Kaunas to Moscow, Russia

Well last night/this morning was probably the worst experience of the rally so far. We drove all the way to Kaunas, by about 11pm we went service station scouting, there were plenty to choose from, but they were nothing compared to the ones we found in Western Europe. They were mainly truck stops, all of them looked the same, they all had the shady bar in one corner, and plenty of lighting, the only problem is they also all had guards. So we didn't know if that meant we had to pay to stay there or not, we ventured into a stop at about 12pm and decided to sleep in the car again. After about 45mins I was woken up by a Lithuanian security guard, who seamed to just moan at us, we had no idea what he was on about, so we decided it was probably best that we moved on, 20mins down the road we pulled onto a small country lane, pulled over and went back to sleep, only now a huge thunder storm was overhead, and the rain from it continued for much of the day.

After a while of sitting in the back of the car, I noticed my feet were getting quite wet, then a puddle started to form in the rear passenger side footwell, as we were driving along I pulled up the carpet to investigate to find that I'm watching the road race by, because of a hole in the floor, luckily the hole has a plug that had come out, so as we went on the rain was seaping into the hole. After a bit of mopping up, I replaced the plug, and we continued on towards our destination.

The day then got so much better! We turned up at the border from Latvia to Russia, after 10hours of waiting, 3 vehicle searches, and a small bribe to the customs official (3 of my alcohol minitures, including a brandy I was saving for the finish line) we eventually found our way into Russia! Then came the fun of trying to get car insurance for driving in Russia. This involved alot of help from my language book, but after about an hour we had insurance and could set off into Western Russia and onwards!