Sunday, 30 January 2011
The big Boys never get bored !
The many overheating problems we had with Cherry (car number 7) were always opportunities for the boys to play !
Saturday, 29 January 2011
Dakhla to B2-Beach: The oddest day
Leaving the great hotel with swimming pool in Dakhla where we had a well deserved break, we drove in the direction of Nouakchott in western sahara with the great hope of be part of the Budapest Bamako rally beach party - but not everything went according to the plan...
During our stay in Dakhla we met sweet Freya. She helped us immensively with getting in contact with guides and information about the coming leg of the journey.
Fueling up before crossing the border these cocky boys approached us for the usual "Cadeau", gifts. A whole package of cookies and several colour pens later we were ready for the border crossing between Western Sahara and Mauretania, we thought....
Barbara hidden behind her shemagh. Beside her you see one of our marrocan guides whose fascination was on Barbara to such a degree that his contribution/facilitation of our journey became minimal. (Of note, she is invited to go back to Dakhla - on her own)
Nick and Fergus did a fantastic job in catching up with the rest of the group. Back in line "Cherrie" started to show signs of over-heating again and we had to make hourly pauses to cool her down and refill with water. The work is overseen by our second guide (the person in bright trousers).
One of Mo's many naps. Totally trusting Barbara behind the steering wheel.
"Unforeseen" hinders on the winter roads in Western Sahara. Same same but different to the Swedish winter :)
Gorgeous desertic lanscape.
"No-man's-land" between Western Sahara and Mauritania. After the 6 hour hassle to pass through the WS side we had to cross through the 2km minefield separating both countries. It was a nerve wrecking drive with warning signs every ones so often and car wrecks all over the landscape :-/
We did not see any moose during the whole drive like what Daniel's pillow was warning about :)
The man the myth the legend! This guide did nothing but complain (in french to Barbara), eat our cookies, drink our tea and got us lost. Interesting clothes taste though!
Who could predict there was a Gare du Nord in the middle of Mauritania ?
Fergus at work digging sand from underneath "Cherrie" entering B2 beach. We realised that it was the lousiest of conditions to drive along on the sand and three cars got stuck. It was very stressfull when the waves came closer and closer with the rising tide threatening to drown and wash our vehicles away.
After we realised we just couldn't make it to the part of the beach where we were supposed to have a party with the Budapest-Bamako rally people, we had no choice but to spend the night in the middle of nowhere. It was a night with mixed feelings. Seen here are the three last heroes keeping watch while the rest were asleep. The bottle of red wine tasted exquisite sitting there with the dying fire with only embers left. The beautiful African night was filled with stars and the huge full moon alit the world around us.
Good night Sahara4x Followers, wherever you are,
During our stay in Dakhla we met sweet Freya. She helped us immensively with getting in contact with guides and information about the coming leg of the journey.
Fueling up before crossing the border these cocky boys approached us for the usual "Cadeau", gifts. A whole package of cookies and several colour pens later we were ready for the border crossing between Western Sahara and Mauretania, we thought....
Barbara hidden behind her shemagh. Beside her you see one of our marrocan guides whose fascination was on Barbara to such a degree that his contribution/facilitation of our journey became minimal. (Of note, she is invited to go back to Dakhla - on her own)
Nick and Fergus did a fantastic job in catching up with the rest of the group. Back in line "Cherrie" started to show signs of over-heating again and we had to make hourly pauses to cool her down and refill with water. The work is overseen by our second guide (the person in bright trousers). 
One of Mo's many naps. Totally trusting Barbara behind the steering wheel.
"Unforeseen" hinders on the winter roads in Western Sahara. Same same but different to the Swedish winter :)
Gorgeous desertic lanscape.
"No-man's-land" between Western Sahara and Mauritania. After the 6 hour hassle to pass through the WS side we had to cross through the 2km minefield separating both countries. It was a nerve wrecking drive with warning signs every ones so often and car wrecks all over the landscape :-/
We did not see any moose during the whole drive like what Daniel's pillow was warning about :)
The man the myth the legend! This guide did nothing but complain (in french to Barbara), eat our cookies, drink our tea and got us lost. Interesting clothes taste though!
Who could predict there was a Gare du Nord in the middle of Mauritania ?
Fergus at work digging sand from underneath "Cherrie" entering B2 beach. We realised that it was the lousiest of conditions to drive along on the sand and three cars got stuck. It was very stressfull when the waves came closer and closer with the rising tide threatening to drown and wash our vehicles away.
After we realised we just couldn't make it to the part of the beach where we were supposed to have a party with the Budapest-Bamako rally people, we had no choice but to spend the night in the middle of nowhere. It was a night with mixed feelings. Seen here are the three last heroes keeping watch while the rest were asleep. The bottle of red wine tasted exquisite sitting there with the dying fire with only embers left. The beautiful African night was filled with stars and the huge full moon alit the world around us.Good night Sahara4x Followers, wherever you are,
On the way to Nouakchott: Breaking camp
We all woke up at 6 o'clock from several of the B2-cars storming by us returning from their location a further 25km down the beach heading for Nouakchott 150km up the beach.
Barbara doing the morning ritual which includes making us all a cup of tea... Not!
As we packed up camp, more cars came driving along the beach (as seen from the head-lights in the distance).
We had a long and thorough meeting to discuss the route for the day that was going to take us to Nouakchott.
The amazing African dawn with "The Beast" covered by morning dew. Is'nt she a beauty?
Having arrived in the dark we had no idea we had parked 1 meter away from this hole. The animal tracks outside were confusing. Meerkat? Snake? Roadrunner? Lizard? It is the Million Oquya Question!! Anyone?
Having deflated our tires to drive on the sand the previous day we had an exhausting morning exercise. Barbara is doing "step-ups" on the pump enjoying it immensively. Who needs a gym card?
Daniel and Barbara are hugging!
Mo and Daniel are hugging!
Entering Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania. Arrived at a great hotel. VERY expensive beers! Alcohol is prohibited and thereby extremely taxed at the very few places it is sold. There is a 10k pound fine in being caught carrying alcohol on the street!!!
Barbara proudly wearing her Self-rescuing Princess T-Shirt in a great pub close to the hotel where we spent many hours drinking and laughing.
Good night Sahara4x Followers, wherever you are,
Barbara doing the morning ritual which includes making us all a cup of tea... Not!
As we packed up camp, more cars came driving along the beach (as seen from the head-lights in the distance).
We had a long and thorough meeting to discuss the route for the day that was going to take us to Nouakchott.
The amazing African dawn with "The Beast" covered by morning dew. Is'nt she a beauty?
Having arrived in the dark we had no idea we had parked 1 meter away from this hole. The animal tracks outside were confusing. Meerkat? Snake? Roadrunner? Lizard? It is the Million Oquya Question!! Anyone?
Having deflated our tires to drive on the sand the previous day we had an exhausting morning exercise. Barbara is doing "step-ups" on the pump enjoying it immensively. Who needs a gym card?
Daniel and Barbara are hugging!
Mo and Daniel are hugging!
Entering Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania. Arrived at a great hotel. VERY expensive beers! Alcohol is prohibited and thereby extremely taxed at the very few places it is sold. There is a 10k pound fine in being caught carrying alcohol on the street!!!
Barbara proudly wearing her Self-rescuing Princess T-Shirt in a great pub close to the hotel where we spent many hours drinking and laughing.Good night Sahara4x Followers, wherever you are,
Thursday, 27 January 2011
Dakhla day 2: A day of recreation
Deciding to stay another day some went to the beach on the northern side of Dakhla to surf and enjoy the day among the waves.
While the girls enjoyed the day beside the pool....
some went off-roading to see "The White Dune"
At the very spot Mo is at the centre he dropped the car key after having locked the car. I'd say that the chances to find THAT key is among the very lowest in the Sahara desert. He DID have a backup plan consisting of "leaving" the spare key in the passanger side door from the morining car-check-up :) We DID find the key, though only after a stressful search. The spare key was only found in the aftermath :)
We walked towards the sand dune...
and met earlier visitors... An ill omen :(
The ~2k walk was long and included threading through clay and water. The dune seemed never to get any closer!!
Happy heros of the mighty dune.
In the evening we BBQed on the beach using "The Real Man BBQ" that Mike had brought with him. The sunset was magical and the grilled lamb kebabs exquisite!
The daily meeting to plan the following day. We decided to hire 2 guides to facilitate the border crossings to and travel through Mauretania. The extra weight in the cars of the guides causing a bit extra fuel consumption did NOT out-weigh the "fantastic" help the guides provided in the end... The word "useless" got a new lowGood night Sahara4x Followers, wherever you are,
Sunday, 23 January 2011
Laayuone to Dajla: A race driver has been born!
Good morning Laayuone! 4 hours of sleep... After an early rise we pull ourself into the cars. Laayuone is covered in a deep mist. We switch on our com-radios: "This is car 6 doing a radio-check. Come in please." We get an answer from the leader car and await the rest of the cars to report in. As the column of cars moves along the streets of Laayuone the sun makes itself known on the horizon. When we stop at the town exit for the regular police control the first rays of sun is seen. The sun in Africa rises quick and in a couple of minutes later the full sphere is up and the mist starts dissipating by its warmth.
Barbara takes over the wheel and shows the boys how a Mitsubishi Pajero should be handled.
Sahara toilets are not of the best standard...
When driving gets too boring...
"Kilroy" was here...
Western Sahara coast is amazing. It is slowly being eaten up by the sea. The erosion creates sheer drops of up to 100 meters with some beautiful "hidden" beaches.
What is a drive from London to Timbuktu without a flat tire incident? We got ours a few miles outside Dakhla when passing car threw a handfull of nails at our car. A few blemishes on the windscreen we could have accepted. A couple of them penetrated our right front wheel tough. These events are often followed by a car wndow repair shop or tire workshop a few kiometres down the road... Convenient, eh?
Barbara is on top of the situation. There is no longer any doubt who is the cheif in the car :)
After a long day on the road a relaxing time at the pool is well deserved. Plans for the tomorrow were made and the descision was to stay two nights to get our powers back and await our team mates that repportedly had their car the same day and would be racing down the coast to meet up with us on tomorrow evening.
Good night Sahara4x Followers, wherever you are
Barbara takes over the wheel and shows the boys how a Mitsubishi Pajero should be handled.
Sahara toilets are not of the best standard...
When driving gets too boring...
"Kilroy" was here...
Western Sahara coast is amazing. It is slowly being eaten up by the sea. The erosion creates sheer drops of up to 100 meters with some beautiful "hidden" beaches.
What is a drive from London to Timbuktu without a flat tire incident? We got ours a few miles outside Dakhla when passing car threw a handfull of nails at our car. A few blemishes on the windscreen we could have accepted. A couple of them penetrated our right front wheel tough. These events are often followed by a car wndow repair shop or tire workshop a few kiometres down the road... Convenient, eh?
Barbara is on top of the situation. There is no longer any doubt who is the cheif in the car :)
After a long day on the road a relaxing time at the pool is well deserved. Plans for the tomorrow were made and the descision was to stay two nights to get our powers back and await our team mates that repportedly had their car the same day and would be racing down the coast to meet up with us on tomorrow evening.Good night Sahara4x Followers, wherever you are
Friday, 21 January 2011
Barbara behind the wheel... (From Agadir to Laayoune)
Hey guys,
Apologies that we havent uploaded anything of late!!! it has been non stop eventful drive, really taking us through all the highs and lows that we anticipated and the ones we really havent....
we are just about to gather for dinner in a great hotel Parador in Layyoune in Western Sahara so I will put some bulletpoints and will give the details later :
- Our "beast" started over-heating giving us a huge scare, however we have managed "fingers/toes/testicles/legs/ etc" to sort it out and the beast is behaving again..
- We lost one of the cars as it decided to blow its head gasket, and after stopping 3 times and causing a major traffic on the main road to Rabat , 2 angels (mohammed and ahmed) showed out of no where seriously seriously no where just to start fixing the car (thats ofcourse before it stopped again and blown its head gasket) and also removed the thermostat out of my car also, using team mirage tools that we bought together knowing that they would come handy, and also we used our lip gloss (Kronans Hudsalva) for grease :)))
anyway they did fix both cars on the side of the road, we got back on the road and after 50 miles the other car decided it had enough and blown its head gasket , although our beast's thermostat is still ok :D and the beast was sad for its friend condition but slightly smuged that it has a spanking new gasket fitted in London before we left....
anyway the car was dead, out of no where again (I do believe in athe power above!!!) a towing car showed up while we are on the side of the main motorway in casablanca!!! , with my sister's help who lives in Morocco we have managed to get the car to a garage to be fixed. Cut the story short, the team from the broken car will stay with the car in casablanca until it get fixed.
- my sister prepared a great dinner for the whole 19 people in sahara4x, and moroccan tea. 17 people carried on to Agadir and 2 stayed behind with their car whole it get fixed).
- The beast carried on behaving very well until agadir, we reached at 2am checked in at IBIS Moussafer and basically me and daniel (sharing a room) went into a 3.5 hours COMA!!! before my bloody alarm screamed again "its fu***** time to get going again!!!"
- Barbara took the wheels of the Beast and treated the beast like a gem and the beast was loving every minute, to be honest (mo's opinion) Barbara drove the most difficult and beautiful part of the whole journey until now from Agadir to Laayoune in westeren sahara like she has done that for years.....
- crossed the old borders from morocco to western sahara and basically it was one of the most beautiful drive we had in our life, the atlantic to our right and the endless dunes of sand to our left and an endless single carriage way of road ahead of us while driving into the sunset. This is really something we cannot put it in words guys seriously, it was just beautiful and all of the sudden all the lack of sleep , frustrations, tiredness, delirium, was a thing of the past watching the sun set over the atlantic ocean and the yellow sands turning from yellow to gold to total blackness!!! i am writing this with a mixed of a smile on my mouth and a tear in my eyes !!!!
- made it to Layyoune at 9 pm had a great teams meeting, great dinner and now I am heading to have another COMA, just to wake up again at 6 and do that all over again.
- Last thing, I dont know if you have read the evening standards today or not, but the news have reached us that there is a C*** that slagged Gus on the pages of the Evening SH** , however i quote from the teams opinions tonight, they can write whatever they want, cause they will not make any difference to our determination and spirits, cause we are still going strong and will keep updating you until we get to Timbuktu :)
thank you all again for staying put for our updates and your support.
Apologies that we havent uploaded anything of late!!! it has been non stop eventful drive, really taking us through all the highs and lows that we anticipated and the ones we really havent....
we are just about to gather for dinner in a great hotel Parador in Layyoune in Western Sahara so I will put some bulletpoints and will give the details later :
- Our "beast" started over-heating giving us a huge scare, however we have managed "fingers/toes/testicles/legs/ etc" to sort it out and the beast is behaving again..
- We lost one of the cars as it decided to blow its head gasket, and after stopping 3 times and causing a major traffic on the main road to Rabat , 2 angels (mohammed and ahmed) showed out of no where seriously seriously no where just to start fixing the car (thats ofcourse before it stopped again and blown its head gasket) and also removed the thermostat out of my car also, using team mirage tools that we bought together knowing that they would come handy, and also we used our lip gloss (Kronans Hudsalva) for grease :)))
anyway they did fix both cars on the side of the road, we got back on the road and after 50 miles the other car decided it had enough and blown its head gasket , although our beast's thermostat is still ok :D and the beast was sad for its friend condition but slightly smuged that it has a spanking new gasket fitted in London before we left....
anyway the car was dead, out of no where again (I do believe in athe power above!!!) a towing car showed up while we are on the side of the main motorway in casablanca!!! , with my sister's help who lives in Morocco we have managed to get the car to a garage to be fixed. Cut the story short, the team from the broken car will stay with the car in casablanca until it get fixed.
- my sister prepared a great dinner for the whole 19 people in sahara4x, and moroccan tea. 17 people carried on to Agadir and 2 stayed behind with their car whole it get fixed).
- The beast carried on behaving very well until agadir, we reached at 2am checked in at IBIS Moussafer and basically me and daniel (sharing a room) went into a 3.5 hours COMA!!! before my bloody alarm screamed again "its fu***** time to get going again!!!"
- Barbara took the wheels of the Beast and treated the beast like a gem and the beast was loving every minute, to be honest (mo's opinion) Barbara drove the most difficult and beautiful part of the whole journey until now from Agadir to Laayoune in westeren sahara like she has done that for years.....
- crossed the old borders from morocco to western sahara and basically it was one of the most beautiful drive we had in our life, the atlantic to our right and the endless dunes of sand to our left and an endless single carriage way of road ahead of us while driving into the sunset. This is really something we cannot put it in words guys seriously, it was just beautiful and all of the sudden all the lack of sleep , frustrations, tiredness, delirium, was a thing of the past watching the sun set over the atlantic ocean and the yellow sands turning from yellow to gold to total blackness!!! i am writing this with a mixed of a smile on my mouth and a tear in my eyes !!!!
- made it to Layyoune at 9 pm had a great teams meeting, great dinner and now I am heading to have another COMA, just to wake up again at 6 and do that all over again.
- Last thing, I dont know if you have read the evening standards today or not, but the news have reached us that there is a C*** that slagged Gus on the pages of the Evening SH** , however i quote from the teams opinions tonight, they can write whatever they want, cause they will not make any difference to our determination and spirits, cause we are still going strong and will keep updating you until we get to Timbuktu :)
thank you all again for staying put for our updates and your support.
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