I was not going by my own. Ewa, a polish woman, who was working in Mojácar at the time was joining me.
But before I left I was collecting two bin bags full of second hand clothes which were donated by Diane and Mo&Robin. Thanx again.
The day we left it was beautiful weather. I was curious about the car, especially about the engine and the gearbox. Would they last? I was possitive surprised by the power of the engine again. It was so much more relaxing to drive without shifting down gears all the time a little hill only came in sight. And the fuel consumption was much lower as well. One thing I didn't like from the beginning. The car was constantly pulling to the right. The second thing I didn't like too much was the gearbox. There was no noise or anything, it just took some force to shift the gears. I had to keep an eye on that. The place where I wanted to buy the tickets for the ferry was shut. In fact most of these places were shut, which was not really a surprise at the first day of the year. Finally 10km before Algeciras one of these places which were mostly some office containers had open doors. The guy who was working in there charged a fair price and at 9pm we went on the ferry which was called “Jaume I”. It was a super fast ferry. It only took us 30 minutes to get to Ceuta. It felt like being on a speed boat. For the second time I hit african soil. In Ceuta there was only one big parking space at the coast line. That's where we went to spent the night. The next morning we were heading straight for the border. Easy, after 15 minutes we were through and in Morocco. They didn't even check the car, just a quick look inside. I was wondering about the fuel prices in Morroco, and, they were exactly the same than last year. Only the exchange rate was a little bit worse. 1Euro to 10,88 Dirham. But the fuel was still at 7,35 Dirham which is 66cents a liter. We went towards Tetouan and than headed straight over to the west coast towards Rabat where we had to get the visa for Mauretania and Mali. The to the right pulling was getting worse. As a first try to see if it makes any difference I was changing some tyres. It was better but still not really good. We were arriving at the Mauretanian embassy at late afternoon. The weather was still beautiful but much colder than on the mediteranean side. Now the waiting game started. What had to be done to get a visa is to get a form which has to be filled out. Like usuall something was missing, so we had to go there twice. The counter to bring in the form, the passeport and two pictures stayed only open from 9 to 11am, and it was busy and people tried to get in the queue first etc. Just boring. The following day after 3pm they gave the passeports back. We were hoping we could make it the same day to the malien embassy. They stay open until 3.30pm. Funny enough we had it all worked out. There are two queues, one for the women and one for the men and the women are always going in first, so I gave Ewa all the documents. But unfortunatly the Mauretaniens didn't open the door before 20 to 4, so the plan was not working out. The picture was taken in front of the embassy, the waiting game.
We had to stay another night. The third, and they were very cold, much colder than the nights in Spain. I spent the time during the waiting prcedure working at the Landrover. I lifted every wheel up to check if the brakes are all running free. In the steering I noticed a little bit of a play, so I adjusted the steering box. The handbrake lever was making a lot of a rattling noise which was going on my nerves. I fixed this as well. That was the most of it. Even when the Visa-buisness was boring I enjoyed to stay in this road in front of the embassy. There are always some interesting people turning up and it was just funny to watch with what sort of vehicles people are going or trying to go to Africa. Good, I reckon most of the vehicles will be sold there. This german guy for example, he had a car with a totally worn out timing belt. And they were heading for Gambia, good luck. After we had the Mauretanien visa we were heading for the Malien one the next day. I thought it might not take longer then two hours but no. The guy told us to come back at 2pm, which ment we had to wait another five hours.At two pm we were back and for sure the visas were not finished yet. But one guy who was working in the embassy was from Tombouctou, it was a good chance to ask what is going on there. Just a couple of weeks ago three people were captured and one was killed in the middle of the day in the middle of the town. He said everything is save now. There is a festival starting around the 16th of Janurary and it looks like they made some effort to keep the place save. Back to the visa, after another hour I was just tired of waiting and I asked them to give us our passeports and our money back, and all of a sudden things started to move. The ambassador himself took care about the situation and on top of it he gave us our money back, ok, not all of it, the rest stayed in the coffee box for the staff, but hey. Finally at 4.30pm we left the place with our visas. We were quite driving some distance. I wanted to stay at a place called Qualidia, but it turned out the campground didn't exist anymore. I asked some guys and they sent us to a parking place out of town where we spent an undisturbed night. I wanted to sleep in the roof-tent, but unfortunatly it took some water. It must have happened when we had the very strong rain in Spain. I should have checked it. Everything inside was ready to go to the bin. The next day Ewa was cleaning the tent and I was again checking the car. The pulling was still present all the time, but this time I found the problem. One of the tyres must have had a problem, cause after I took this one off to be used as a spare the pulling was gone. We made it until Agadir, passing by at the beautiful argan tree area just passed Essaouira. These trees only grow in this area. I spoke with one of the argan-oil sellers and he said 2011 was a very bad year for argan-oil. They didn't have enough rain. Normally it rains in the month of December. I could see it myself, the fruits were very small and the trees only had a very small quantity of fruits to be picked up. The price for the oil went up as well. But this oil is so good, I couldn't resist and bought some, together with some honey and something I never saw before. It was smashed almends mixed with argan oil and honey. Delicious. The picture on the left shows one of the argan.oil sellers. Shortly before Agadir I discovered a new campground. The place was nothing else than a more or less flat place on the top of a rocky hill. 
But we had the first warm shower since we left Spain. And again car problems. The steering wheel was always after I hit a whole with only one front wheel moving very fast from one side to the other. I only could stop it by hitting the brakes. Very unpleasant. The next morning I decided to find out what was wrong. The steering damper was gone, I was not even trying to get one here. Instead I put more resistance on the swivel housing housing by taking out some of the shims and voilá the problem was sorted. It looked like all the car problems were solved now. Finally. Ewa in the meanwhile was doing all the washing. A word to Ewa. She was so far the best travell maid I had. She just took over the kitchen and whenever we stopped she was preparing some lovely food in no time. I never found out how she was doing this, but the result was fantastic. I felt like having 5 star dinners in the middle of the desert. When we left the camp-ground it was already past midday. We were not going very far. In Guelmin, which is by the way a very clean and friendly town, I saw a sign leading to the “plage blanche” which means white beach. I heard about this beach already 20 years ago and we decided to give it a try. It was not what I expected. To be honest it was quite dissapointing. And white sand? No way. I reckon it is not worth to go there, We hit the road quite early the next day. The landscape was turning into desert. I loved driving in this scenerie. These endless ongoing roads only interupted by a police checkpoint or a small village. Though we had a very strong wind blowing directly from the side. Shortly before nightfall we arrived at a camp 5km off the main road. A french couple took over this place one year ago and so far they did a good job. The place was called “Roi de beduine” and they were still building on it. There was a small river next by, with a small waterfall. Sure there was almost no water in it but I saw a picture how it looked after some rain; quite impressing. A place I really can recommend. Only the mosquitos in the evening were a little bit disturbing. Back on the road the following day. On the picture some of the Off-roaders we met. It was a 570km distance to Dakhla. But we made it, even constantly fighting against a very strong wind. The fuel consumption went up a 30%.
It was getting hot, and we had luck with the wind. Dakhla is a surfers paradies, but it was not at the time we were there. Dakhla is the last possibility to do some cheap and good shopping and we took the opportunity.The night we spent at a really nice beach maybe 30km outside Dakhla. I just turned off the mainroad and than followed some tracks, beautiful. We had a stunning sunset and a beautiful moonrise. We wanted to cross the border to Mauretania the next day and we got up very early. The last possibility to fill up with cheap fuel is 85km before the border. Don't forget it. The fuel in Mauretania cost almost the double. We arrived at the border at midday. I was worried we had to pass trough the scanner on the morrocan side but fortunatly we didn't have to. The only problem were members of an organized tour. They had 31 cars and half of them were in front of us. But after two hours we had everything done and went over through no-mans land towards the Mauretanian side of the border.
Click here to watch some pictures on Picassa photopage.
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