It was nice to find three other rally cars in line to cross the border. One mixed nationality car ahead of us and 2 UK cars passed us in the faster, EU line. We made plans to meet up with them in Odessa. After waiting for a long time on the Romanian side of the border, we were given our exit stamps and allowed to proceed. But they actually just release you into a buffer zone between borders. The Moldovan border crossing was maybe a mile further on. Again we waited in our car for a very long time. We could see that the ralliers ahead of us were having their cars thoroughly searched by Moldovan border security. We were eventually allowed to pull forward to the border agents, who informed us decisively that we could not enter their country. This because we do not possess the original vehicle registration document for Jon Hay. The dealer from London assured us were good to drive her with the documents he gave us, but these would only get us to the EU border. Our copy of the registration was not enough for the Moldovans. What’s unfortunate here is that we were only to be in Moldova for a few miles in transit from Romania to Ukraine, but they would not let us pass. Ukraine and Romania do not share a border on the Black Sea. Moldova holds fast to their small piece of waterfront real estate.

 So what do they do when they reject you from their border? It’s pretty exciting. They make you turn around and go back the same way — the wrong way down a one way into oncoming border traffic. We managed to find an open manhole with both a front and rear tire as we navigated a tight path through some very large trucks. We found a couple truckers to help lift her out. We eventually made it back to the Romanian border where we had to wait in line with everybody else. We were rewarded with another entry stamp. The whole debacle was an amusing and tense affair.

We returned to Galati where we found our way to the town center. Looking for a hotel, we found a very large building with a very large sign reading “Hotel Turista”. Sounds appropriate, right? Wrong! We walked inside only to find a large, completely empty room with a man sitting in a folding chair accompanied by a well armed and armored guard. They met us with some fast Romanian, but soon realized our mistake. The guard actually spoke decent English and gave us some loose directions to Hotel Galati, which we found. We have no interest in knowing what goes down in Hotel Turista. We are very happy in Hotel Galati.

We are learning that many teams are stuck in Romania at present. Most are missing the requisite vehicle documentation. Reports from the other side are not much better. The roads appear to support a pace of about 20 km/hr. One team which tried to go around Moldova reported car-sized potholes.

So we are trying to find some heroic cooperation in London in order to locate our missing registration and overnight it to Galati. If we cannot find it we will have to contact the DVLA and request a replacement. We could also move North and test our luck with the Ukrainians directly, but it sounds like they will be interested in the same document.