Team Haglöfs Silva finihes in second place at Expedition Africa. They had a very hard race, especially the last two days they didn’t sleep much or nothing at all. Torn and battered they arrived at the finishline, but superhappy about the podiumplace and getting a free start to the ARWC in Ecuador!

The story will come later!

Today is Mattias birthday! He had actually not thought about it he said, “I was busy doing something else!”. The Mbotyi River Resort where TA6 is, arranged for him to have a cake and a candle – and all of us swedes sang for him when they arrived at the gate. He was really surprised and superhappy! He shared the cake with some from the backteams, because they really needed the energy and happiness too!

Mattias made a tiny error on the orienteering during the night and they lost time, and lost a bit more when they got down to the canyon this morning due to sore feet and slippery terrain. After a long transition with plenty of food and some care of their feet they gained new speed on their bikes and has now regained second position on the leaderboard. With Tecnu right on their heels, and Painted wolf chasing behind them.

The race so far had been pretty but challenging, with long kayak stages and tricky navigation. The navigation seems to be tricky due to the maps being old, meaning we follow new roads that aren´t on the map and have to constantly keep track of where we are so that we know how to turn when we find a road we recognize. We lost a couple of hours at the start of the mangrove kayak when a control was place only 2-300m in the wrong place but that meant that we kayaked right past it. Other controls in the mangroves were hard to find as the channels we needed to follow were sometimes very indistinct, and the 3.5m tidal difference meant that some channels were impossible to navigate at low tide and there were strong currents to fight against at times. We also lost about an hour on the first cycle where it appears Thule were the only team to find a clean route, again because of roads on the map being totally overgrown and new roads adding to the confusion. The course Antonio has set is very ambitious, and we had been saving our energy for the long trek coming up which will likely be epic.

We had some great experiences along the course, which remind us why we keep coming back and doing these races. We have seen some whales, although unfortunately from a distance. There was also bright fluorescence in the water and spectacular stars during the two nights we spent paddling. We also had a small crocodile keeping us company when we were filling our water bottles before the mangroves, where we took with us 8 litres of water each, I suspect that tems who take less will become very thirsty in the mangroves. The mangroves were beautiful, but a challenging environment. At one stage we tried to drag the boats a low tide along with Seagate, but the knee deep mud meant the we soon gave up and paddled an extra 10km around instead.

The zipline was the quickest section of the race, we hung on a pully attached to a steel cable, 2km long and 400 vertical meters. Robert who is a bit heavier than most travelled at 140km/h. It was pretty cool doing it at night, flying through the treetops with the headlamp on lighting the way!

I met with the team at TA4. Josefina had a bandage for her elbow, and barely move it och bend it. Everybody is ok and they are very, very disappointed. The race had just begun and after the biking the trekking would begin. Something Josefina was really looking forward to. After the rest it would have been a good and fast race to the finish together with Thule and Seagate. //Andreas

Unfortunately Team Haglöfs Silva is out of the race! During the night Josefina Wikberg fell on her bike and hurt her left elbow. It was bad enough that she couldn’t continue, but she is OK and the team is resting at the Superman Canopy.
She is picked up by the organisation and is taken to a hospital for X-ray.
//Andreas

Today the team handed in all the boxes and bikes for transport to the start. Now they can relax and socialize with the rest.

Otherwise the team is focused and ready for the task. A bike is borrowed from a local and the rest of the gear is in place. Today part of the course were presented during the briefings, and that presentation also had some bumps that had to be straightened out. Of course it concerned a darkzone. When that controversy was cleared, all of the teams seemed happy and could continue plan their way through this 800 km+ hardcore racecourse. It will be very remote, and no shops or anything on the way to the finishline. So the team will have to carry everything during the sections – and some sections are over 90 km trekking through jungle.

During the briefing the teams got a long and detailed lecture about all the snakes in Costa Rica. You could sum it up with: snakes are dangerous – don’t go near them. Lets hope the team runs faster than a little snake.   //Andreas Strand