Quick update

as this keyboard is stiicky and crazy layout again

in the capitl of Mauri

when we last left you we were at the top of W Sahara

We  motored down hard core. again a whole bunch of nothing in patrticular. lots of sand and camekls. gotto Dakhla in the lunch time. quite a cool place its built out on a pinesula. lovely big beaches stretching every where. loads of windsurfers and kitesurfersd about. didn’t sty loing though an dpushed on tot he border

ended up taking a right towards the beach at a petrol station about 60 km from the border. best move yet. we rocked up in this little fishing shanty. where they showed us this awesome little cove to camp. gave us this enournmlous fish and some 2kgs of langustines all for a packet of cigs. had a great meal, but terrible night sleep, the wind was howling

hit the border first thing inthe moring

the morrocqns hate to se you leave. we spent 6 hours there going from one luine to another. everyone is writing doznt he same bit of information like 20 m a part but youhave to que for each one.

anyways got through and had to travel across no mans land which literally was no mans land. hid all our beer in silly places as it is illiegal to bring beer in. got to the border got asked for our first bribe. i played dumb and we got the visa’s anyways. niot a lot to be said really had a bit of a muision finding petrol but go some in the end. these guuys love their check points even more here. literally in th middle of the desert but mae good time to the capital.

got shaken down by some traffic cop for an “infraction” so that was 10 euro wasted on him. tried to get out of it but no luck. now in a fiarly decent camping hotel in the cetnre of town

going to try and push for the mali border tommorow with the aim of cross ing it the day after.

4500 miles on the clock in 10 days!

Currently on locqtion in Western Sahara. this place uis awesome if you are into police check points. sand. camels on the road. sun and scrub land. other than that. not os much, actually they do have very cheap petrol, like 50p a litre which isg iving our finances a much needed break.

goign to be quick as there is a tagine on its way.

left maralesh yesterday morning. drove through literally an oven. it was roasting on this really really slow road but got to agadier in reasonable time where we stopped at a macro and procceeded to buy. motor oil. beer. orginia. and pasta in that order pretty much.

had some hassle getting out of the store but all worke dout

ended up camping near sidi ifni along the cost which zqs cool, had a few beers

got auit elost on literally a one route out of tozn zhich cost us a fezw hours the next day but all worked out, came inland and pushe donto western saharah by lunch time.

we,re about 200 km from the largest town in W Sahara.

going to push for the border tomorrow so hopefully we can cross it on monday mornign first thign and head to the capital where we are going to pick up our Mali visa,s

 

oh and i have officially joined the motoring community, got busted doing 65km/h in a 40 zone. not cool that was a 40 euro fine. literally in the desert. middle of no where. but at least no points.

Through this trip we have had time to start postulating a theory about performance  of cars covered in fake grass. it is co,ing to our attention that we might have in advertently come across the next big thing. the car is progressing very smotthly despite the intense heat. we would liek to postulate a theory that this is due to the excellent heat disappating capacity oif the astroturf. the incredibly large amouint of surface area the surface gives allows the heat to be slowly absorbed but the rapidly cooled by the large amount of wind blowing over it

Car Temp = Sp*A-A*(H*n*pi*r^2)*V

Where

Sp = Sunpower

A = Area of Grass

H = hight of grass

n= number of grqss in square meters

V = velocity of cqr

There is a few bit ,ore tidying upt to do but we feel thqt shortley we will be able to present this at the next Foroum of Adeventurists

SO 3000 miles in and touch wood the car is doing ok.

it appears to be coping witht he heat ok. not sure if the water ismeant to fly up and boil when you take the cap off but the temp gauge says everythign is fine so not knowing any better we are assuming it is.

we appear to be aquiring ,more and more crap along the way. we seem to have less room now that Funke has left so not sure how that works out.

the only problem we seem to have is. a leak coming from the engine. it means we have to check the oil every fez hundread miles or so. as long as we keep it toppe dup everything is fine. we don,t then the car breaks and we go home. so going to buy 20L of thqt before ze push on into the desert

***appolgies for the spelling this ti,e it really is the keyboard. literally about to start fitting just looking at it . its that busy************

anyways.

left spain with a few million people (surley hundread. Ed) on the ferry. everyone seemed to have the idea that if they sat on their horn and pushed their car through they would get on first. a little different to the ferry at dover. anyways. we.re just about to board at 2230 for the 2300 sailing when literally feet from, the ramp we get denied entry as we don;t have our boarding passes apparentley we just have a reciet. so quick dash to the ticket off to stand behind 5 chaps who seem to be collecting tickets on behalf of half the ship. anyways got our tickets which was good. and hopped onto the ferry. we had the last laugh as the way it was loaded ze zere literally the first in line to get off.

a pleasent 7 hour crossing to Nador in eastern morroco. usual proceddure for passports and importation was repeated on board. a line of thousands immediatley started queing. so we had a beer and went and slept. went up there 1 hour before we unloaded and there was no line. all cleared in 10 mins. again unloaded and the usual looks and stairs while customs and immigrattion looked at our newley stamped paper work and papers. and “à mins later we were into Nador.

we were very kindly helped by a friendmy dutch/morrocan chap called Khaled who we convoyed with to taza; had we brekkie on the way. roads here are very good and we hit the main highway just after fez. beuty of a road and we made very good time

unfortunatley we saw our firt Roqd Traffic Accident. RTA. about 30 clicks from Rabbat we came accross a new merc which had driven off the road and had flipped over. the guy  did not look in a good way at all. pretty dead looking in fact.  unfortunatley there was very little we could do to help at this point. there were already 20-50 locals on site calling in ambulances and the like. so rather soberly we carried on. but certinally a reality check. no tother car was involved so it was a bit of mystery what coul have caused this. it was literally a straight bit of road in very good nick.

we carried on to Rabbat before proceeding south to cacablanca and eventually marrakesh. we got here just at sun down which; meant it was ideal for navigating through. alogn with the rest of the morrocan population. needless to say. only stoping once for directions we found our selves a car parkign space int he centre of down by the mosque and a hotel for 200 d with air con.

went to Hustle central for supper. so,e how they keep on finding more people as there was like 200-500 stalls all cooking supper for what seemed like thousands along with loads of oj ellers and everything else you could imagine0 very similar to the constant din and feel of parts of india. just non stop. but had a lovely meet kebab and a wander around before hitting the hay. lazy start this l*morning heading out in a little bit.

hopefully pushing on to the border with western saharah today. plqn is to hit Mori by monday morning. going to get the visa.s at the border and the mali visa in the capital. still on track for the plan of being in Mali byt the end of next zeek. but then plans of mice and men;

probably be out of contqct for q while. shoiuld still be qble to keep the txt updates going though.

3100 miles on the clock. beard is looking good, oh and FYI its hotter than an oven ehre. i am sweating like its going out of fashion.

Day 5 commenced with military efficiency. Within 20 minutes of being awoken the camp had been packed, teeth brushed and the showers ignored. After a quick fuel stop we hit the motorway from Strasbourg and started making some good progress. It felt especially good to start our 5th day on the road as it was the first to start with us heading towards africa. However, the Kilometres (like miles but smaller) didn´t go quite as quickliy as they could have.  An early plan to avoid toll roads was proving time consuming and the traffic was taking its toll. Travelling in convoy with Cara and Hettie also caused some delays and after spending an hour finding a supermarket, and a coulple more on toilet breaks the girls had truly worn The Heroes patients thin.

At a service station an hour north of Perpignon ( South France), we decided to part ways as the girls were tired and the heroes were hungry for morroccan kebabs. The dicision to go on turned out to be a good one, and as we hit Barcelona the roads were very quiet and we made great progress through the night, morning and early afternoon and made it to the ferry crossing point, Almeria,  at about 3pm on day 6. Odometer showing we´d covered well over 2,500 miles so far. The only other interesting thing of note for day 6 so far is that we gave our first handout (not quite a bribe, more a tip) to a very friendly car park attendent for some sketchy directions and not stealing anything from our car while we brought a ferry ticket.  and so it begins.

¡Onwards!

Follow us on the road

Woke up slightly groggy and were on the road again, we had a quick detour to Prague airport to drop Funke off after discovering the train would get her there a few hours too late. so around 2pm we were actually on the road heading West towards Germany and beyond. Pretty uneventful,

Drove and Drove and Drove. The highways were damn good but boring as hell. Teamed up with some southampton uni medical students, Cara and netty which was a good crack and ended up camping in Strassburg.

Time to get through Europe quickly and start hitting Africa

Well after an enjoyable night at the campsite we headed off at the crack of noon to the Czech out where the party was being held, a pleasent drive now we had good tires with out much inthe way fo delays,we took the back country route to get to the party which is about 120 km west of Prague. rocke dup at a field which was about half full of cars from all over the shop. was great to see loads of african rally guys makign the effort to get there as well as the Mongol rally chaps.  the field pretty quickly filled up and before logn there were tents and carrs all over the shop. the designs were awesome with some of them. there was a double decker bus, a few ambulances, a mini with a telephone box strapped to it, a group which was planting trees along their route.

The party kicked off at 7.30 with a big pig roast and some local Czech group singing. the party then stepped up a gear to the castle bit where there was a cool ska band and lots of free punch, punch quickly turned into absthine which is a hell of a lot stronger here. Funke might have imbibed a little of this, haha. Was  a very chilled atmosphere with all the teams bonding. bumped into some southampton folk on the mongol rally who rather randomly i did a group project with his housemate a few years back. small world. they were off to Mongolia.

Unfortunately the rain came pouring down but not for long and we sought shelter in the Funk room where we did some grooving . all great fun, finally went to bed around 4 ish or so. not really sure.

Onwards and upwards

So a quick stop in a french car park for the night and we were on our way again, checked the air pressure, (more on this later) and we tour off across Belgium and Germany. can´t say anything exciting really happened, all motorway driving, the green machine sucks petrol at 70 mph but does about 300 miles at 60 mph. but since we were in a hurry we were goign at about 80 plus.. then things started to go wrong again, we were about 100 km from Nurenberg and i was driving again when the wobbling feelign came back jsut as i was tryign to overtake  a lorry at 80 mph. yep another flat tire, a quick manuver to the right and we luckily pulled over right next to a rest stop. (it later transpired i had perhaps inflated the tires a little to high after miss reading the dial back in France)

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 Read the above sentence as ” I inflated the tires to double the max reccomended pressure for a fully laden car” for a more accurate representation of events…. I did buy the crappy tires so i´m to blame  as much if not more. [lets not mislead the readers phil].

Dustie

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unfortunately we still hadnñt got a new replacement tire for the spare we were using already. so had to call inthe recovery services.  (unfortunately only 3 days earlier we had decided RAC cover for europe at 70 quid was unnecessary). A cool truck turned up, promptly took lots of pictures of the green machine and picked us up. The problem was, it was 7pm on a saturday evening, no garages are open and certainly none open the next day, we were looking at misisng the party in Cech and trying to get Funke to the airport in Prague. Fortunately our man had the connections and we turne dup at this garage who were able to sell us 4 news tires, slightly lower profile but at least they were good ties. so thank you Paulo and Co for sorting that out for us.  They even showed us to a camp site where it was time for SUMMER FEST, OHYEAH!!! turns out summer fest was loads of eldery german couples singing drinking songs, we cut quite the scene with our jumpsuits. I also tried top put up a tent in a gale, with out much success at one point it threatened to blow away!