The Adventures of a Rally Roadie

There’s nothing and no one awake when get up to leave. Pinky makes tea for everyone just as the hotel boy offers to get someone awake somewhere in town and bring us omelets for breakfast. We Thank him for the offer but refuse. We have a long way to drive to Dakhla and we need to get going.

The plan is to drive to Dakhla where we are to camp on the beach. Last year, we camped in the small cane and tarp shelters right next to the waters edge. I was quite comfortable and that is the plan for Pinky and myself this year. Elaine and Clemo are planning to stay in a hotel in downtown Dakhla.

Were up early for coffee, tea and rat pack breakfast. The rat packs are quite tasty but the choices are weird. The label on the package seems to be gibberish (it’s actually written in English but by a random word generator) so choice of meal almost doesn’t matter.

The RV camp isn’t full but everyone else here is in either a caravan, a standard RV or a desert truck. There’s a Swiss couple next to us that is part of a two truck team. The truck they are driving is a proper desert truck, 4 wheel drive with high ground clearance. It’s emblazoned with KTM logos and looks like it is a relic of the old days of the Lisbon-Dakar rallyraid, complete with a couple of moto airplane boxes on the roof rack. It the polar opposite of the Land Raver.

We are up before sunrise and the skies have cleared. It’s going o be a beautiful day. Breakfast in the dining room of the cafe, load the car and start down the mountain.

The road doesn’t seem to devastated on the way back down. As the sun comes up, though, the extent of the devastation is all the more obvious. There is no one moving yet in the survivor tent camps on the way down. There probably is nothing for any of them to do but wait.

On September 8^th, 2023, just after 11PM, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck in the Atlas mountains approximately 20 kilometers from Tizi-n-Test pass. Over 2,900 people died that night in the mountain hamlets on both sides of the high mountain pass.

During last year’s Banjul Challenge, we stayed at the top of the pass in a small hotel, La Belle Vue. We had planned to stay there again this year and had made prepaid reservations before the earthquake. We soon learned that the hotel had been severely damaged, destroyed the owner told us, so we booked at another hotel, La Haute Vue, a few kms closer to the epicenter. Probably not our best decision.

We start the day with an oil change for Clemo’s Freelander. On the way out of Fes, we are looking for a proper auto garage but no luck. Everything is either closed or simply a fuel station for fillups.

When finally get to the outskirts of Fez and we see a fuel station with a Huge Scania sign that obviously does truck service. Surely, they can do an oil change on a little Freelander (which actually is a truck.)

We just move along steadily on the rolling hills toward Fes. We pass through a lot of small towns and coming out of one, I’m grabbed for speeding. This isn’t really a big deal and the police are very friendly and polite.

The officer asks for my passport, my drivers license and the car registration (the V5). He compares the drivers license to the passport and gives me back the drivers license but keeps the passport and V5. He tells me to wait and hands the passport and V5 to another officer sitting in a police car.

We are on the road to Algeciras to queue for the Ferry loading at 7:20. In the port by 8:00 and almost immediately start loading the ferry. There are very few trucks and cars to load so we are in the updeck lounge by 8:30 having cappuccino and a delicious chocolate tart. In line for the on-board Moroccan Immigration which again doesn’t take very long because there are so ew people on board this crossing.

There are a number for destinations in Tangier, Morocco for the ferry crossing. We choose Tangier-Med which ports outside of the city of Tangier. There is less civilian traffic this way because the this port is quite a way to the city center. This is primarily the lorry crossing and when we get to the port, departure runs smoothly and quickly.

The four of us pile into Clemo’s Freelander and head off to Gibraltar. Angela and Paul have set up an appointment with an employee of Paul’s who has a side hustle working on old Land Rovers.

He, Paul’s employee, says that he problem is the diesel fuel leaking past the piston rings and diluting the engine oil. That, in turn, leads to the engine oil overheating and the engine shutting down until the oil temperature sensor is happy again. The plan is to change the oil, and put in some magic sauce that supposedly has magnetic particles the will seal the rings and prevent further leakage. He’s adamant that this is the solution to the Freelander problem

The day starts early. There’s no food at the hotel. And it’s a long way to go to Tarifa. Get fuel and some breakfast. That’s the plan.

The car starts easily and sounds okay. Up and out of the garage. We wend our way through Bordeaux and eventually find the motorway. The only thing to fend off the boredom is the slowly worsening weather. The morning started with a heavy overcast and as we head south, it starts to rain. The rain steadily gets worse as the road goes up in altitude. At about 2,000 feet, it’s pouring, the visibility is dropping like a stone and the wind is picking up.

We’re up and out of the hotel. It’s going to be a long day. It’s a slog down the motorway. There’s not much traffic but there’s not much to see. The occasional stork nest on the top of a transmission pole but no storks. Probably still too cold.

We pick up some rain when we go through the northern end of the Pyrenees that gets pretty intense for a short while but as we descend the south side of the range, the rain stops and eventually clears. Closer to the Spanish border the sun comes out and the temperature finally rises.