herbie does marakech
...oli and suggest he come back.. He did and found his kit removed from the room. Phoned me and I went down to see what’s was going on… I ring the doorbell to le patron’s residence. As I am doing so he comes around the corner hurling verbal abuse at me. We have a verbal head to head until oli intervenes and suggests I go to bed. 21st dec We leave and drive to the ferry for crossing to morocco. En route oli explains with a rye smile why le patron was so pissed off. Oli on returning to find his kit removed from his room was not happy couldn’t find le patron and so jammed apiece of wood against the doorbell for 40 mins. He saw me with my finger on the buzzer…. Bastatrd!.. We laughed and had another smoke! We arrive on the continent of Africa. 22nd, 23rd we travel in convoy and have a laugh with other members of the rally giving them all caricatures, “the Swiss family Robinson”, “bill & ted “ “dumber & dumber” “the dukes of hazard”. Daisy what a babe!! etc etc in the spurious thought that one day we will write a film of our adventure and for our own entertainment. We have another smoke! On the 23rd we are advised that our new engine just needs the fan belt changing as ours has a fray and its not good… it is changed by our handy hints volunteer!! You bastard you now who you are!! 24th dec. arrived at the campsite and had a fab evening stood round a campfire in the rain! We were then lucky enough to spend the night sleeping in a puddle before deciding to make our way into Marrakech for the day and “catch people up later” … yeah right! What a laugh. We got lost once inside the city walls and drove right into and through the old town medina and parked just off the main square amongst the donkey carts. We drank lots of fresh orange juice. Oli bought a backgammon board made of some material otherwise unknown to human kind, which weighed more than the car and its entire contents. We then found we had been locked into a walled city whose gate are closed after 6 and had to drive across the main square and speed out past the only possible (very small) police exit. This meant negotiating a crowd of approx 2000(conservative estimate) people various camels, snake charmers, orange stalls and many very bemused faces. Herbie rides again toot toot!! We have another smoke and drive south arriving at the “almost end of the world “ layoune to spend the night in a deserted hotel and feeling all was not well with our engine! 25th Christmas day!! 22k into the day at 10 am in the middle of know where… Bang. We blow the damm engine again but think it might just be an electrical fault. Because it won’t start! Other cars slowly come by and stop to chat. We are laughing and having a smoke. Finally the pint pullers Andy and kodi offer to tow us to dakla. 450k on a 12 foot rope at 100kph. It was the fastest we had traveled so far! Oli was up front helping to calm Andy’s nerves and ensure he gave all his whisky away to policemen. I sat back played some t rex and managed to skin up which I though quite impressive at the time! Happy days In the evening we arrived in dakla and made new freinds. With so much help and support of the other teams. Francis and George were stars and Dan did his best even chopping off bits of our engine he thought were probably not required from here on in!! Another great night around the fire engine talking and laughing… chatting to the Swiss family Robinson lovelies. 26th dec-5th Jan Another tow this time into dakla. Where we meet Abdeslam who will be our mechanic. Problem. No problem. Problem finish. Mechkains Mechkull. Famous last words! At no pint did we expect to be in dakla for more than 3 days. As it was we spent 12 nights there for one reason or another before the car was ready to go. If we had known this we could have flown for 180E to grand canaria for new years! As it was we spend all this time in a city where the wind blows sand constantly and there is no beer and certainly no women in sight. We played a lot of backgammon, smoked a lot of local herbs. Slept more than is required in one lifetime and found an old mechanic who was distilling sugar in the back of his workshop. Disgusting but worth an evenings entertainment with “the local old boys”. Seems we also had lunch or dinner with every shopkeeper and mechanic in dakla. We made a lot of friends, ate a lot of camel and left smiling! And had another smoke as we drove now south to the boarder with Mauritania. 6th Jan 2005 We arrived at the Mauritanian boarder at 8am after spending the night 20 klicks up the road. Oil slept in the car me in my bivi bag. We had eaten well the night before oli doing us proud with stir fry vegetables, BBQ chicken & rice. Hey and a bottle of white wine donated by Tim & Rebecca and the Swiss family Robinson MKII’s Cheers guys! After the usual exit bravado at the Moroccan side we decided to do the minefield 12k crossing alone. Both of us hate the blagg of those making an illegitimate living from deceiving tourists and we believed this to be just another scam. We were right. As long as you make sure there are tracks in front of you, you will eventually make your way to the other side of no mans land. We reversed a few times but made it. The patrol on the Mauritanian side were not so pleased and even more so when we refused give them any “cadeaux” pretending that we were actually from a strange part of the uk with a local dialect known only to us “pardon no understade. Cadeaux.uhh?” we left for noadibou and had another smoke. Problem. No problem. Problem finish. Mechkains Mechkull We filled up with petrol full of sand in nouadibou and managed to drive the desert crossing with bits of road and various mishaps. Getting stuck on a number of occasions. Being helped and helping other complete strangers. Ace fun and interaction! We drove as much as we could now the car was “working” and stopped for only 3 hours to eat, have a few games of back gammon and chill for a while. Oli got pissed off with a mouse, which would not take the hint. He fell victim to a tin of fruit! We drove on. 7th Jan We had hit this perfect piece of road in the middle of nowhere. Like it had been made yesterday just before we’d stopped last night. When we set off oli slept and I drove as 100kph really good for us until seeing a sign. Nouakchott 100k. Great I though wake & tell oli. Then bang, shit, crash the road ended without any warning and we snow ploughed into a sand bank. Scared the shit out of me!!.. Oli “ what’s happening mate every think ok”? We parked up for a couple of hours and slept until dawn. Only now when we get out of the car do we realize that we that’s the royal we. Have left one side of our roof box open for the last 150k and could so easily had we been not on this bit of road lost all our kit. Just aTegine and some beach mats gone. We found the tagine 50 meters away at the scene of last night’s emergency stop along with the pad lock, which we had left, balanced on the roof…. Very lucky call!!… We drive on and have a smoke. Problem. No problem. Problem finish. Mechkains Mechkull Pm we have by passed nouakashot and make it to Rosso for 10pm after a series of breakdowns with sand in fuel type problems and a busted wheel rim. We do the last 20k on a rope behind a big blue van doing 40kph.. But we got there and spent what was left of the evening sucking petrol from the carburetor and cleaning down the fuel pump. We still can’t work out where the sand is getting through. 8th Jan We bribe our way to the front of the queue and after only 10 euros we are off to Senegal… all seemed much easier than we expected at rosso. Little did we know what was to come? In short we got to the other side at 10am and didn’t leave until 2pm. By which time we had argued with the military driven off at speed from the insurance sales person.. Oli physically ejecting him from the vehicle. He managed to grab from Olli’s fingers the 2 euros we had offered him as he had been told and obviously realized as gravity got the better of him we really meant “its that or nothing”. Then we get to the boarder army patrol where they want 260 euros. We know Jim & Chris and they posse’ of five cars made a run for it a few days earlier so consider this. As it happened we broke down 600 meters later when we eventually left so good job we didn’t hehh! We argued big time we these *** holes and in a surreal sort of way having had guns literally pushed up our noses did a deal with them. 40E $45 and a cheap cd player. They then insisted we had lunch with them before our armed escort would ride through Senegal with us to ensure we did indeed leave! Then we had a real laugh with these 6/7 army dudes before leaving. 8th/9th The journey through Senegal was anticipated to take 6 hours with Monsieur in the back “old matey” as we affectingly called him. To start with he was a bit reserve red and kept hold of his gun. But having broken down every 2-5kilometers because of sand in the fuel system he soon realized the only way he would ever get home would be to lighten up and much in! We had so many tows at one point by a fucking tractor. That was the end. How shit was our car! But we met every mechanic in morocco and Mauritania so why not Senegal as well! In the evening of the 9th we called into zebra bar to blagg some euros off Tim & Rebecca, which it was our good fortune to meet, again, eat and move on. Their intrepid boys matt & jo showed us the highlights of the bar, its watch tower and how locus die slowly when they cant fly anymore. They then escorted us back to Herbie who had waited on the other side of the river. We of course only realized as we drove off that the car was really wet inside. The tide had been and gone while we ate! We drove on unable to smoke be cause of...