ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF SAINT-LOUIS, Senegal, Team Posh crashed in an expensive beachside resort; I hitched a ride with a local man to Zebrabar, a campground 20 miles south of the former colonial port where other teams were taking a post-desert layover. After a couple of days deflating, I squeezed into the backseat of Team ReVolvor's gray wagon, piloted by John and Sam Drew, a father-and-son duo from Malmesbury, in southwest England.

The tail end of the winter harmattan winds blew like a blast furnace for three days.

We hammered on to Mauritania's capital, where Team Posh found a restaurant serving heineken and, praise heaven, a passable plate of salty English chips.

As we limped the final 400 miles through Senegal to Banjul, the faded golds of the Sahara dissipated into brick-red, the macadam deteriorating the farther south we drove. Wherever we stopped—Touba, Mbacké, Kaolack—children assailed our ten-car convoy, screeching "Bon-bons!" and "Cadeaux!" while climbing onto bumpers and roofs, reaching through open windows like zombies seeking brains.

And then, with no fanfare except for a billboard advertising Saddam Gunpowder Green Tea, we were on the quiet late- afternoon streets of Banjul. The PDC vanguard had finished several days earlier and been escorted by police to the national soccer stadium, where they paraded around before local politicians. We caught up with them in the lush patio bar of the Safari Garden Hotel to recount our epics late into the night over beans on toast and prodigious quantities of JulBrew, the local lager. The 34 cars that survived our wave were mostly sold to local taxi drivers and fetched a million Gambian dalasis, or roughly $40,000, which was distributed to Banjul's woefully undersupplied Victoria Hospital and other groups.

Sid and Martin made it to the finish line, though not as grandly as planned. A few hours after their departure from Dakhla, Ros Bif blew another gasket, dying in the poorly marked mine field separating Western Sahara and Mauritania. She was towed to the outlaw town of Nouadhibou and sold for $300. Sid and Martin were forced to cadge a ride in a guide's truck for the remainder of the trip. Adding further insult, the C rations turned out to be spoiled, causing Martin to spend a night heaving a day's worth of junk food.

Sid's wife, Ann, and older son, Peter, flew down for a family vacation at the Gambian coastal resorts, greeting us at the Safari Garden with two bottles of champagne. Sid grabbed one and uncorked it. All but a fraction of the bubbly spewed out. "Oh, well!" he said, uncorking the second. It did the same thing, leaving him standing there holding a bottle that was half empty.