Today is the first meal with 10 around the table. The team is two-thirds complete, things are taking shape, and the approaching departure is on everyone's mind !

The ones freshly arrived are jet-lagged, the equipment and supplies are still to be divided between us and we need to study carefully the whole budget....
Evrard would like to make a little survey flight over the massif to better map our route and confirm a few things, like where we can get water and whether some crossings are realistic. But the cost of the things is prohibiting : 3000 US$ per hour, for a flight that would take around 2 hours!! Bargaining is going to take a while.

How far would we go to feel safe and decrease the risks ? The water issue remains ever present. Even if we need to cover just 30 to 40km as the crow flies in a dozen days, the temperatures we will encounter combined with the bags we have to carry are going to make dehydration a potentially serious risk. Ideally we should guarantee a minimum of 7L per day per person, which would be a miracle in a karstic massif like this one, full of holes and only retaining at its surface a tiny fraction of the water that run in its underground networks.

No one is shy of ideas : «Right, how about dropping water jerrycans with little parachutes from the helicopter every 3 kilometres ?»

Plus sobrement, il y a des chances que nous fassions deux équipes. L’une « éclaireur » et très mobile pour ouvrir la voie et trouver « l’oasis » du soir. Et l’autre, restant au camp jusqu’à ce qu’une source et un passage soit trouvés dans la direction voulue.

In any case, we are hoping that a few good showers will be bestowed upon us by Mother Nature...
Meaning : we don't want to think about failure, but we can't ignore the risks.

At the end of the day, we found the power generator, the scuba tanks have been filled up and, in spite of the fatigue of the newcomers, a thousand other items have been ticked off the list. Yet we still have a few little things to do and to bargain, so we will still not be leaving Kendari tomorrow. The departure day to the massif is set on Friday morning!