Location: Marrakech, Morocco
Date: July 24 - 25, 2008

Local Temperature: Ranged from 74 to 110 degrees Fahrenheit

Total Journey Mileage: 1812

______________________________________________________________________________ 

Late last week we enjoyed a wonderful day and a half in Marrakech. It is located further inland than the rest of our Morocco route and while wandering the lively souks in the medina part of the city (old part) we got our first real taste of heat. Luckily for us, the heat was cut by the wonderful fresh and cold, orange, lime and grapefruit juices being sold at stand after stand in the center of the medina.

The souks were colorful and loud, full of men trying to sell us jewelry and inquiring about our marital status. Another topic of conversation throughout Morocco has been Aparna’s Indianess. Let’s just say, her ethnicity has made our frequent police checkpoint stops much easier, and Moroccan men are very keen on welcoming her to this country! I’ll let her tell you more about that later. Also noteworthy, Doug tried to negotiate a trade with one shopkeeper;  me in exchange for 3,000 camels and half of Morocco. The transaction occured much to my protest, but luckily after some tugging, Aparna was able to steal me back.

We ate at the food booths in the medina, trying tagines, mint tea, dates, nuts and snails.

Marrakech is beautiful at night, but we enjoyed wandering both during the day and evening, getting a feel for the people and the place.

On our last day in Marakkech we enjoyed some wandering and a few hours relaxing at a hammam. Once you do your research on what a hammam is, you will understand why there is no photographic evidence.

I’m off to set-up our campsite here in Dakhla, Western Sahara. More pictures and stories soon!

Location: Bouznika, Morocco
Date: July 23, 2008

Local Temperature: 78 degrees Fahrenheit

Total Journey Mileage: 1,700

______________________________________________________________________________ 

We are back online (sort of) and are trying to catch up on posts. These events took place a few days ago on July 23, but we hope to get you all up to speed on a few of our adventures shortly!

So, now about our first day in Africa!

Arriving in Tanger we are whisked through customs with Aparna’s masterful use of French and the ingenious placement of passport control on the boat! Anxious to get on our way further down the coast, we quickly drive through this Moroccan Tijuana, stopping in the outskirts only to get a bite to eat, some mint tea and a new SIM card for our cellphone.  We make what is supposed to be a brief stop at a Meditel booth, hoping to add minutes to our Moroccan SIM card.  The people we meet there turn out to be a good indicator of the interesting and generous people we have been meeting along the way.  The Meditel employees speak several languages, and a long conversation that flows through Jessie and Aparna speaking French, Spanish and Arabic with the odd confusion in English with the Meditel employees results in lots of smiles, a new SIM card, new friends and new Sandbox Savants fans. 

Hoping to have time to spend in Marrakech, we decide to make for “campsites” along the coast between Rabat and Casablanca. As night falls we pull into a roadside restaurant serving meals cut directly from the fresh whole goats hanging from the wall behind the counter, this time for dinner, mint tea and directions to the nearest campsite.  We ask the waitress for some help, and she tells us that another restaurant patron sitting nearby is willing to guide us there.   However, because there are only three seats in the car, Aparna and Jessie have to wait at the restaurant while I and the man who only speaks Arabic venture out into the night to find the site.
 
Two windy dirt roads later we pull up to the back yard of a nice beach rental home, where I meet the proprietor of the house, who also only speaks Arabic, two of the current vacationers, who only speak French and Arabic.  After a long, difficult conversation with the man from the restaurant, his friend and the two current vacationers, again spanning many languages and accompanied by lots of pointing, we have secured a small square of this yard that is being rented to vacationers.
 
When I go back to pick up Jessie and Aparna, they are delighted to meet our “host family”, who has not only agreed to let us set up a tent in their back yard, but also provide us with great conversation over some delicious food  (I tried camel for the first time) and mint tea.  We had a great time with Jiad and Faty and their wonderful family, and hope to see them all again sometime soon.

We lost our photos of them in the tent incident, but hope they send us a copy that we can post soon so you can see our generous hosts!

More posts coming soon! This one coming to you from an internet cafe in Dakhla, Western Sahara. Mauritania tomorrow!

Sorry for the lack of posts everyone.  We were ready to upload a few posts yesterday about some of the great times we have had so far in Morocco, but hit an unfortunate snag.  Two nights ago we left Marrakech and headed toward Agadir, deciding to stay at a campground we found at a beach outside of Essaouira.  There were a number of other campers and tents on the grounds, and an easy, relaxed atmosphere: the other campers seemed to have been to this campground before and felt very comfortable there.

We pitched our tent, secured our car and fell asleep pretty quickly after enjoying an incredible night sky and listening to the beautiful call to prayer.  Essaouira is a very windy city and our sleep was accompanied by the sound of wind whipping around, which nearly drowned out every other sound.

At around 2:30 AM, we were awakened by three men outside our tent, asking us if we were missing anything and pointing to our tent.  We saw that our tent had been slashed near the base and that the items laying around the perimeter of the tent were missing.  We are fine.  We still have our passports and money. Unfortunately, we did lose our small, USD400 minilaptop (there went all our posts and quite a few of our photos), and Doug lost his manpurse; luckily, there wasn’t much in it other than his ipod and toothbrush. 

Yesterday morning, we spoke to some other French campers, who also had their tents slashed last night. They told us they have been frequenting this campsite for years, and they were completely shocked by this incident.  The guardians, who did not see the thieves until it was too late, also said that this was not a common occurrence and they were very upset.

The upside is that nothing irreplaceable is lost and we are all ok.  We have picked up a few more precautionary measures, and our spirits have improved since we’ve been on the road.  We consider this a one off incident.  Our time in Morocco has otherwise been wonderful and the people here have been hospitable and very helpful.  We are thankful to have had this time to spend here.

The downside is we now need to write all our posts on an Arabic/French keyboard.  Oh how we will miss our computer. 

Right now we are in Tan Tan. We met up with a few other rally teams last night and camped out with them just outside Goulmim.  We will be crossing the next two borders with some of these teams, which will provide added company and support during those long, remote stretches through the Sahara. 

As we continue South, please continue thinking positive thoughts and sending good mojo our way.  This experience thus far has been amazing and there is not a moment we regret.  We look forward to sharing more as we continue. 

On a lighter note, we did hear some interesting gossip last night.  It seems that the Great Balls of Fur never made it past Tunisia, having been deported without their furry vans, which were confiscated.  We’ll keep you updated on any other interesting news we hear.

Some Spain Stats 

Location: Caleta de Velez

Local Temperature: 85 degrees Fahrenheit

Total Journey Mileage: 1,333

______________________________________________________________________________

From the moment we loaded our Suzuki off the train and drove it onto the RIGHT side of the road we have been moving. Stopping only at gas stations and rest areas to refuel and to stretch, the journey south was grueling. To break up France and Spain we stopped in the surfing town of Hossegor (just north of Biarritz). We enjoyed a large beach reminiscent of Malibu, CA; napping in the sun and catching a refreshing dip in the Atlantic from the other side. Within just a few hours we were refreshed and ready to continue on.

I feel I was misinformed about the stick shift abilities of Jessie and Aparna. They “ran out of time” to practice their manual driving capabilities in the US and as acting driving instructor in Europe, I took them through the riggers of no power steering and a knobby stick. First Jessie in the French countryside, then Aparna on a dirt road in an olive grove in Spain. With all three of us taking in the road and taking on the wheels, we shot down to the south of Spain where we meet Jessie’s friend’s parents Jo and Richard.

With help from our hosts, we spent the next two days hopping between Chinese bazaars, the the local shopping center, to the Suzuki mechanic in town. We savored a quick break at a beach cafe one  afternoon, enjoying mussels, fresh calamari and some of the best gazpacho ever. 

Again, thank you to Richard and Jo, the amazingly generous couple who put us up in their wonderful flat on the coast of the Mediterranean. We are forever grateful for the food, the laughter and the guidance they provided during our last stop before the African leg of our journey. Our thanks are extended to the rest of their family in town, Richard’s sister-in-law Anne and her partner Reg, for the company and kindness.

We miss Caleta de Velez, but are thankful for the time we spent there mentally and mechanically preparing for the rest of our journey! And soon, more about our first day in Morocco …

We love our car. Really, we do. However, it is important to mention that he is a bit tempermental and doesn´t always like to start. He always -eventually- starts so, you know, that´s a plus! In a moment I will bring you to our present (improved!) situation, but for now let´s hear the back story.

Incident #1

Not more than an hour after leaving London we stopped to get some gas before heading to France via the Chunnel. We were so excited to finally be on the road and happy at the thought of putting our car on a train that would take us (by under water tunnel!) to the next country on our list.

We jump back in the car, still a little shocked at the price of gas, but ready to hit the road again.

Doug puts the key in the ignition and turns.

Silence.

He tries again.

Silence.

Hmmm.

At this point we begin to think we must have left our ipod charging while we were waiting for the rally start. Perhaps we drained the battery? Perhaps our charging system caused a short? We don´t really know what to think, because it hadn´t happened before and we have only had possession of the car for 48 hours. A few mechanics had seen it, and so we were generally confident in the vehicle. Anyway, we decide to buy jumper cables at the gas station, and ask a man for a jump. After rolling our car off to the side of the station, we try to start it one more time.

Doug puts the key in the ignition and turns.

Vvvvrrooom.

We shrug at the man who offered the jump and decide since we have the jumper cables we should keep going, and if we need a jump in the future we will be fine.

We take the awesome ride in the Chunnel, and drive off in France without a hitch. We drive for hours, stop for a gas and food a few times … we are fine, the car is fine. The starting problem must have been a fluke.

Or not.

Incident #2

Around 10:00pm Doug taught me how to drive stick on a small road in the French countryside. It really only took about 10 minutes to get the hang of it, but like most learners I have the occasional trouble getting the car into first gear.

I stall at a stop sign.

I turn the ignition.

The car won´t start.

Luckily within minutes the car decides to start up again. Off we go.

I drive for hours, getting the hang of down shifting on hills and generally learning how to drive in a british right-hand drive vehicle with left hand drive French vehicles all around. All is well.

Incident #3 - more of the same attitude from the car.

Incident #4

Around 5:30 am the next day we stop for gas again and Doug and I decide to switch off on the driving, I need a nap. We clambor back into the vehicle.

Doug puts the key in the ignition and turns.

Silence.

He tries again.

Silence.

We wait 20 minutes and still no luck. We decide to take a nap and figure out what to do once we have had some shut eye. I wake up around 8:00 am to the engine roaring. Doug has turned the key and our little devil of a car has decided it is time to hit the road. At this point, we know we need to see a mechanic but decide to try to make it to Spain for the repairs.

Incident #5
What more to add? The car chooses not to start at some point in the mountains on our way to Caleta de Velez, but we give it a few tries, it starts, and we finally make it to Caleta de Velez to meet our hosts, only a few hours late.

Luckily, when we reached Caleta de Velez, our host Richard guided us to the Suzuki hospital, where our car was diagnosed with a failing starter. In addition to replacing the starter, the mechanic made a few other gratis adjustments, including repositioning our modified engine to help with some of the wholly unnatural sounds which came from our car in second gear. Thanks to your donations, we were just able to pay the nice mechanic and get back on the road! 

Our Suzuki Sam seems to be feeling better than ever and is ready to take the Sahara and subsaharan West Africa. Be thinking happy car thoughts … In the mean time, I´m off to look for a car therapist.

Launch Details

Location: Hyde Park, Central London
Local Temperature: 61 degrees Fahrenheit
Total Journey Mileage: 0

______________________________________________________________________________
Three days since we launched, and it all seems a blur. But before I get into the meat of things I’ll get to the first order of business: where are we at this very moment? Doug, Jessie and I are currently sitting under the shade of a beachside bar in Caleta de Velez, Spain, looking out at the Mediterranean. We are being hosted in a nearby flat for a couple of days by a very kind and gracious couple, Jo and Richard, who are the awesome parents of Jessie’s English friend Cath.

So, here we are recovering from 2 full days of hard driving, resting up before we head across the sea in two days. Those 48 hours driving from London to southern Spain were certainly exhausting, eventful and story-worthy, but there will be more on that in later posts. For the moment I am going to tell you of how we launched out of London, which seems to have set the tone of our adventure so far.

Launch day was on July 18, 2008, at Hyde Park in Central London. We rolled in at around 9:30 a.m. to register and meet our compatriots. We love our Suzi/Sammy/whatevs, but he was certainly not dressed for the occasion as were some of the other rally cars. Parked next to us were the Sandbox Warriors, whose lovely little steed was sporting a new paint job as Spiderman (click thumbnail for bigger image).

We were all prepared to treat the Sandbox Warriors as our nemeses – who did they think they were with that name? – unfortunately they were really nice guys and we’re thinking of traversing Western Sahara with them in the coming week.

Some other noteworthy vehicles belonged to the Great Balls of Fur, whose team of five will drive two VW buses, one covered (completely) in zebra print fur and the other in leopard/cheetah/some-sort-of-spotted-animal-print fur. We are very interested to see the shape of those vans after traveling through Saharan heat and sand followed by Subsaharan torrential rain.  Matted fur…yummy.

Of course, our own vehicle had a pretty snazzy decoration itself:

What’s that, you ask? Why, that’s our first place rosette – with your awesome assistance, we are currently the top fundraisers for charity in the Africa Rally! We were very nervous that the prize would be a position as the starting car in the rally. We in no way wanted that honor, given that we had no knowledge of London and the rally was scheduled to begin with a caravan of all the Africa Rally cars through London before we each set out on our individual routes to Cameroon. The paper rosette was a reassuring substitute. Unfortunately, our car was parked closest to the starting line, so we ended up heading up the caravan anyway.

Disaster.

We managed to get out of Hyde Park alright, but immediately took a wrong turn. Or so we thought. After making an impossible u-turn, we noted several of the rally cars going in the direction in which we had just been going. Making another impossible u-turn involving some sidewalk driving of which you will never see evidence, we pulled up to the first rally car we saw, rolled down the window, and yelled “is this where we’re supposed to be going?” The response? “No idea!” Hmm. Let’s pull up to that rally car up there. Lean out the window to ask, see the passenger in the car staring at the map while the driver looks over with very lost eyes, and realize they don’t know anything either. Great. We’ll just figure out how to get to the chunnel. Somehow.

And off we went.

Oh my, what a day. It is almost 1am here in London and we take off for Hyde Park tomorrow at 7am. Time for bed for us! Before we turn out the lights, I wanted to share a quick post about our final, crazy day in London.

Had you been a fly on the wall in the life of the Sandbox Savants today, you probably would have gotten quite a kick watching us scurry around London in our awesome no-power-steering Suzi, getting it (gender still tbd) all tuned up and ready to go. I’ll spare you from having to read a play-by-play and instead emphasize that today was all about awesome people, stepping up to help get us squared away and down to Hyde Park for the rally start tomorrow morning.

Our pre-departure activities ranged from rotating tires, mounting our spares, replacing the fan and auxiliary belts,  purchasing a handful of other spare parts, re-welding part of our winch, finalizing our route through Europe …  the list goes on.

Rereading what I just wrote, I suppose it sounds a little like -we- did the handy work. It’s important to note that Doug, Aparna and I didn’t bust out the blow torch and socket wrench. Aside from getting a little grease on our hands strapping our gear to the roof rack, we stayed pretty clean.

Today, Aparna’s friend Benny drove us around to various people and car shops to finalize the car preparations. Talk about down to the wire! I’m still shocked at the amount of work we got done today. Special thanks to Midnight Motors, Andrew’s Garage, Niel, Aaron, Benny and Steve for all your work on the car!

Alright, the bed is calling my name. We will post a few more pictures from today soon on Our Photos page. Also, keep an eye on the website for a link to our SPOT messenger, which should be up and running shortly thanks to my awesome housemate, Matt.

Until we post again, be well!  

Big Brother is actually watching! We three are here in London figuring out last minute details. We just became 100% legal to start our drive (tax/mot/insurance). The cops here actually have cameras which not only take a picture of your license plate, but also instantly tell the cops if you are up to date on everything… even parking tickets.

So with our new found legality we are off to Bedford to pick up our chariot and a few last spare parts. As is, we look to be on track for our Friday start at Noon in Hyde Park!

I would like to take a moment to thank everyone who came out to support my small fundraiser in New York. Through the little raffle we raised another $500 for Send-A-Cow, confirming our position as the top Africa Rally charity fundraiser with $4,464 raised to date. Raffle prizes included an assortment of products from Pangea Organics, a years subscription to Good Magazine, a backpack made from Recycled news paper from Keen, and others.

We have not only had tons of support in the United States but it has continued in London. My couchsurfing.com host Patty Pullen was amazing, showing me around town and giving me a place to rest my head for the few days before I met up with the rest of the team. Jessie was lucky enough to spend her first jet-lagged day in England with her friends Cath and Barry in Basingstoke, where she was fed and entertained by their two youngsters. Now that we are all together, we are staying with Aparna’s cousins in Barnet. Rekha and Srikanth have been the most incredible hosts, giving us warm beds to rest our heads and feeding us delicious meals. Their home has been the perfect headquarters for last minute rally business.

On Friday, we have some friends coming down to Hyde Park for the Rally start. If you are in town, come by around 10am for the pre-departure activities and stick around for the start at noon.

2 Days.

Two days ago I had the privilege of finally meeting, in person, both Steve and the Suzi.  Everyone say hi.

They say, “hiya.”

Steve is pretty awesome, and the Suzi is coming along quite nicely.  Steve has already: 

• fitted the bull bar,
• added a radio, 
• added some extra strong washer fluid jets, which will certainly come in handy given all the sand we’re facing, and
• added anti-theft locks to the wheels and the transmission, just in case.

Our chariot is in good shape, but we are not resting easy.  Before we launch — in just ONE WEEK!! — we should also have the roof rack and winch installed.  We’ll be picking up some necessary items, including a bunch of extra air filters, some nylon stockings to provide extra protection for the air filters, a basic tool kit, an additional spare tire and some other spare parts.  We’re also working on getting some international car insurance, which is turning out to be quite the pain.  That’s just our to-do list for the car! 

But don’t fret, my friends! Things are coming together nicely, and on Friday, July 18, we’ll be heading out on our escapade, come hell or high water.  

On a related note…

ONE WEEK UNTIL LAUNCH!!!!! 

Can you tell I’m excited?

For better or for worse, ATMs won’t be available to us during large chunks of our journey. And, since the last time I checked most road side food stalls in Africa have yet to partner up with the major credit card companies, cash will be the king of currency while on the road.

We are faced with the unavoidable reality that we will need to carry more cash with us than is particularly comfortable. What makes cash carrying even less fun is that light robbery is an issue in many parts of the world, including some of the places we are headed.

Most money belts are bulky, and the majority of products out there aren’t particularly discrete. Doug found an actual belt with a hidden zipper pocket, but for Aparna and I, who don’t have belt loops, we needed something different.

We searched high and low for all types of money holders, including bra pockets and money belts designed to lay across our chest. After a considerable amount of time searching, we finally stumbled across the most awesome solution!

The POWER POUCH™ sports bra, designed and sold by Gracie’s Gear and Training is a practical and comfortable solution to our money stashing woes! What’s even cooler is that the company’s founder, Gracie, is a dynamic, generous woman! Her company will be donating a variety of Gracie’s Gear threads to outfit Aparna and me for the journey. Gracie is no stranger to philanthropy and in her first two years of operations, Gracie Gives has donated to causes across the board. Her generosity continues with her support of our fundraising adventure, and we are super grateful to her for her enthusiasm, huge heart, and helping us solve our cash stashing woes!

14 Days until we leave London for Cameroon …