First thing in the morning off to the Toyota garage for the brake repairs. To the disappointment of team Lipstick the garage could not offer any assistance as they were fully booked with other cares but they guided the team to some other place 100m down the road.
Again there the same situation “sorry we cannot help you today” but they guided the team to yet another place “Bosch Service Centre” in a side road.
Arriving there and lengthy discussions the manager advised the team that he can do the job but it would take him a day to get the parts (8 pads and 2 front discs)
Andre and Willy then decided to go back to Toyota and after a lot of negotiations in between broken English and broken French they were able to locate all necessary parts in the spare department.
Boschie all over …. Great service….
Packed with these parts they limped back ( No brakes) to the Bosch service station where the manager happily now allowed Lipstick onto the car lift and proceeded to exchange a new set of TOYOTA genuine brake pads and both front discs….
Lipstick gets another set of breaks in Libreville….
2 hours later Lipstick pulled out of Libreville through very dense traffic onto a nice tar road towards Lambarene. This road was in a very good condition but full of bends winding itself through the forests of Ghana.
Between Lambarene and Libreville there is not really a big town but again a lot of villages consisting of a few houses on either side of the road.
Sometimes a local man had to be asked for the right directions which was sometimes quiet amusing as the load carrying capacity is not always a true reflection of knowledge
In West Africa the head is used to maximum capacity….
However with Libreville being situated in the northern hemisphere the team crossed the equator again … the 3rd time in 2 Days…
Zero degrees South – Lipstick crossed the equator again on route from Libreville to Lambarene.
Off on the road again to Lambarene where the team found a nice resort on the river to set up for the night.
A quick stop over in the town to buy a local sim card as there was no Internet and the team had to phone our man at the base station – Cape Clearview – … Happy birthday NATHAN!!