers had the gall to tell us to hurry up and get our cars out once we were finally able to get to them.
http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... At this point the Kazakh people wouldn't let us go through customs for several hours because the worker had gone home, and they also wouldn't let us back on the other side of the gate into the customs office where the non-drivers were. We had to take their sleeping bags to them so that they could sleep in the customs station, and then I slept on the ground near the ferry, next to the car. The next morning it took us close to 12 hours to process all our cars through. It was awful. In general, the guards were much friendlier than Azerbaijan, with the exception of the last customs people that whistled and snapped at us like we were dogs. The whole time we had to get one paper from one building, make copies, walk across the compound to another unmarked building, make copies of the old paper work which now had a new stamp, walk across the compound to a different unmarked building, get a new stamp, make copies of that, then onto another unmarked building..... Then once we finally made it to the last office, they processed about half of us, then decided to take an hour lunch break, so we had to wait again.

When we finally got out we stopped for beers and burgers at a restaurant called Guns 'n Roses. We deserved it after our last experiences. We filled up and headed out for our first journey into Kazakhstan. It was a beautiful desert scene with lovely mixtures of browns and whites, and mesas all over the place. We had 6 cars in our convoy, and everybody was in high spirits. One of the cars we are with is a Volvo Limo that has been turned into the bat mobile. Andrew put on a batman mask and cape and road around on the roof for awhile, and we all were treated to views of camels walking along the roads. We also passed some cemeteries, and interestingly enough, the buildings in these places are usually nicer than the buildings people are living in. Another side note: Kazakhs don't look like Borat, they actually have very Asian looking features.

We camped in a field that night, and woke up early the next morning for the worst roads we've ever encoutered in our life. They can't really be called roads, and you are often dodging potholes the size of the car. We blasted apart our gearbox, but fixed it pretty quickly, but then the bat limo blew a tire and the Rubix Cube car and our car stopped to help them. It turned out the Volvo dealer sold them spare rims that didn't fit the car, so we spent the rest of the day going about 10 mph trying to get to the next town which was close to 150 miles away. The bat limo rattled a whole lot and lost its brakes because of the ill-fitting wheel, but we actually couldn't have gone much faster on those roads in general. At this point we lost half the convoy, and it was just down to three of us. Three teams plus a Dutch hitchhiker that is. He's been hitching for months now, and is on his way to China. He's a super nerd who is starting to get annoying, but he's nice enough. We've been calling him Galaxy (as in Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy), and I don't think anybody actually knows his name. http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... Now we've been spending the last week driving through the Kazak desert, which is actually remarkably like Kansas. Everything is flat, there are lots of wheat fields and sunflowers, and the roads are straight and endless. We've had our share of adventures, and our car has taken a beating. One night people in a city kept running to our car to talk, and we told them we needed fuel and vodka. Next thing we know cars are leading us to a store for vodka, then onto a petrol station where they insisted on buying us fuel. Then they took us to a parking area on the highway, pulled a picnic table out, and we all sat down for Vodka. Love the hospitality. In terms of the car, our muffler snapped off, our exhaust came apart completely at the engine, Joe of team Rubikcrew carelessly through a rock and shattered our whole back window, and our transmission fluid is leaking. We taped a tarp up in the back window which has held up so far, but yesterday our alternator failed. We had to be towed into town by a trucker, and we eventually got ourselves to a mechanic/boxer who fixed our stuff for 17 dollars, even though it took him 3 hours. He took apart the exhaust and took out the bolt I sheared off, and welded a new piece on and fixed it up. He also gave us new connectors for the alternator, so we're all sorted. On a sad note though, somebody sliced through our tarp last night and stole our sleeping bags and tent. We figured we had taken out the valuables somebody would want, but some explitive took our sleeping gear. Joe feels terrible, but I'm not upset at him, just at the fact that somebody would steal our sleeping stuff. Alas, what can you do? Right now we're figuring out logistics for the upcoming week or so, trying to figure out how we're going to get the Bat Limo into Mongolia, now that their time is running out. Who knows when the next update will come, but thanks for staying tuned.

---Team Flatlanders---