Semey, Aug 17

The road to Semey is terrible, Chris folds 3 wheels inside of one km, two on the same pothole. One of the Peugeots hits a pothole so hard that it throws its emergency shutoff switch. Eventually we make it into Semey where we find a shop that beats everyone’s wheels back into shape, checks and balances them for about $1 each. We also get some gear oil to throw in the Peugeot with the leaky differential. After getting money, meat on a stick and a beer in a cool little market wehead out to set up camp just short of the Russian border. At our camp we are joined by a couple more brits who we met on the ferry but haven’t seen since Sochi. It was a great evening and camp site, but we were too close (like 50m from) a military training base so we were hassled in the middle of the night. As usual, we ignored them for a while and they left. We headed out early to be one of the first people at the border. The Peugeot with the bad cv is also having serious electrical problems, besides having to bump start it almost every time, their car likes to shut off randomly while driving down the road.