Day 78

Left the hotel at 7:30 and continued south stopping a few minutes before noon when the GPS read 0 00.45 N and some kind person had put a gantry over the road saying that we were now crossing the equator.

Both my and Simon's GPS put the actual equator about 200m south of the line painted on the ground. I couldn't quite get it to read 0 00.0000 N but managed 0 00.0025 N

The rest of the day was spent driving along the Trans Sumatra Highway, which often has tarmac no wider than the roads into Witham Friary with a bit of gravel each side for when the oncoming lorries don't move over enough. Which is every time there is an oncoming lorry.

Late in the day we started to come down from the mountains that form the backbone of Sumatra and our average speed picked up a little. We still won't make our target of the Java ferry by friday afternoon, but hopefully we'll be across sometime on saturday.

Ramadan ends on saturday and our experience of this on previous holidays is not to try to travel anywhere. We'll see how we get on this time.

Tonight's hotel (it's raining again) is called Pink Hotel, and Beth thought it might be a brothel when we walked in. If it is then the rates are very reasonable. I'll let you know if it's good value.

Simon and Pat were a bit behind us at the end of the day and stopped in a town about 50km before us.

Lat 0 53.43 S
Long 101 20.96 E
Town Kiliranjao