Coastal route, Rif Mountains (Do you have a smoke or do you want to smoke) and Fes

Update: 12-4-2012


The Rif Mountains

We left the campground in Martil on Sunday and we drove the incredibly beautiful road along the coast in easterly direction.


According to tracks4africa it was supposed to be a gravel road but they apparently  have not updated their software in the last four years because it is an easy driving tar road that brought us to a stunning “bushcamp” overlooking the Mediterranean.



Room with a view

We were visited by the local youth who had lots of questions but since they only spoke Arabic, they did not get a lot of answers. We also witnessed the traditional Moroccan  division of work: Women do the work, men watch the work.


Twee emmertjes........

.........water halen

But everyone is super friendly and helpful, Rosana was not even allowed to pay for the baguettes. The friendly woman at the bakery just smiled and did not want the 2.5 Dirham (about $0.30) for two baguettes. Rosana paid anyway.

The next day we were planning to continue driving along the coast and then turn south towards Fes and find a place to camp along the road. The drive with views of the sea and Rif mountains was stunning. However when we turned south, the road became a stretch of potholes with some asphalt in between.

still the good road

We also ended up in the middle of the Rif mountains, driving between 1200 and 1600 meters. It got to zero degrees Celsius and we were driving on snow covered roads. According to the manual of our heater in the camper box, the heater may not work at altitudes above 1500. So we pushed on thinking that at some point of time the road has to go down. The scenery was still beautiful but the road did not go down before it became dark.

Yes, a lot of snow

 In the mean time we also started noticing that more and more people were asking us for a smoke, at least that is what we thought, since they made the international sign for smoking.  However we suddenly remembered a story in the lonely planet about “Kif in the Rif”. It basically said that you should avoid some towns in the Rif mountains because the locals think that the only reason you are there is to buy some happy smokes. The further we got into the Rif mountains the more annoying and desperate the locals became in trying to sell us their local pot (I must say that the men were really working hard at this).  They would jump in the middle of the road trying to stop Duma, they would drive in front and force us to stop or drive next to us and open the window to conduct their business.

When it became dark and it still did not look that we were going to get to a lower altitude soon we decided to park the car just outside a little town for the night. But as soon as we stopped the car we had visitors every 5 minutes trying to sell their local produce (Can’t they see that our car has a Dutch license plate, do they really think that we are driving 3000km for something we can get in any city in the Netherlands or in Boulder for that matter (during the last presidential election there was also a proposal on the ballot to legalize the recreational use of Marijuana, and it got passed).

So we decided to drive on again until we found a spot along the road farther out of town. We got bothered twice; when we arrived,  and in the middle of the night an idiot was blowing his horn a couple of times to get our attention, but he fortunately left after a few tries.

The next day we got up early and drove straight to Fes.

Update 12-6-2012:

Yesterday we spend most of the day in the city of Fes, strolling through the two Medina’s. Initially we had the campground sell us a guide to take us for a couple of hours, but we fired him after 5 minutes as he started to fight with us. We had agreed the day before that we would get a guide and take a taxi to the Medina. Now the guide wanted us to go with his car but he wanted us to pay three times as much than what a taxi would charge. We did not want to pay that and although the guidebook about Morocco told us that negotiating and haggling over everything is a fun game….the guide must not have read the same guidebook as he got upset with us.

So we went to the Medina by ourselves and it was pretty easy to find your way around and when we got lost there were enough people we could ask for directions. The Medina was very nice but also very touristy so you got bothered quite a bit by people that wanted to act as a guide, show you something nice but you would end up in a shop where they would get a commission. In that sense the Medina in Tetouan was nicer as there were hardly any tourists. 

Tanning and dyeing leather (Tanneries)

In the evening  Marc went to a soccer match in the Stadium next to the campground. Fez was playing Rabat.  To get in the stadium he was searched 3 times, not as many times as the Moroccans. They got searched and pushed around by the military police like animals. Not that it helped as the fans were still able to get fireworks in the Stadium. The Stadium probably fits about 40000 people but there were only about 1000 or so. They were pretty loud as you can see /hear in this video Soccer Video

The match was pretty bad, Fes took a 1-0 lead after 20 minutes and defended the lead by delaying the game in all possible ways. The highlight was probably that the referee gave a red card to the ball boys. Halfway the second half they got removed from their job, as they took too much pride in getting the ball back into play as slow as possible. When they came off the field they received a hero’s welcome from the local fans.

Real Bread

While Marc went to the soccer match, Rosana baked another bread. And this time it not only tasted like a bread but it also looked like a real bread.

Update 12-09-2012
On Friday we left Fes and we drove to Rabat. We ended up about 60 km north of Rabat on the only campground between Rabat and Casablanca. Tomorrow off to Rabat for the visa for Mauritania.

"The Orange Man"

Update 12-10-2012 Visa application Mauritania

Today we had the first experience of unorganized chaos at the Mauritanian Embassy. Some other overlanders we met had told us that they were going to be in line at 6am at the Embassy in order to get their visa application in. The Embassy only opens at 8.30 am but they had heard that if you are not there early you may not get your application in before 11am. Well, we did not feel like being there that early, so we showed up at 8.30am and about 80 other people were in front of us. A mix of overlanders and people from Senegal returning home by cars/vans/trucks full of stuff from Europe.
When you arrive at the Embassy you put your name down on a list with a man hanging around the entrance of the embassy. After that you are supposed to line up in order, but that concept was a little bit difficult to grasp for the non-overlanders as the people started to push for the entrance of the embassy. Inevitably a fight broke out between the Senegalese men who were all trying to sneak into the entrance, even though only one person at the time was allowed in. The guard, who was supposed to manage the mess did not do anything and only when his boss came out of the embassy and started to shout, something that looked like a line was forming. However the line did not form in the order of the list with names. So people were getting upset again. Also no women were allowed in the queue, there was a separate line for women. This was excellent news because there were not that many women, Rosana was second in line and since the guard was letting in one woman for each two guys, we got our paperwork in by 9.30. Rosana does not speak any French but she was able to make clear that we are planning to get into Mauritania on January 14th (we had heard that if you do not give a date that the start date of the visa will be today's date and you will have to be out of Mauritania within 30 days).
At 3pm we could pick up the visa, but that was African time, so at 3.15 the Embassy opened and two lines formed (everyone had learned from the morning). Rosana was second in line again and we had our passports back in 2 minutes. The start date of our visa in January 5th and we have to be out of Mauritania by February 2nd. Apparently they just randomly give you a date when you can enter the country, maybe they are afraid that Mauritania gets overcrowded since there are about two inhabitants per square km (compared to Holland with only 400 people per square km).
All in all the whole visa process was a lot easier than the visa application for China a couple of months ago.

In Africa ………..finally

OK this is our first story in the category challenging border crossings. We have the feeling that many will follow.

On Wednesday morning we left the Campground in Marbella at a leisurely pace, so we pretty much knew that we were not going to cross into Morocco that same day. We still had to do some grocery shopping and by the time we got to the harbor in Algeciras, it was late in the afternoon and we did not want to arrive in Morocco in the evening. We decided to buy tickets for the next morning. We could choose between taking the ferry to Ceuta (a small Spanish enclave in Morocco) or to Tangier-Med (a brand new harbor between Tangier and Ceuta). We decided to go to Tangier-Med because we had heard that the immigration and customs is a lot better organized than in Ceuta or in Tangier. (For the followers of our blog who are planning to go to Morocco: Even though on the websites of the different ferries they talk about height restrictions, when you buy the ticket at the ferry terminal in Algeciras they do not care about the dimensions of your vehicle. Even though Duma is 3.5m high on the ticket we were only 2m high. Also the prices were lower than what was quoted on-line, we paid 124 Euro).

Why put it in the van when it can fit on top

We bought the ticket and spent the night on a big parking lot between the harbor and the city of Algeciras. We were planning to take the 8am ferry the next day.  The next morning we got in line for the ferry at 7.15am. About 6 campers, 6 vans (loaded with so much stuff on top of the roof that they were taller than that they were long) and a couple of cars in front of us. No problem we thought………..until it was our turn to go through the gate.  The Algeciras Javier (the little A….hole seemed to have followed us from the Mercedes dealer in Malaga) ordered us to move to  the side and after that he only let small cars go through. Apparently they did not feel like taking anymore campers on the 8am ferry. But no problem said Javier we were first in line for the 11am ferry.



First in line

And so we waited, enjoying breakfast while watching emigrated Moroccans returning for a holiday, getting in line behind us (yes they still bring the washers, dryers, bicycles and mother in law with them (here is how they pack their car before their trip to Morocco: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVL0sqUgA-E).



Morocco

At 10:30 we were the first one to get on the ferry (which is not good in this case because you will be the last one to get off). We also found out why only a few campers got on the 8am ferry. From another area big trucks were loaded onto the ferry, quickly taking up all the space. Obviously the ferry did not leave on time, but at 11.30 we left Algeciras and after about 2hours (we were told it would take 1.30 hour) we arrived at Tangier-Med.

 

On the ferry

 On the boat they already checked our passports, so the only thing needed now was to pass through customs. Since we were the last ones off the boat Marc just followed the other people and got in line. After 10 minutes we all found out this was the wrong line, you first needed to pick up a form at a booth 50 meters further. This form is for the temporary importation of the vehicle. Marc went back in line number one, showed the car papers, passport and the import form. He immediately noticed that the man with the moustache was getting confused because the name on the form and passport did not match the name on the car papers. Marc told him in his best French that his brother owned the car (Marc is not allowed to have a car registered in his name in Holland because he is not a resident). Now the moustache did not know what to do, so he turned to his boss, moustache nr. 2 (we found out the bigger the moustache the higher you are in the hierarchy at Moroccon customs). First the good thing. Moustache nr. 2 spoke English. Now the bad thing, in his best English he asked for an authorization letter from Marc’s brother. Don’t have it. OK then you have to go back to Spain. My brother does not live in Spain. You have big problem. Yes I understand how do we solve it? Can my brother  fax an authorization letter. After looking difficult and talking to some other moustaches he finally said yes.  What is the fax number? Now moustache nr. 2 got a little bit annoyed because he could not find a fax-number nor could any of the little moustaches. So he told Marc to go to the scanner. Scanner??? Marc thought we needed a fax machine. The scanner is this huge x-ray machine on a big truck that goes around your car/truck .

So we drove to another area and line up with 3 other cars for the scanner. We are waiting and waiting and waiting then little moustache nr.3  comes out of the scanner truck and says that the scanner is broken, now we all have to drive off the scanner and line up so they can do a manual check of the cars and truck. Clearly, moustache 3 is not happy that he has to search three cars and our camper. So he gets on the phone. Five minutes later a huge moustache appears on the scene, he goes in the scanner truck, comes out, makes some calls and the scanner is fixed. We drive around on the scanner again. Rosana is getting nervous that they will discover all the wine that we are bringing in. But three minutes later we are good to go back to moustache nr. 2. He apparently is still not happy and now he wants Marc to go to the police to have them check Marc’s passport.  So Marc goes to the police, who checks the passport and sends him back to m2. M2 now wanted to see the truck and inspect it himself. By this time everyone is through customs and we seem the last ones there, which apparently made m2 happy. He asked were Marc was from and when Marc told him that Rosana was from Brazil, he even started to smile as he did not believe it as she was too white. Anyway we opened the back of the truck but M2 had seen/heard enough, he gave us the paperwork back and we were free to go. Finally in Morocco.

We drove straight to Martil on the coast about 40km under Ceuta as we were planning to visit Tetouan the next day. However, yesterday it rained the whole day and it was pretty cold so we did not leave the truck. Today, the weather was better and we took a shared taxi to Tetouan (6 passengers + driver in a small car… yes it is possible), where we visited out first Medina. Here are some more pictures.

Africa here we come... not yet

Lots of "help" from the neighbors

November 23^rd, 10 am, everything packed, Rosana already sitting in the cab. Marc turns the key and..... nothing. Duma doesn't collaborate.
Do we have an issue with the starter motor or with the batteries ? Can we jump start it ? Duma’s battery is 24Volts and all other regular cars are 12V. We finally had some jump start cables and another car standing right next to the batteries. We’ve tried to jump started it without any luck.

How about “AAA” ??? The only thing they could do was to send a tow truck. What kind of tow truck would we need?

In the end we got a mechanic to come to the campground. He took the batteries to be charged overnight. The next day at 10:30 am, as promised he was back with the batteries. Wow, the Spaniards were finally surprising us. Later we found out he is from Venezuela. The batteries were put back and Duma was happy again.

Good news !!! It looks like the issue is not with the starter motor !!! Now we just need to get new batteries and off to Africa we go. No, wait a minute. The issue could be with the alternator and/or the regulator and not with the batteries. We need to get it checked.

Found a place to get it checked. It looks like they have the right equipment. The apparatus used actually said “alternador defectuoso”
What to do ??? Wait until Monday to go to Mercedes to double check (oh no, not that dealership again… ), then order the alternator, wait a few days, have it fixed and then off to Africa.

Nothing could be done on Sunday so Rosana decided to try her 3^rd recipe for baking bread.

It actually worked this time.



Fresh bread every morning

 

Reconfiguration of the passenger's seat
to fit the new batteries

Monday 10am at the Mercedes dealer. Explained our issue (in Spanish or sort of) and we were told by Javier (remember him from the previous post???) they were super busy and he had to ask the "Jefe" (yes the same supervisor that wanders around) if they could diagnose the issue. He came back saying today was going to be impossible they were too busy. After reminding them that last Monday they had us wait the whole day and Rosana's best arguing in Spanish we convinced the "Jefe" and they were going to do it sometime in the morning.
11:30am - Surprise, Surprise, they were going to start.
12:30pm Diagnosis done ! Alternator and Regulator good. 1 battery good and 1 battery bad. Ordered 2 new batteries from a shop just around the corner.
1:30pm Siesta time and no batteries yet.
3pm With batteries handy it should be done in 15 minutes. Wait a minute, the batteries don’t fit… The iron box need to be cutout and re-welded to give another 15 millimeters of space
4:30pm !!!!! Batteries in, Duma happy!!!
5:30pm After some more trees were killed by our amigo Javier, the paperwork signed and the bill paid we head back to the campground. Tentavive plan is to leave for Morocco on Wednesday/Thursday so we have two more days in Spain to make sure the problem really was the batteries

25% of people unemployed in Spain, it could be worse....

Yesterday we had an early start as we had gotten an e-mail on Friday from the Mercedes Truck Service station in Malaga that the new ventilator had arrived.

 They asked us to be there first thing on Monday morning. This was our second trip to the Mercedes dealer, the first time we learned the lesson that if you do not upgrade your three year old Garmin (GPS) you are going to drive around for two hours before you find the Mercedes dealer.

Specially in Spain where the EU tax money was very well spent on building new roads (corruption and bureaucracy at work: there is a 20 km new highway between Coin and Malaga that has been finished for over a year except for the “stripemarks”, the project ran out of money so this new road is still not in use).

Anyway we arrived at the Mercedes dealer at 9am after a nice  sunrise morning drive.

Javier, the guy at the reception who helped us the first time to get the new ventilator ordered, registered our car and the three things that we requested them to do: change the oil of the gearbox, replace the ventilator and check the electronics of the dashboard.  First three printouts were made of the planned services that we needed to sign. Once signed, new forms were printed and copied and printed again for the mechanic, the supervisor (who had been standing around all the time doing nothing (as we found out the rest of the day that was his job))and for us. So 45 minutes and one tree later we thought they were finally ready to work on our car. Wrong….. We were asked to sit in the waiting area. So we did as we thought it is not 10 yet and based on their estimate it should all take about two hours so we will be out of here around noon. In the mean time we evaluated the registration process and came to the conclusion that fortunately the Spanish are so inefficient, imagine if they introduced efficiency in their workplace, the unemployment rate would jump to 50%.

Supervising...

At 10.30 Rosana went to ask when they would start working on our car. The answer from Javier was as soon as the mechanic was done with the truck he was working on. Obviously we wanted to know when he was going to be finished with it, so Javier went to ask the mechanic. The mechanic said that he needed another 30 minutes. So at 1pm he finally started to work on our car (yes right that is 2.5 hours later). Very nice guy and he seemed to be very good, not in English though. Since Marc does not speak Spanish nor is his English (or Dutch for that matter) truck mechanics vocabulary very big he had to ask Rosana to translate. So now Rosana was trying to tell in her best Spanish the things Marc could not even explain or ask in English. We felt very sorry for “Manuel from Barcelona” For those of us who do not remember Manuel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6EaoPMANQM

Anyway, so  we thought we will be out of here by 3pm. Wrong…….At 1.25 Javier came out of his office to let us know that at 1.30 everyone will go for lunch/siesta until 3pm. By that time we already expected anything, so we decided not to grab Javier by the ears and not to stuff his head in an oil drum.

In the end we left the Mercedes dealership at 5.30pm, wondering if Spain is really in Europe or is it part of North Africa.

In Spain

We have made it to South of Spain. Duma did well ... ~2,300 KM (1,400 miles) in 6 days.

We left the Netherlands on November 4th from Marc's brother's house. Patrick, Hidde, Frederieke and Florine were there to send us on our way.

It was a slow but at times beautiful trip through France and Spain. We said we would only stop for nice and warm weather, well we are still looking for it. We are now in Marbella and it has been reasonable. Some sunny and warm days but also quite some rain. On some of the pictures you can see that there was some major flooding in the south of Spain.

On our way down to Spain we ran into a couple more issues with Duma. I guess she did not appreciate being in a barn for three years. The biggest issue was that the household batteries were not being charged while we were driving. Besides that Rosana's feet were getting wet when driving in the rain, the ventilator gave out when we passed Madrid and then there were a couple of minor things. So we spent a few days with Koen of Twiga Travelcars in Spain. Most of the problems are fixed now and as a bonus Marc got a crash course in Unimog maintenance. Thanks Koen.
Koen also shared some of his travel adventures when he took his Unimog to Mongolia. We only hope that Marc will not spend as much time under the Unimog as Koen did on his trip (Well that will not happen as Marc will quickly determine that he will not be able to fix it anyway).

On the way back from Koen another problem surfaced, the dashboard lights all start to blink when we drive, like it is already X-mass. Hopefully we will be able to take care of that problem next week so we can finally take the boat to Morocco. In the mean time we spend our time on a camping with retired "Netherland" (today is Saturday so Marc will join the rest of the camping and give Duma a good scrub.....not)

Pictures

We have Started !!!!

After traveling to 16 different cities, towns and villages in 3 continents visiting friends and family having fun, sun, wind, rain and even snow we have started our overland adventure.
Duma (our Unimog) did not like we had left her standing still for 3 years and gave us some trouble. After picking her up and trying to start the trip we had to bring her back to Twiga Travel Cars and they quickly took care of all the issues and now we are driving.
The trip started on Nov 4th 2012 from Tilburg, The Netherlands.
First day we drove about 500 km.
Here is a link to our pictures from the last few weeks.

Depois de viajarmos por 16 cidades diferentes em 3 continentes visitando parentes e amigos com diversao, sol, chuva, vento e ate neve comecamos nossa aventura sobre 4 rodas.

Duma (nosso caminhao) nao gostou muito que a deixamos parada por 3 anos e nos deu um pouco de trabalho. Tentamos comecar a viagem mas tivemos que leva-la de volta ao pessoal pessoal da "Twiga Travel Cars" (uma oficina especializada neste tipo de caminhoes de viagem) que cuidaram de tudo.
Nossa viagem comecou em 4 de Nov de 2012 em Tilburg, Holanda.
Dirigimos cerca de 500 km no primeiro dia.
Aqui vai um link com algumas fotos das ultimas semanas.

Taste of China

Visiting friends in China.

Our Pictures.

6 legs

Our ticket for the "pre-trip" has 15 legs. So far we have flown 6 of the 15 legs to visit friends and family in Chicago, Brazil and The Netherlands.

While having lunch with some friends and talking about our itinerary Rosana's 5 y.o. Godchild in Chicago commented on the trip "That's a LOT of vacations"

Flying with miles means a lot of sacrifices, ie not able to fly the dates you want and not able to get direct flights. At least we were able to fly business class (we calculated it and for every 10 miles we flew in coach for our jobs we are able to fly one in business class). While on the way from Miami to Lima a passenger passed by our seats and commented "This is bigger than my apartment". He must have an apartment in Tokyo or NY but at least it made us feel good. To those wondering why we were flying to Lima... No we do not have friends in Lima, but again flying using miles meant that this was the only way to get to Sao Paulo, with a 20 hour layover in Lima.

We only had 6 days in Brazil and 3 of those were spent standing in several different lines to obtain our visa to visit our friends in China. After soccer, standing in line is the second favorite pass time for Brazilians. We even noticed that if there are two entrances to the subway, the Brazilians will take the one that has a line, assuming that that is the only way in.

While using the subway in Sao Paulo we saw a special seat (see picture below. translation "Seat reserved for obese people"). We thought this may be an interesting idea for the Chicago Elevated train stations, we just don't think there is enough space on the platforms to accommodate all the people in Chicago that could use it.

6 days...

6 days before we leave home.
There will be a few stops before we take Duma on the road to Africa.
We plan to visit friends and family in Chicago, Brazil, The Netherlands, China, Ireland, UK, Denmark and Liechtenstein.

Preparing

At the moment we are preparing for the trip and counting the days.