30th December 2012

St Louis Blues.

19^th December to 26^th December

We passed through the Senegal police bridge toll and then to the customs officer. He kept us waiting for about 45 minutes and then told us that he had no authority to allow us to bring in our van for more than 2 days and we would then have to go to the customs at Dakar docks some 400 km away to get our Carnet de passage stamped so we could continue. This is more than a serious inconvenience ,and quite unnecessary it is really difficult to make the journey in the time allowed and if we got stopped by the police exceeding that time we could have our vehicle impounded.At the superb Zebrabar, south of St Louis, Martin, the owner was able to use the services of a ‘helper’ to secure us a further 5 days but the services of the helperwas not free. Since then, a new ‘regulation’ was introduced and we got our Carnet stamped at the border here without any need to travel to Dakar.

                    St Louis 

As we had a few days we also enjoyed the charming small city of St Louis, once the centre of the French Aero Postale Service, a network of sea planes that provided an airmail service all around Africa and much of the world. There isn’t much to say beside that this city seems to have many of the charms of an African city but less of the pressures.

 

We have been here for over a week, spending Christmas here was a real treat! The Zebrabar is set in the National Parc and it is not uncommon to see all manner of exotic wildlife, fabulous birds, troops of Barbary apes, and more reptiles than you can shake a stick at. We’ve been on a boat trip around the park, Noel was rather nervous at the boat being so low down in the water but the lagoon was quite shallow. ‘Tosh’ the dog, accompanied us on the boat with his Dutch owners, Mike and Marion. Also with us were Lorenzo and Kevin our biker friends whom we met in Mauritania.

 

Kevin and Ping with the boatman

 

 

Tosh being carried on to the boat

We had a wonderful Swiss Christmas dinner hosted by the owners of the Zebrabar, Ursula and Martin, in the charming dining room – the palm tree decked with tasteful Christmas tinsel, tea lights and candles all made it quite festive.

 

                                     Happy Swiss Christmas dinner

It is so beautiful, relaxed and tranquil here, whilst we are cacooned in this paradise, we are aware that out of here, there is real part of the country where the poverty, dirt, dust, awful badly maintained roads and stench of rubbish seems to be all around. There is the ever presence of plastic bottles, blue plastic bags, anything plastic piled along the road side, skimming on the surface water of the lagoon and living amongst this are smiling, helpful people just trying to scratch a living eg selling you 4 cloves of garlic for 100CFA (about 5 pence) or the local fisherman trying to flog their daily catch at inflated price to the tourists.

 We have another puncture(#6)!, so it is another visit to a “pneu” shop. We may need to buy a couple of new tyres, but we might do this when we get to The Gambia, which is our next stop (and they speak English!).

Happy New Year to you all, keep the emails coming.
Ping and Noel

 

22nd December 2012

We are now in Senegal.  I have no wish to create any jealousy, but, as I write we are settling down for the evening in this wonderful tranquil surrounding of the Parc national de la Langue de Barbarie. It's an ornithologists' paradise. Cormorants, pelicans, hornbills and loads of other exotic birds are all around us.

We’ve had a day where the high temperature  was up at 45c.  There are people somewhere over in the distance enjoying a Senegalese sing song. The Imam has just called the faithful to prayer, the evening air is warm and fragrant, the beer is cold and the company of other travellers delightful.

It has, however, been quite an experience getting here.

Gone Fichen!

High Street Noukchott

Try driving through that!

We had spent a couple of days on the Atlantic beach in Noukchott the capitol of Mauritania where we set off from the city which is like the biggest cowboy town in the world. We headed out of town amidst dense traffic, chaos and grinding poverty.

 As we drove down the highway we encountered frequent police road checks. One of the things that we were advised to have with us is a supply of a document known as a’Fiche’ This is a sheet with all our details laid out together with copies of passport etc. the idea is that it saves the need to write them out long hand each time we go through formalities. However as we encountered increasingly frequent police checks we found that each one asks for a fiche. It seems that they collect these pieces of paper to prove that they are doing their job.  It has now become a routine, we see the road check coming up wind down the window we hand over the fiche. The officer would take it, ask a clever question in a dialect of French which we don’t understand, we would act embarrassed and they would then send us on our way. Since we Entered Western Sahara we have got through 25 of these papers.

We were heading for the border with Senegal, we had read a lot about the area of the border. It is reputed to be full of corrupt officials, thieves, vagabonds and ‘helpers’ all deeply committed to getting money out of the innocent traveller , as they have what they believe is a captive audience. I was particularly anxious to avoid this really difficult hassle.

We had been told of an alternative route but still with the proviso that there are spotters with binoculars who if they see travellers avoiding the frontier they will send out ‘guide’ to bring them back to the fold.

Lost in the Desert

 

The alternative route is not sign posted. We had explicit directions from a professional guide. He told us that this was a good road easily passable and it is easy to find. We should drive 140 km from the capital and the road would be on the right. It is plain to see, no mistake, a good road. Well, we drove 145 km and there on the right was a wide road it was not macadamised but it was quite well graded. We drove this road for about 10km and it became a difficult drive. I stopped a guy driving a camel, he has a kid under his arm who was bleating in protest, presumably having formed the view that he was destined for the pot…… who knows. I asked the man ‘Is this the road to Daima?' he looked surprised and told me that it is the road for the Atlantique. He was less convincing when he drew me a map on the sand, showing that we could take a side turning that would take us to the border which we already knew was about 80 km away. We drove on and eventually saw a very rustic looking road going off left. We asked a driver for directions and I really could not understand his reply but he seemed to think it would be a good idea to take the turning. So we took it. After a while it became less of a road and then became a sandy track.  We know it was sandy because for the first time we got well and truly stuck in a trough of sand!  I engaged the 4 wheel drive we couldn’t get free. I engaged the diflock still no joy. We got out the sand ladders eventually using both sets and we were still stuck. With hindsight I am sure that our inexperience was a real factor. But nevertheless stuck is stuck.

 

Our friends at the Zebrabar said that's not stuck - it's nothing!

Before we left I had deliberated long and hard about whether or not to have a winch fitted, very expensive and not so simple to use. In the end I had a winch fitted on the simple basis that if we need it once only it will have been worth it.

Back to the desert we were stuck in I felt I had explored all options  I payed out the winch cable and fixed it around an Acacia bush and we winched ourselves out. Fantastic! As we drove away I noticed that I had dropped one of my diesel gloves, oh never mind.

Ping then said ‘I dropped a loaf of bread and I forgot to pick it up. Oh well.

Off we went it was a really difficult drive lots of loose sand and steep inclines we then came to realise that we were losing a clear track, now dodging around the numerous thorn bushes. I am still picking out thorns from my clothing and I am unable to wear my shoes as the soles are full of steely thorns that come right through.

On we went and as the sun started to go down we had to stop for the night and we realised that we were pretty uncomfortably close to being lost in the bloody desert. Despite having 30 gallons of diesel and about the same of water and plenty of food we started to fantasise about calls to Falmouth Coastguard!

Overnight we decided that we could either continue on in the belief that it would eventually pop out somewhere useful, maybe........... Or go back. We opted to retrace our steps in the morning.

Morning came and I made a recce on foot to find that our tracks were barely discernible, but managed to find them retracing our steps was ok for a while. We had travelled about 20km into the desert. Travelling SW so we found what tracks we could and used the compass, after a while the tracks disappeared altogether and we had to rely on the compass.  It was clear that we had to find our way over a ridge which was very sandy at the top and so impassable,  constantly making foot recce we eventually found a way over it was quite difficult and we really didn’t know where we were. Suddenly we saw some tyre tracks  and as we got close, Ping noticed they were our tracks from the night before. It was an amazing feeling. Then it dawned on us that we would encounter the same trough that we had been stuck in the previous day.  Sure enough Ping spotted it just in time for us to stop. This time I was able to drive around it but not before I sawed down a couple of bushes. As we passed the trough, Ping said ‘I see the bread is gone'.

By this time we kind of knew what we were doing and easily used the track. Just before we reached the road I heard a loud whistle and could see a shepherd on a ridge waving vigorously at us.  I stopped got out and went to greet a strange man who was unmistakably wearing my diesel glove! He said in in a language I don’t understand. I think he said "Excuse me but I think you dropped this mate"!

                                                    
                                                           The Shepherd who found

                                                                         

                                                                     the glove

And handed it back to me amid much hand shaking and back slapping we drove on back on to the road and then back to the highway. We decided that this time we would just brave the onslaught at the first border.

As we drove on after about 20km we found the correct road much further on than we had been told it was not easy to spot and was till a quite difficult drive for about 70 km. We reached a town and then drove through about 50km of National park with a truly awful road and suddenly we were at the border.

Here were a couple of cars passing through no hassle just a few officials to bribe, er sorry pay taxes to pass. And we breezed out onto the Senegal side.

 

Then onto the highly praised Zebrabar where the camping is well managed the beer is cold and the family who run it are so pleasant helpful and good company. We plan to stay here for Christmas before we move on to The Gambia and beyond.

Happy Christmas!

 

We did give Christmas greetings in our last entry, but as we write this on the 23rd December it seems right to just say Happy Christmas and very best wishes for the New Year.

 

Do please keep your emails coming It always so good to hear from home even trivial waffle is appreciated.

noelbow51@gmail.com  pingbow54@gmail.com

 

Lots of luv

 

Noel +Ping

 

 

18th December 2012

Sand, Camels and Mad Max

Well now! We are now getting on with the serious business of travelling in Africa and we have moved down to the bottom of Morocco and into proper desert which is now very warm. Now I don’t say that to bring out envy but it does mean we are making progress. However in order to highlight what I have to put up with my ‘esteemed life partner’

On the last really chilly day we had we were driving down the road. Ping said, ‘It’s really draughty in here, there is a cold draft getting in’. I checked my door it was shut tight, Ping checked her door it was shut tight.  Still she complained that she was cold  we looked high and low checked the sliding door and the vents eventually  I had to stop to have a good look round, still found nothing . After sometime Ping, looking rather sheepish said, ‘my window is open!’  So we wound up her window and she was happy again.

We have driven down to the edge of Western Sahara.  The mountains gave way to a vast expanse of rocky desert and that in turn has turned into the Sahara with fine sand piled in drifts and dunes everywhere, it is truly beautiful and I feel this is what I came here for. In way it’s a shame that this soon became rocky once more and has kind of changed and changed again since then.

Needing to cover a lot of distance, we’ve had to drive at night on a couple of occasions.  A general rule is that it is not wise to do this as there are a myriad of reasons why you shouldn’t drive on these profoundly dark roads. Even right out in the desert there are pedestrians. Camels and other livestock are often to be found and of course unlit trucks and buses that only turn their lights on if another vehicle comes towards them. However, driving through the desert during the night was indeed a surreal experience, the darkness was all around us, but it wasn’t spooky or frightening. There was nothing to see but distance lights from other vehicles. There was no one around, but we didn’t feel unsafe at any time, it was exhilarating!

Due to the delay caused by the repairs it was necessary to travel quite fast in order to clear Mauritania before our visa expires. So we drove all the way down to border with Mauritania in one day, over 600km through the desert. Our crossing into Mauritania was quite an adventure and, I suggest, not for the faint hearted.

So here goes.  We arrived at the border at about 4pm before the border closed and guess what? I found we had another puncture. So I had to change a wheel which seemed to prevent us getting through that afternoon and we started to prepare to camp the night.  

Just a word or two about our tyres.

Before we left we bought  7 tyres from a company that supplies "Unused MOD surplus Tyres. We trusted VASS & Co to provide us with what we paid for.

They were cheaper than new but they were not cheap we bought new tubes and spares all our punctures with one exception seems to have been caused by grit inside the tyre. I believed that this may have been caused by carelessness when fitted by VASS +Co.  I emailed them  to point this out and to invite the comments of the management  They did not have the courtesy to reply.  We spent in excess of £500 and informed them that we needed them for trans Africa travel.  There now I have that off my chest  maybe someone from Vass may care to respond.

Another Bloody Puncture!

I decided that as diesel is so cheap in Western Sahara (20-25pence per litre) I would fill up using all my remaining currency. I chatted to a couple of very moody guys there who were clearly there for some ‘unconventional purpose’ they were very helpful and pointed out that although there are very few people waiting now, the road will fill for miles in the morning, with people trying to get through. It would be no problem to get the police to allow us through the Morocco side, before they open at 9am - just pay the cop 10 euros.

Whilst I filled up, unbeknown to me, Ping had gone up to a cop and asked if we would still be allowed to pass through tonight. He said no problem, but it quickly became clear that we were now committed to going through and that this was part of the strictly unofficial 10 euro scheme. There really was little to be done but to go with the flow, and at 6pm we passed through the Moroccan border without a hitch. After going through all the checks, there was one guard who drops a chain for us to pass. I swear the expression on his face said ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’

                                      The Badlands.

We passed through the gate and the scene which greeted us as we went through was truly astonishing! We were about to pass through an area known as “no man’s land” that could easily have been part of one those ‘post-apocalyptic movies’. The place littered with blue plastic bags and bottles and the totally barren desert landscape (reputedly once laid with landmines), littered with abandoned vehicles of all kinds completely stripped of parts, fires burning to keep people warm, all kinds of apparently unscrupulous activities going on, people changing money, emptying goods out from their hiding places and hiding other items, and rather bizarrely thousands of old smashed televisions everywhere.  There was sand to get stuck in and rocks to get hung up on - this was an unbelievable drive and only 4 km long! We had initially decided that we would sleep by the Mauritanian side and pass through in the morning.

Well, sod that!

As we arrived we saw that the immigration and customs post were apparently still open and it was getting dark. Again we were rather taken along by the tide and we went through all the formalities in a period of intense chaos and almost total darkness that lasted less than an hour. Ping said she wasn’t frightened at all, but actually found it quite an adventure even though I had no idea where she was at any given time. I experienced a kind of low grade terror. We decided to camp there and then in the border area and drive on in the morning. Wow that was intense!

We have since driven across the very impoverished and in some ways quite hostile countryside. There are many police checks which seem to have very little obvious purpose. These checks were sometimes miles apart and sometimes as near as a couple of hundred metres apart. They solemnly examine our documents and then wave us on.

High Street Noudhibou

The capital city, Noukchott, really resembles a cowboy town and is quite a strange environment.  All this seems to indicate that this not a good place but that is not so, nearly everyone we have met has been pleasant and charming, despite looking terribly sinister through our western eyes as they all wear, both men and women, a scarf covering their faces together with dark glasses.

We have now driven over 2000 kilometres of the Sahara and at the time of writing we are resting 15kms from the capital, in a most beautiful place by the Atlantic Ocean, in the company of some new friends who are staying in a nomad’s tent on the beach. The food is absolutely delicious, fresh fish barbequed to perfection!

                            Peace and harmony at Les Sultanas

Well, we have only three days to get across to Senegal, so having rested for a day; we are off in the morning to another crossing that promises much of the chaos of the last one.

We are indeed lucky to be constantly surrounded by such beauty of the Atlantic, the mountains and this variety of different deserts.

Happy Christmas to all. 

Love Ping and Noel 

We do love to hear from you all. 

Email us on noelbow51@gmail.com or pingbow54@gmail.com 

On the road again!

9^th December 2012

Well Now. It seems appropriate to make a bit of a roundup of events and views as we finally get moving again.

It has been a difficult couple of weeks and quite eventful too. Sorry about the last blog but I was a bit bored and felt like being silly.

Electrics - we had 2 sets of such problems, one was that the reserve battery was not being charged which until now had caused us mild inconvenience but as we now head away from the relative sophistication of Morocco we would not be able to charge from mains electricity so readily. I have at last found that when our split charger was removed as faulty it was replaced with a simple switch which was itself faulty but it took me ages to work this out.

The other electrical problem was that accessories such as windscreen wipers and washer were coming on entirely spontaneously or occasionally when I switch the headlights to main beam. They will only go off when I remove the fuse for an hour or so.

So our friend Rich suggested that this is likely to be the effect of Italian (Fiat) electrical system combined with continuous rain.

The whole business became easier as the weather got dryer. My plan was, on Ric’s advice to take the fuse box out, dry it and cover it in plastic. This was a bit of a pallava! Then, Jerry, my musical mentor, and therefore the obvious person to advise on such matters suggested, ’just take it out and spray it with WD40’. Of course I should have known the ideal solution. Thank you Jerry!

Awning

What did we do with the completely ruined awning?

Well, I managed to claw back the remaining parts from the Italian man who scavenged the wreckage to fix his own awning. I recovered the telescopic supports and the long facia panel which is moulded specially to hold the length of fabric that makes up the awning.

With 3 words of French, a few drawings and £40 later, we got a local man who sells waterproof fabrics to make up a new canopy. We've also had great adventures exploring the local market in the Medina in Rabat  where we eventually found a cobbler who managed to find us some second hand plastic webbing straps to fix the canopy to the panel and ‘Bobs your uncle’!

I spent a day putting it all together and we now have a really good working awning.  It certainly works better and simpler to use.

                                           The New Awning

Ping’s broken tooth

We had to find a dentist.  A Google search produced a raft of results but the very first entry we found was made by another overland traveller. It was entitled ‘Want a good dentist in Rabat?’ it said, “My filling had fallen out and I looked out of the window of my hotel room and saw this dentist across the road. Had excellent treatment”.  It even gave GPS coordinates. Armed with our new GPS gadget (thank you Bernard) we found it and the only problem locating it was that the hotel was now derelict.

I have to say that it took 4 days and £60, Ping had the remains of the old tooth removed and a high quality replacement made. So now she can eat and smile again which is quite good! Sometimes she does both at the same time. Though I won’t let her have any solid food just to be on the safe side. Well you can’t be too careful eh!

          Post dental treatment

Steering Rack

So we are left with the matter of our steering rack replacement.

We received the new rack which cost an absolute fortune.  It seems important to observe that this has been a very important learning process for us.

We were taken down the path of finding a new one although much later realised that there must be a specialist in Morocco to put the old one to rights. Well I didn’t take that path.

The manufacturers were pretty hopeless. I looked on ebay and found second hand ones in UK, and after a lot of searching and many international phone calls, (it was incredibly difficult doing this without help and at such distance) but we  managed to find a man who had one. It was expensive and we had to pay VAT because he is not experienced in export.  We got him to it Fedex it which cost more than the rack. It then arrived in Casablanca airport where because of inadequate paperwork it got held up by customs. We had to go to the airport   where we had to clear it ourselves which took hours and cost us a further 25% in duty, despite our pleas that we were not importing it and we simply needed it so we could leave Morocco.

At the end of all of this Fedex refused to release it until I had paid for a day’s storage, this despite the fact that I had come to clear it within 12 hour of it arriving, I had paid for the ‘premium service’, and I had saved the need to deliver it to us 30Km away. I really felt so powerless and abused by Fedex. What a bunch of Crooks!

Anyway we have it now and it is the right one and we are now ‘Back on the road again’, oh yes I got Ping to find Canned Heat on the Ipod and I am playing it full blast as we drive off from the Iveco garage.

‘Every day is a school day’ so I’m told. We have learned a lot. We have met some interesting people, some very helpful and others not so. We are very lucky in being able to solve these problems although at the time, it didn’t feel so. I have been successful in some of the resolutions by fixing them myself.

It may seem that I have complained a lot. It certainly has been a difficult period. But I have to record my overall impressions of Morroco which have surprised me.

This is actually is a place where you can get things done. If only my French was better.

So often a cliché when we speak of new country the ‘people are so friendly, helpful happy’ and so on. Nevertheless I have to say that the overwhelming image is that a lot of Morrocan people seem to be pathologically helpful and this has been very important to us. There have also been examples of helpful people who would normally have been due a decent tip and by the time you have found your money they have walked away.  You get harassed by panhandlers and people selling beads, crystals tours of the city etc etc. In many touristic places, a firm ‘no’ is taken to be the opening for an afternoon’s negotiations between someone who doesn’t want and another who doesn’t understand no. Our experience in many parts of Morocco has been a firm no elicits the response of “Ok well I will leave you alone I do hope you enjoy Morroco”.

The countryside is fabulous and diverse. Something for everyone. Ancient cities and the world’s most appalling drivers.

We have looked at the stats for our blog and find we have had well over 2000 views which is fantastic and make it all so worthwhile.

I have again to say that we have managed to terminally muff up our mailing list it seems to be gone forever so please spread the word to friends far and wide to take a look at it.

We just love to get emails from you all so do drop us a line anytime you feel like it. Trivial news is great or just say hello.

Lots of love  Noel +Ping

pingbow51@gmail.com  or to noelbow51@gmail.com

Update a, la Apollo 11

7th December 2012

In view of our being held up for a protracted time we have decided that we should report the news of the journey through Africa as if it had really happened.

Distant places more worldly than you can imagine, oh we have seen some amazing sights that we have traveled to and some of the creatures we have seen so far!

Elephants are so common in these parts you have to be careful how you go. One wrong move and they will charge without warning and then you are really in trouble.

Like this one who roamed through our campsite just the other day.

Phhew!!! that was a narrow escape.

Of course the dangers of some animals are well-known to all. 

Lions and tigers Wow!

As you can see here we had a narrow escape as this magnificent specimen stood guard over his Pride.

Cor blimey tigers !!! the place is thick with them  I spotted this one staring out at me as we passed through some jungle staring out of the gloom - he was………. I am lucky to be here to tell you this tale.

Not many people will have heard of the deadly Morrocon Desert wolf. At night in the darkness of the desert you can hear his deathly howls as he seeks his prey. These creatures like the one we managed to snap while he was out looking for his next meal, have been known to drag away grown adults as they slumber in their tents.

Viscous and deadly water birds abound here. Some say that the local inhabitants will lock their children safely in their homes at the certain times of year when these birds go searching in massive flocks for fresh food. As you can clearly see in this shot they are equipped with talons and razor sharp bills with which they can tear human flesh. Some say that they are so vicious that they will attack and kill innocent humans for the sheer pleasure of it.

 

So to those of you who insist on referring to this life changing episode in our lives as our 'holiday'you can now see some of the risk we have had to take and the adventures we are having in this wilderness of exotic and dangerous creatures.

2nd December 2012

Crisis Bulletin!

Where to begin…first the nice stuff.

Well we have encountered some supremely helpful people in the last few days. 

Those nice chaps at Iveco Casablanca

The guys at the Iveco dealer who diagnosed that our steering rack has to be replaced.  Obliging, kind, helpful and took a sharp intake of breath when I asked where I might get a right hand drive steering rack.  ‘Well we may get one from Italy but it will take a month’. Their boss would not permit them to charge us until the whole job is done.

We have identified the need to get a more sophisticated GPS device and having spoken to loads of useless people who did not know enough to advise us as to what to get, we found Bernard Houlier  down in Casablanca.  His company is a merchandiser of Marine equipment. Having recently taken on the Garmin dealership, he is quite accustomed to selling these things in wholesale quantities. 

He was such a delightful man who took time out from his busy schedule to, not only sell us just one  but also to show us in detail how to use it. He then allowed and helped us use his computer to download maps of Africa from Garmin.  He spent ages with us speaking his excellent English both entertaining and informative. Having experienced our protracted and stressful journeys around city centres without knowing our way around, this gadget should be great.

So Bernard recommended a camp site just outside Casablanca and armed with our new GPS, of course we got a bit lost.  We found a campsite probably not the same one, but it was horrible. We were hungry for a wifi  site and a hot shower. Sadly the unhappy old man in charge said ‘no wifi’ and looking astonished at the question, told us that there were no showers.  We found ourselves wondering what was the purpose of a campsite with no facilities  when we realised that there was a pack of 4 German Shepherd dogs roaming around in the dark outside the van. The man was nowhere to be seen.  Actually the whole thing was rather spooky. So we bailed out and spent a comfortable night on the forecourt of a petrol station.

We returned to the Ocean Bleu as we had to collect visas for Guinea from Rabat. In contrast to the treatment we got in the Mauritanian embassy the lady in the Guinea embassy was a true delight. Charming, relaxed and quite beautiful. What more could one ask for?

Time has passed and I got to realising that we have not made any progress in getting our steering rack. I was getting a bit upset. I set up the van for the night and found that something in the winding mechanism of the awning broke I couldn’t wind it out fully or wind it back in. it was getting cold and dark. So I thought what’s the worst that can happen? I will leave it leave and look at it in the morning.

That night we had a really bad storm Lots of wind and rain, and at about 4 am there was a loud crash which was of course the awning being torn apart and ripped from the side of the van. It was completely ruined. 

In the morning as I was still getting my head around these mounting problems, Ping knocked up a great breakfast. 

                                      Pre dental  crisis breakfast

As we were enjoying it one of her front teeth broke off and came out. So the day was taken up with collecting our visas, negotiating with a parts company in the UK to find out if they have the right parts for us. We had to find a dentist for Ping. Now I have to say that a lot of this was made possible by our new GPS. Ping went on the interweb and found the very first entry ‘do you need a dentist in Rabat? The entry was from a traveller who  had a good experience and gave all details including Coordinates for the GPS. 

We found the dentist who seemed very nice though he may have been an axe murderer for all we know as he spoke no English.  He removed the remains of Ping’s tooth in under 5 minutes and insisted on showing the bloody remains to her where she nearly passed out. She was fine up until then.  She has to go back for two more visits.

So to sum up we are in a country that appears to be full of people who only want to be helpful if only we could talk to them. We are getting to grips with the mechanical problems (though we still have no idea how to get these parts). We are managing to make some kind of a provisional awning from parts salvaged from the wreckage. Interestingly the Italian man at the campsite managed to salvage some parts of the mechanism to get his own broken awning working. It’s a funny old world .  So we continue to kick our heels in really quite bad weather, most days are quite cold with torrential rain. If we don’t get our problems sorted by a week today then we will have to go back to Rabat and get a new visa for Mauritania  as we won’t have time to travel down before it expires.

This the guy next door salvaging parts from our trashed awning to make his own one work

I know it sounds like all we do is moan, and it is true that a number of things have not turned out as we expected, but actually we are not in bad shape at all.  If only we can stop Ping’s teeth from falling out!

The latest is that John in Charlton may have a steering rack for us by Monday.

  

Oh and on my birthday I bought a nice bottle of Morrocan Merlot to celebrate. I have been looking forward to it. The cork crumbled as I opened it . and when I tasted it Blurkgghhh!!!

Still look on the bright side theres always someone worse off than yourself!

Cheers for now suckers!!!

Peace and  love to you all

Folks please remember that our mailing list has been mostly lost I really hate to think that our supporters are not getting the  blog so pass the word around and remember we are so enjoying the emails you are sending  please keep them coming they mean a great deal

28th November 2012 

It has been a quiet day at Le Ocean camping.

                                                   The Sea

“There’s something about watching the waves of the Atlantic” says Noel philosophically, That’s because of the wave I said, but then he said you had had the spiritual awakening that you seem to have experienced when we were up in the mountains.  It’s the rocks!  He said It is just as beautiful and bleak, staring out to sea etc etc

                                  The cute kid at the Campsite

We’ve been here for the last 3 days, not doing very much except for a few minor repairs and tidying up of the van. As usual the question arose about how much stuff we’ve got in the van and what to do with them. We are getting better at this but needs much more brutal “thinning out” and the fairly minor matter of getting our steering sorted out is starting to weigh heavy. As the mechanic has said ‘you can drive it, but don’t take it in the desert or on any long journeys’.  OH!

The local fisherman has been round on his motorbike, the box he had on the back was packed with fish freshly caught this morning. The haggling over the price was obligatory, he knew it and I knew it, in the end, even though I got it down to less than half of what he asked for it still felt that I have been had.

The Fish

Preparing the fish was a bit of an experience – I seem to have lost that skill, by the time I finished, I felt as though I have been in a massacre. It was delicious though!

So it all rather pleasant here but we are starting to get itchy feet.

                    The campsite

22nd November 2012

It’s been over a month since we left the UK, Pegasus 2 has been performing well (apart from the electrics and silly windscreen wipers).

We’re in Rabat, trying to get our visas for Mauritania, but we have found, there is a problem with the power steering, which the local mechanic thought was caused by a faulty pump. Noel has discovered to his surprise that his ‘schoolboy’ French can be used to some good effect when combined with much gesticulation and apology, but it seems to work.

After a lot of searching we were referred to the only Iveco dealer in Morocco who may have a new pump. We were given specific directions (in French ie, turn R when you see the Hassan II mosque, go to the Atlas building, you can’t miss it) on how to get there, we set off on the motorway towards Casablanca. Of course, it wasn’t easy, we could see the Atlas building from the motorway, and the difficulty was getting to it. There were several mosques between our van and the Atlas building.

                                               Getting a lift to market

Eventually, through sheer determination and driving in between, large lorries, tram tracks, donkey carts loaded with people and fresh produce, bikes and people just wandering in front of you, accompanied by some very colourful expletives from Noel, and instead of finding the Iveco agent, we saw a large breakers yard.  Noel decided it  might be worth a look, so we found eventually ourselves in the biggest vehicle scrapyard in Morocco, probably in the world. It went on for miles it was actually the size of a provincial town. Noel was especially delighted – he temporarily forgot that we were here to get a new pump for the van. 

In Morocco whenever there are complex things to be done there are helpers or runners, who make their living by helping to find what you need.  There were a lot of them trying to get our attention but one seemed to really understand what we wanted, he took us to a scrap dealer who deals only in Iveco parts. He was very nice man and did have a pump for us, but the nice man got Rashid, the resident mechanic to look at the problem first.  

A pile of old iron

To Noel’s delight, we were told that the fault was not with the pump and he would not sell me something we don’t need. Instead we should come back the next day when they have cleared some space and Rashid will try to fix the problem.  It turned out that the steering rack is slightly damaged and he was able to say with some certainty that we would not be able to get the parts we need as they are specific to a right hand drive vehicle. He absolutely refused to take any money despite the time he had spent on it. This was yet another example of unconditional helpfulness that we have found in Morroco.

Interestingly while Rashid was under the van working on it I set about providing breakfast which we ate in the sun in the midst of this busy breakers yard, fork lifts and tow trucks going in all directions. Strange place to have breakfast……….I thought it was strange when we had breakfast on the Paris ring road, but this is even stranger

At the end of this quite surreal day we returned to the Ocean Bleu campsite where we spent a lovely evening watching the waves of the Atlantic and took a long walk along the Esplanade.  

              Sunset at the Ocean Bleu

3 punctures in 24 hours 

Having raved on about how reliable the van is, we found to our dismay that even having brand new tyres does not stop us from suffering from punctures. Noel has a view on this (email him for the details). Our first one happened on the day that we arrived in Rabat, followed by the 2^nd one a few hours later in a supermarket car park. Working together, it took us half an hour to put the spare tyre on and we went to the local “pneu” shop to have the puncture dealt with. We were on our way to the Mauritanian embassy to camp for the night, when we made a brief stop on the way to find that we had a third puncture.  With much swearing and cursing, we dealt with this last one with little patience and were beginning to wonder whether this is the start of the unreliability of Pegasus 2.

The men who fixed the puncture were neither surprised or curious when we turned up for the 3^rd time. The just repaired the puncture and sent us on our way. 

    

                  Third time around I think this makes me a good customer

Needing a holiday

Having got our visas for Mauritania, we are now camped about 25 km from Casablanca, once again at the “ Ocean Bleu” campsite. We thought we deserve a break from driving and staying here is absolute bliss. I am not intending to do anything – well, watch the waves of the Atlantic, maybe read a book, listen to Radio 4 on the internet and wander over to the restaurant to see what’s for dinner.

We’ll stay here for a few days, then maybe we’ll set off.