Well, I'm in Labrador City right now ...

... in probably the most expensive hotel I've ever stayed in in my life, even when someone else was paying the bill. But that's what everything is like around here. To give you an example, the petrol in Baie-Comeau is 108.4 cents per litre - at Manic 5 (the intermediate stop on Highway 384) just 213kms north, it was all of 132.4 cents. And a small mug of coffee cost me $1:50 instead ot the usual 50 cents.

So what I decided to do was that instead of spending three or four nights on the trail I'm going to do it in just two. So 604 kms over some of the worst roads I've ever driven in the mud, rain and snow (it's snowing outside) and a 12-hour day with 68 photos included, and here I am halfway round. And I'm exhausted too.

But the road is an adventure. The first 213 kms up to the hydro-electric dam at Manic 5 (short for the Manicougan River Dam no5) is a surfaced road and then the rest of it is as you find it. Generally speaking it's compacted dirt but in the weather we are having just now it's mostly mud and there are places along the trail where lorries have sunk in. It's slippery too in the wet and I've had Casey across the road a couple of times when I've not been concentrating.

From about km300 (where there used to be a huge mine of some description) to the railway at the Flint Mine the road is surfaced but it's not been maintained for probably 30 years since the mine closed and it's worse than the dirt trail. And then after the railway there just isn't anything really - rail traffic has put paid to any pretext at keeping up the road and you have to pick your way between the potholes

But the views for the first 300 or so kms are beautiful and on a good day it must be magnificent. Once you climb onto the Labrador plateau then you are really in the tundra - no grasses, just mosses and lichens and stunted fir trees. It's snowing heavily up there (or it was when I was up there earlier) but down here in the valley at Labrador City it's teeming down with rain and there's a biting wind.

Tomorrow I'm going to catch up on a couple of things I missed and then I'm going to do the second half - to Goose Bay. A mere 520 kms.