June 6th: Beyneu to Aktau

We woke up with a thick layer of dust on our faces. The camp had run out of clean water for drinking and washing but we had the vision of a clean hotel shower on the horizon. The route out of camp was so ridiculously dusty, we were fitted with a second coat of dirt for good measure.

The potholes on the road out of camp also knocked our horn into the on position again. We opted to simply cut the entire loom, which solved the horn problem but left us with no windshield fluid pump or interior lights. Luxuries we can live without! On the highway rest stop we met some Austrians who were driving into Uzbekistan and we shared lament for the desert and the heat. Later on we turned off the highway for the last sporting section in Kazakhstan. The road was tough though and the Cambridge sputtered to a halt 500m from the event start.

Steve helped us troubleshoot the issue, checking first for air and then fuel delivery. We moved onto the spark and found we had none. The battery was charged and the plugs looked free of oil and gas. We checked the distributor cap for dust and the distributor. We realized then our spare distributor was not the correct part and we had no replacement. We moved to the coil and tried fitting a spare to no luck. Only when the sweep crew showed up did we realize the ignition coil had no power coming to it. They fashioned a small wire to connect it directly to the +12v and the engine spun alive without issue. We drove away with the dream of being clean getting closer to reality. After a fun sporting section and a beautiful descent into a desert chasm, we took the highway to the Kuryk Port and left our car to be ferried. A bus took us to our hotel in Aktau, a water resort right on the Caspian.

It was a sight for sore eyes. We spent the night swimming and hanging out in the grassy knolls above the beach. Overall, a fantastic reprieve from the difficult last few days.