Queenstown born-and-raised Carmen Doran said this week she and brother Marc and friend Brent Clements were in Turkey and all was going well.
Ms Doran said the Adventurists' Festival of Slow, at Goodwood racing circuit, in England, was a great introduction to the unsupported 2010 Mongol Rally, on July 24.
The trio crossed the English Channel and drove a tiny-engined Renault Kangoo across France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria, to arrive in Turkey last Sunday.
The team interacted with locals along the way, watched a 30-piece brass band play Smoke on the Water outside a Luxembourg cathedral and witnessed a non-fatal crash between a motorcyclist and the car in front of them on a German autobahn.
The Queenstown residents said they had dined in a Slovakian wine cellar, crossed the Danube River on a car ferry and had the first engine checkup after hearing "strange noises" from under the bonnet.
They had driven through lush green Romanian forests, which reminded them of New Zealand, and spotted a man wearing an All Blacks jersey in a small Hungarian town.
"We now spend a day in Istanbul before heading eastwards and onwards to Iran. That is when life really gets interesting," Ms Doran said.
Team Good Bye Pork Pie is raising money for the Christina Nobel Children's Foundation, which shelters Mongolian orphans.
