Hello. This is Earle Lowe on the 1999 Around the World team calling to you from Dongxing in Inner Mongolia, the Inner Mongolian autonomous region of China.

I would first like to answer a question from Jim Hatfield on our web site. We are at 39 degrees 48 minutes North, 109 degrees 59 minutes East. He wants to know the latitude and longitude so he could follow us on a map. And if you are following, tomorrow we are going to try and reach Zhongwei. That is also in Inner Mongolia*. It will be a significant travel day for us tomorrow of several hundred kilometers.

Today we experienced our first significant vehicle problem where one of the alternators on one of our Land Rovers failed. We managed to make it to a failrly large city called Hohhot, and this morning we managed to have a new alternator put in with the help of some very friendly and extremely helpful Chinese mechanics.

So we are now running with a Chinese alternator (quite happily) in one of our Land Rovers. Despite this incident and the delays it has provided our trip, everyone is very upbeat, the Rovers are running quite well, and we anticipate making up any time lost tomorrow.

And that's it! Thank you very much. Goodbye.

* Editor's note: For those of you keeping track of the Team's progress from home, Earle does indicate that Zhongwei is in the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region. However, I've been following them on my maps and it appears to be in Ningxia Province. If I'm wrong I'm sure the Team will let me know.