The sun started coming up around 6 and the traffic picked up so we got up and hit the road. The morning started out with us getting kind of lost. Azerbaijan is the second country we haven’t had internet in but we do have offline maps on a few phones and thankfully there are relatively few roads to Baku. That being said with all the exploring for campsites the night before we got a little turned around and detoured from the main highway. The road we took was probably slower but it was a nice drive. We had to drive up another mountain which meant the Doblo didn’t leave second gear for around an hour. It’s a grind to get to the top but once we were there the view was pretty awesome.
The biggest drawback to not being on the main highway was the lack of food. There are plenty of little vendors that set up along the road selling honey or something, but that’s not exactly a meal. We drove through a few towns before we finally spotted something labeled Restaurant. Most aren’t labeled at all so unless there’s a picture of food on the sign it can be pretty difficult to tell what’s what.
The restaurant was quite a find. It had a big patio and it wasn’t hot out yet so we sat up there. One of the employees gave us a menu that was written in cyrillic, and since it is a completely different alphabet there are no context clues to know what’s what. I’m willing to bet they don’t get a lot of foreigners on top of the mountain. We tried gesturing to ask what he would order, and he told us to hold on one moment. A man who I assume was the owner came over to the table. Usually when this happens they’ve grabbed someone that knows a little English. He didn’t. He did start saying words until we recognized one: kebap. We gave the big thumbs up, but then he started talking more. Our reaction was more confused stares so he did something that was fucking awesome. He brought Ryan and I to the kitchen and started opening random fridges and freezers. Some of it looked familiar, some of it didn’t. We just pointed at some meats and they started cooking.
I’m assuming what they brought out was different cuts of lamb. Whatever it was was very delicious. They also brought out a tray for us to pick stuff a la carte like watermelon and cucumber salad. One of the drinks he set on the table was a little weird. It looked like milk, but it wasn’t milk. Now Ryan and I had learned a lesson drinking milk at the Hilton in Ankara so we were trying to stay away from any from then on out. The restaurant was showing so much hospitality that I felt obligated to try it (I was also just curious.) It was sour but not in a bad way, it just tasted like greek yogurt. From what I understand it actually might have been yogurt milk, no idea. Wasn’t bad though.
A few hours later we got into Baku, but we had a problem. We couldn’t find our hostel Ryan had booked. The address we had wasn’t right. The side streets of Baku were sort of similar to Istanbul in that they were very narrow and mostly one way- which is crazy confusing. At this point it’s around noon, so we circled around in that area until we found a tea shop that said it had wi-fi on the sign. Bingo. As I’ve said before whenever you have a problem, have a beer and try to figure it out. Google was giving us a different address from hotels.com which is frustrating but at least they were in the same area and only a few blocks away. Turns out it was 2 blocks up the street from us but it still took 30 minutes to find because it wasn’t labeled beyond scratching the name of the place into the door.
Mitch had started using Google translate to ask one of the cafe employees where we could find a mechanic to install a sump guard for us. If you don’t know what that is, a sump is another word for your oil pan which is typically on the bottom of the engine. During the course of this 10k mile drive we’ve got some brutal stretches of road to cross. Potholes come out of nowhere and on a lot of roads the cement has been crushed down by 18 wheelers creating a valley with cement mountains on each side. Suffice it to say if you aren’t careful you will scrape the hell out of the bottom of your car or worse. A sump guard is a big piece of metal that you place under the engine to take the brunt of the beating. If the oil pan gets pierced that could be game over.
The Azeri guys had an idea of who to hook us up with so Mitch and I jumped in the car and followed a taxi to a hole in the wall mechanic. He spent a few minutes looking at it and said he couldn’t do it. He also noticed the sweet oil leak we have in our newly procured used engine though.
We followed the taxi to a second mechanic who said the same thing. This is where things got interesting. One of the kids in the taxi had called his dad, so pops got in our front seat and led us around town for next 5 hours. By the way this guy spoke no English at all.
The first place he brought us was a Chevy dealer. Kinda surprised they had one here actually. They tell us to pull into the service bay and lift it up into the air to check it out. Mitch and I knew this was not the place that this problem was going to get solved at but we let them take a look. I think they were actually trying to help out, but in the end it didn’t work out. Their mechanic also saw the big oil leak so he spent an hour cleaning the engine trying to find it. We came to the conclusion that the oil dipstick was leaking somehow. Of course we had to pay for this but it only ended up being 20 Azeri manat which is $12 usd. Pretty cheap for an hour at a dealership.
The next place the guy brought us to was exactly what we were looking for: a really shady alley lined with hole in the wall mechanics. There’s a decent chance they were chop shops, it’s really hard to say. Regardless it looked promising. The first mechanic told us he might be able to do it but we’d have to go find scrap metal. So we go to a scrap metal place with random pieces of metal sitting around. The kid running the place wanted nothing to do with us and said none of the crap lying around was available. Bullshit. So we went to a second one who was willing to sell us a couple sheets of steel. They even cut it for us. Total cost was another 20 manat.
We went back to the first mechanic who had moved a fancy car out of the garage so we could pull in and he could get underneath. After a few minutes he started yelling at the guy who had brought us there. He argued back, and for the next few minutes they are yelling at each other because he couldn’t or didn’t want to do it. To be fair after we looked under the car we were pretty discouraged that it was even possible as there wasn’t really anywhere to attach the steel too. So we left and at this point we’re both thinking we’ll give this one more go and then calling it off. Old guy brings us to an exhaust workshop. Ok, creative. Might work. We waited about an hour for them to finish with their other job. When they lifted the car up we did our best to pantomime what we needed. 15 minutes later after a lot of cheering and high fiving they had mounted it. Granted, it’s not the most professional install and who knows if it will hold, but they made it work. They even fixed the rim Goodman had crushed in and swapped out one of our wheels for us. Total cost…….. 15 manat. $9 american dollars…. Other teams have spent $50-200 getting one installed. This is what the rally is all about, solving problems even when you can’t really communicate.
The hostel wasn’t exactly the Hilton. Or a motel for that matter. Community bathroom (felt like a college kid’s apartment bathroom, generally grungy), community shower (with no curtain??) and no air conditioning. It was a place to stay though, and any kind of shower is a luxury sometimes. The owners of the hostel were nice though, and one of the employees (she was considering working there) said she would give us a tour of the old city. After walking around for an hour we decided we needed a drink. It had been a very long day and we were proud of our problem solving. We found a cheesy Irish pub and posted up there. A few other teams were also in Baku waiting on the ferry so they came out and we met over lots of Irish car bombs. One of the teams was Irish so that was especially funny. I think we closed down the bar, those Irish kids can really drink. It’s always fun to meet new people and swap stories about the trip.
