The Lion King Lives Here

The unexceptional drive (apart from the overwhelming greenery) from Ougadogou to Benin was split up by a brief meal in the town closest to the frontier. The drive between this town and the border was also unexceptional - driven in the dark. The road quality wasn’t as bad as other roads we had seen, but it wasn’t great. Unfortunately, this minor road transgression multiplied out of proportion about 200m from the entry to Benin in the form of a road-width-spanning pot hole. Shit.

Our two left tyres out and with only one spare we changed up and crawled to the border wincing as our now one flat and disfigured wheel screeched towards the Police Building marking the entry point to Benin. Unable to go on we sorted our passports and went to sleep in the car for the night.

Falling asleep was fairly easy and I did so to ease the long day’s travel. I awoke to the sound of Mosquitos. A horde of them as if I were sitting in their hive - if they live in hives that is, not quite sure on that one. Feeling imprisoned by them in our small, slightly uncomfortable car, we launched an offensive. Armed with a torch, our hearing and our bare hands we cleared the car of the constant parasitic whine. Our striking hands covered in the dead shells of bugs and small pools of the our own blood which had errupted from their bodies on impact. Satisfied with the evenings hunt, we slept. We were soon awoken by the border town’s mechanic who having got our two tyres promptly returned with them shoddily bashed back into a more regular, but far from good as new, state and on we went to elephants.

The drive to Benin’s northern Pandjari Nature Reserve -home to elephants, lions and a host of other exotic African animals - was fairly short in distance but the dirt road dragged on us. Past the picturesque Savannah fields and hills and through the multiple tiny African villages lay our visual treasure; the satisfaction of having driven from London to where elephants roamed free. Just before arriving at the park’s entrance the watery heavens opened, by the time we reached the entrance building the roads turned to rivers.

Given that our car is too small to pass the unsteady paths of the nature reserve we tried to negotiate our entrance into the park via a number of different plans with the park officials and the locals running trips into the park that day. The Park Officials could not take us, and Alfred - a bizarre German man who lives alone near the park and who speaks in heavily accented French - who happened to be taking a trip into the park to rescue some stuck tourists did not seem able to give us the Safari experiene we were after so with this we cut our losses and returned turned back to the main road.

Not far from the park we settled in Nattitingou where we ate (bad and poorly served) Pizza and slept in a nice looking but severly lacking hotel room. Tyhe next morning we left for Cotonou, supposedly the country’s heart. This was a long drive to meet the West African Coastline that we had departed from on entering Mauritania. With only a straight line to descend untill we hit the city and the sea the drive lost its charm - there are so many casually nude children and women you can observe on the roadside before its novelty wares off.

Shortly after taking the wheel to do my share of our last real day’s solid driving of our trip, we were confronted with an impassible road object and we crashed. Having gone to overtake a large and slow-moving orange truck and having been blocked in my overtake by an oncoming car in the opposite direction, wet roads denied our brakes the opportunity to stop. Into the rear of the truck we drove.

With the airbag still smoking in my face I checked over my body to inspect any injuries I might have gained from our forceful collision. Without any I looked over to Nat. My lucky escape appeared to have been his folly: a bulged eye and bloody nose brought roused me to take command of the situation. Although, somehow by the time that I had climbed from the driver’s side window of the car Nat was already stumbling aimlessly in the road behind the car. After sitting him down and explaining to him what had happened I reasserted my need to deal with the immediates.

As I attempted to gain the use of someone’s phone to call the police - desperately stopping every car who attempted to pass untill this mission was complete - a crowd was gathering around bloody Nat, the car and myself. Whilst with hindsight the rabble of silent voyeurs observing our predicament without contributing to its solution seems unnerving, at the time the more fuss the better in the hope of drawing as many people in so as to find the one english speaker who could help us.

Luckily, this saviour came fast in the form of Gil and Irene, a middle-class man and wife. At his arrival, and at many other intervals during this episode I had to remove myself from the situation of dealing with things - often I think by just ignoring all the people trying to help, although at the time this did not seem abnormal - in order to answer Nat’s continuous existential questioning: “Where are we?”, “What Country are we in?”, “How did we get here, and tell me from the beginning”, “How did the car get smashed”. Having taken the decision that Gil’s english-spoken offer of sanctuary should be taken - and later appreciated - each question it seemed had to be answered before Nat could be pursuaded to move, and each answer was only around for about 10 seconds before its question would be re-asked. Nat’s repetitive conclusion being, “I think I have serious memory loss…” A little shaken by the experience I moved Nat to our saviour’s car for urgent treatment - fearing memory-altering head injuries as if they are mystically cursed.

Back into action mode. I seemed to have got us to safety, now to defend our interests and make sure I had left nothing stupid or essential in the rush. This brought me to the business of our things, we cannot just abandon our car and essential posessions for the potential. With a disorientated Nat sat in the backseat of an unknown sanctuary, why not move our things into the sanctuary as well. It was in the middle of this urgent-seeming task that I rushed passed the first Policeman I had seen since the crash to put our things in the car. In fobbing off the policeman with an ‘un moment’ I had unexpectedly drawn some comedy to the situation: Having so desperately tried to find a Policeman as the first call for help and having given up on the task when more immediate means of helping us had been arranged, I had just walked by an integral part of the ‘fixing things’ process. Whilst this irony might have been missed by me at the time, fortunately it was not lost on the rabble arranged around the crash who chuckled and leered as if reacting to my tragic sitcom being played out to make their day a little more interesting.

The policeman’s role in this saga turned out to be minor, I handed over our papers and left the car in his hands, took his number and the rest of our things and we left the scene out our sanctuary’s back window.

The clinic we arrived at in the nearby town of Bohicon was a pretty vacant place. Nat was walked into the doctors office to have his wounds inspected, cleaned and treated. Once treatment was decided and insurance arranged I left Nat to get better like a car in the shop while I used the time to find the policeman and deal with writing off the car.

I ended up at the Police Station in Abomey (the minor, yet historic, town next to Bohicon talked about in the Lonely Planet to the omission of Bohicon itself) giving a statement and waiting for our papers to be cleared so that I could have our documents and my driving license back. These would not come till Monday however and it was Saturday Evening by this point we would have to spend the weekend in town.

On arriving back at the clinic, Nat was stitched up and a bit more with it. You will have to ask him of his ordeal at the clinic, although I think he took it in good spirits. Here we also took the offer to recouperate in Gil and Irene’s home for a couple of days untill the car papers could be sorted on Monday. Re-united, both Nat and I, and us and our new Beninois family we went to a resturaunt to repay our saviours with a meal.

The next two days went by fairly uneventfully - I sorted out my flight booking. Once we had the papers, and once Nat had sold the car for scrap, we left Bohicon for Cotonou in a fish-smelling three-in-the-front, four-in-the-back five-seater bush taxi (car). On arrival in Cotonou we got another bush taxi to Lome, Togo’s capital.

In the last update I talked about the change of scenery. I think that this will be a nice way to start this update seeming as its ‘Green-ification’ - not a real word - coincides with the phase of the trip that we are now in.

The drive down to Bamako from Nioro was a romantic Africa the likes of which we had not yet seen. Rich green plants carpeted the hills and plains as far as the eye could see and the ground, in the patches which broke into the greenery is a dusty red. Even to a blind person it would have been obvious that the landscape had become more fertile as the number and frequency of bugs slamming into our windscreen increased the closer we got to visible pools of water on the roadside.

On arrival in Bamako it became apparent that everything there is a hussle in a land of expert husslers. Whilst in other places we had been many people had enquired the value of the car and made offers to snap it up, here everyone was a potential car dealer. Even stopping to ask directons resulted in the ‘sell the car’ conversation - although we are getting quite good at keeping to the task at hand in broken French (having now picked up ‘tout derwa’, ‘agosh’ and ‘adwat’ - straight on, left and right).

Tired from the day’s travel and needing to find a hostel before dark we eventually settled in Auberge Lafia in the Centre Ville. The task of finding the place was made much more difficult by the millions of mopeds which surrounded our car at every junction and on every road.

One of the Courtyard Regulars, Ma’man, quickly informed us after meeting him that he is a guide and after announcing our new friendship showed us to a resturaunt in return for a meal. In the resturaunt we met some of his ‘brothers’ big ones or small depending on whether or not they were older or younger than him. After drinking a couple of bottles of Castel each (one bottle being the size of about two pints back home) we were happily acquainted with this new family: Ma’man, our new big brother, a couple of stoned and drunk friends sitting at a nearby table talking to us in Reggae lyrics and Boni, an english-speaking businessman. After the two who spoke in Reggae left we chatted to Ma’man and Boni for what seemed like hours.

The next day, having agreed to update Boni’s website - slightly jokingly - Ma’man woke us to fulfill our promise and off to Boni’s office we went.  After fixing some dodgy French-Enlgish translation on his website (www.boni-voyages.com - I have no idea if our changes have been made) he fed us lunch and off we went to start our exploration of Bamako.

Within a day of staying there we were familiar with the regulars who frequented the hostel’s courtyard to watch the TV there and knew where the local shop, bakery and internet cafe was. Bamako’s Grand Marche, a labyrinth of shops, was a harrowing but with hindsight enjoyable experience. There seems to be no differentiation in the salesman’s attitude between the tourist market and the local market so if they see that you are ‘Tubab’ (white), they assume that you have money to spend and will shove whatever they have to offer you in your face from phone cards to soap, to clothes to keyring torches - the best product I was offered was a shoe-shine boy offering to shine my crocs. Having felt a bit claustrophobic in the market we headed back to our hostel where the sell was still on from our courtyard brothers: on our request, one guy got on his moped and came back with a selection of pretty creepy but charming Obama T Shirts - an offer we couldn’t refuse. 

On the advice of a friend we also tried to find some local photographers in Bamako. This brought us to the studio of Malick Sibide - whose wor is well worth looking up. Whilst the old man himself was not there, his son, Jah, was. We spent a good hour or two exploring his studio: looking through books of photos, sifting throug his epic dusty camera collection and playing around taking silly photos of ourselves in his style. In Bamako we also got some very expensive Burkina Faso Visas, this was a mistake, doing it at the border would have been better, but done now.

During our stay, Ma’man had convinced us to take him as our guide on our journey to Burkina Faso so that he could show us Segou, Djenne - and its mud Mosque - and Dogon Country - home to the Dogon Tribes and Villages.  So when it came the time to leave the city and hit the road again, off we went on the Ma’man tour with the man himself in the backseat.

The drive out of Bamako however was a nightmare. We soon learnt at a junction nearby our hostel that policeman like stopping foreign cars, we also learnt that the Customs in Nioro were - to borrow an African phrase - Snake men, not Camel men. The Tourist car paper they had given us was legit but the swines had put the right date on the receipt (04/07/2010), but had sold us a paper to cover our car from (03/06/2010 to 03/07/2010) In effect, it expired before we bought it and before we entered Mali. Bamako policeman werent very sympathetic and saw the opportunity to make a buck, which they did. This happened again at the next junction, although here, with Ma’man’s, not very useful help, we convinced the police to escort us out of the city so that we would not have have to pay what seemed to be every cop in the precinct. By the time we got to the city border over the Niger river, this esort proved useless as we were pulled over again. The bastard asked for ID, I gave him my passport, he sold it back to me using it as leverage during our refusal to bribe yet another set of policeman for our dodgy paper. At this point we were looking forward to Burkina Faso - the land of honest men. 

Segou was pretty dull. We met some of Ma’man brothers, a hotellier by the name of Titty who also seemed to talk in Reggae. On a stroll into the town we also met some of Ma’man’s other brothers, that day we met around 10 of them I reckon. We saw the Niger and got a bit drunk in a bar before heading back to the hotel for a Spaghetti and Chicken Dinner. We left the next morning.

Next stop was Djenne, the home of a large mud Mosque and not much else. To get there we had to cross the Niger. With the boat a few meters from the bank we had our reservations about driving into the river board the boat although after doing it we realised there was not much to worry about. Getting there, you have a mosque and not much else although a trip to Mali I think will inevitably end in you going there as everyone you meet in the rest of the country advises you to go. Here we met two French students living in Djenne to do Anthropological Research into how tourism is effecting the locals. They also spoke the best English of anyone that we had met in a while so we were glad of the conversation. 

Leaving Djenne came the much talked up two days in Dogon Country - where we would be for the World Cup Final. As the landscape changed heading North towards the desert again the weather ahead appeared apocolyptic. Huge winds had created a fierce dust-storm. With no other direction to go, on we drove. The haunted trees around us and choreographed bushes swaying in the wind gave a thrilling sense of drama to the event. I wish I had stopped to take more pictures than I did and to appreciate the overwhelming magnitude of the storm. From this we drove into horrendous rain which slowed us to a stop at one point. As the rain passed we neared Dogon. The rain had washed the dirt of the storm from the car and the  African sky had dried off the water - it was as if nothing had happened.

The drive into Dogon was magnificent. The road itself was in parts, a ‘4x4 Driving Experience’ and in parts a rollercoaster ride for our small Ford Fiesta trundling through the hills towards the Dogon plains. The views were spectacular. 

On arriving in Kani-Kombole, we settled in our hostel and napped. We then explored the small village. A Djenne styled small Mosque, some odd looking trees, a few carved ornaments between the mud buildings and the local livestock was all there was to see. I should also mention that the village was overlooked by a huge rock cliff containing small houses built into the cliff’s face. These Ma’man informed us were once home to the pigmes who had taken since left but taken on a mystical symbolism in the Dogon religion, Anamism. Night fell and we watched the football, Uruguay vs Germany on the villages only TV surrounded by what seemed to be every male in the villager under 30 including a herd of small barely clothed African Children.

The second day in Dogon we walked to the next illage, Teli, where we experimented with Animal Sacrifice, buying and killing a chicken in ritual fashion in the hope of a Holland Victory. This is, as far as I can tell, about as far in-touch with the Dogon psyche as we could get.

When watching the match, in a similar environment to the match we watched the night before, the television cut out 5 minutes before the end of the game, so we missed Spain’s goal. We were pretty tense by the end, feeling the uilt of having put something to death for the cause. The natives croded round the screen however didn’t seem that fussed. We found out the score on the radio afterwards. It appears that our experiment with animal sacrifice was a failure - suprise, suprise.

The next day we walked back to collect our car from Kani-Kombele and headed towards Burkina Faso on nearly 200km of dirt road. The Border crossing here was quick and east, we had our expensive Visas, but even without then I do not think we would have had much trouble. The people of Burkina Faso just seem happy to have a chat and a laugh, often it seems at our naive expense.  

Our arrival in Ougadogou - where we got pretty lost was stressful on account of very poor road quality throughout the city. Since arriving we have sorted our Ghana Visa and our Benin/Togo one is being processed as I write, we will go and pick it up after leaving this Cyber Cafe. Next up, searching for Elephants in Northern Benin’s Nature Reserves before heading towards Ghana via Togo and selling the car. Looks like the end of our journey is in sight.  

To continue where I left off, the car is in great condition.

After spending a few days longer than expected in Nouakchott, due to traveller’s tummy problems, we ventured into the Sahara to get to our next destination, Bamako in Mali where I am currently writing from, armed with a fixed car, plenty of water and an opportunist hitchikker that we acquired at a police checkpoint on the outskirts of the big city. 

Compared to our other long drives this one went slowly. This was not helped by the fact that I left our passports on the car roof before driving off, leaving them on the roadside. Luckily by the time we got to the next checkpoint we were informed of this by the policeman and instructed to go back. We were also given a car radiator, a civilian, and a soldier to transport back with us. The four of us crammed into the car was a tight fit. Nat was on the soldier’s lap up on the front passengers side begging for a photo of his predicament, I drove and the soldier’s friend was in the back seat where the hitchikker had been.

Having dropped them off at their broken-down car halfway back to the checkpoint to collect our passports, we continued, obtained the passports, signed an ‘official contract’ saying that the policeman at the checkpoint had given us back our passports without asking to be paid, the wording of which was “No money, no problems”, the date, time and our signatures. Now travelling back in the right direction, progress again seemed slow.

The Sahara itself was quite a sight - and very hot too. Barren and empty, a small spattering of trees and shrubs littered the sand dunes as far as the eyes could see. The Mauritanian desert roads were also lined with the carcases of dead animals - a fitting reminder of just exactly how harsh the desert can be.

Having made it past Aleg and fast-approaching Kiffa (Keif a’Halak? - i kid, i kid) a roadside checkpoint slowed us to a halt while a sandstorm brewed just beyond the parade of shops and houses that made up this small - to us, un-named, desert town. Stuck in the storm, we ate, watched Ghana get robbed of their place in the world cup and slept near the car behind the checkpoint that had originally stopped our tracks.

Waking early the next morning and eager to get to Bamako we set off. We had been told that the road from Kiffa to Ayoun el’Atrous was bad because the Touregs of Ayoun had tried to stage a coup d’etat a few years earlier and that the ruling dictator had stopped all work to fix the road as political punishment. The potholes were unavoidable and slowed down all traffic. We punctured a tyre and buckled one of our wheels, changed it and carried on slowly for the next 170km.

At this point the landscape started to change as we left Sahara and entered the Savannah. The sand developed a greeney tinge - as if someone had dropped a bit of green powder in the sand and it had miwed overnight. What were actually an infrequent collection of Acacia trees on the plains accumulated on the horizon to appear as a forest from our perspective. Towering bolders - seemingly magnified pebbles - surrounded the roads. This was driving into a Disney film; any guesses which one?

After replacing our tyre and putting the spare back in its place inside the car we set off once again. Thankfully the roads after Ayoun towards Nioro were much better. On the way we met a cheerful Nigerian ‘businessman’ with “The Lord is My Shepherd” enscribed on the front of his van of European goodies bound for African Markets. By the time we got to the border his expertise at navigating the roads and bureacracy made our newfound friend a very useful one indeed.

Having crossed the border, changed our money and set off for Nioro everything was falling into place for our voyage across Mali - one of the places we have been most excited to experience on our trip. After obtaining Car Insurance that covers all of the countries we are now heading for for only 30 euro we decided to set down for the night in an Auberge in Nioro. (We also could not proceed without getting our car stamped by the customs officials in Nioro who were closed for the night by the time we got there.)

Finding a bed for the night in Nioro involved seeking the advice of some street-side teenage lay-abouts. I hopped on the back of one of their mopeds - probably the best, and most enjoyable, way to travel the mud streets of this, and many of Mali’s towns. We found a pretty cheap, basic room with bed and shower - and that is it. Given that there was a light covered in red paint by the front entrance and quite a few young ladies frequenting the establishment we are pretty sure that we spent the night in the room of a brothel……

The next morning having awoken in our hedonistic pleasure-house, left, paid off the customs guys and the police for a stamp admitting our car transit through Mali, we set off for Bamako. The road was for-the-most-part pleasant. The surrounding trees and mud villages were captivating. 

I now write from Bamako. Mali. Where the Party is At

Having spent an idyllic few days in Dahkla, and feeling quite at home in the street our hostel was on - complete with bakery, resturaunt that we ate in at least once a day, and an internet cafe (where I made the last post from) things have taken some unexpected turns.

On leaving Dahkla, saying goodbye to it and all the land,arks we had come to know our voyage towards the Morocco-Mauritania Border. It being nightime, and Tom Wait’s ‘Closing Time’ Cassette Album needing a second listen, finding the rewind button steered us of the road and into the dirt of the desert at high speed. Failing to regain control, we landed on our side, tyre marks on the road where we shot off it, driver’s sidewindows smashed, 3 wheels caput in the middle of nowhere. Scouting out the buildings whose outline we could make out in the distance (an army town) I was chased by a pretty mean-sounding dog back towards the car. We set up our - slightly broken - tent and decided to deal with our woes in the morning. (It is worth mentioning that both Nat and I are in full health - we were very lucky.)

It is a testament to Saharawis (Western Saharans) the amount of times our rest was interrupted by genuinely concerned, eager to help, passers-by. In the night we had a prophets double-act - one was a delboy, the other a mechanic - who within an hour of the crash had offered to fix the 3 decimated tyres. Their offer we declined at the time. Whilst Nat was arranging getting the car transported to, and fixed in Dahkla, I was with the car in the desert cleaning out the sand and smashed glass which seemed to have clothed the inside of the car and all of our stuff. This task was constantly interrupted by other drivers stopping to have a look, check that I was OK and offering me chilled water and food. Having done this a few times I had my tour of the damage all planned, drivers would stop, see that I was OK, see the three wheels and two windows damaged, and then I would turn the key in the engine to show them that the car was running fine, at which point our crash tourist would sit with me for 4-5 minutes (usually in silence, due to language barrier and lack of things to say) before realising that there was nothing that they could do, and that we had it under control as best we could. When the police showed up with a very camp english-speaking, film-making Moroccan it was just a matter of waiting to get the car into Dahkla and seen to by a mechanic.

Having patched up the car, we decided to drive to the border to get this stage over and done with that day. Then we got stuck in the sand whilst admiring a beach. SHIT. Having only read about getting cars out of sand in our ‘Overlanding Africa’ book, actually doing it proved a little more difficult. Having slogged and made no progress, and about to lose our tempers, three un-named, mute angels decended on our car, got the car out and then turned back the way that they had come. After this VERY VERY LONG day, on relatively little sleep, we scrapped our plans for the border and headed back to Dahkla. We only got about 500 meters before coming across a Kite Surfer’s beach-hut hostel thing.

Having arrived and arranged getting a tent, dinner was served communally, surrounded by only french, we made our friends and settled in there for a few days. This surfer’s rent-a-commune actually turned out to be 30 euro a night, not 30 Dhirams as we had been told. Having explained our sticky situation, the boss let us off one day’s cost and we returned on our quest to the border.

Having played a bit of table football - and been beaten - and pool - and been beaten - at the border, we got some Tagine, went for a wander and slept in the car. With little knowledge of what layed in store the next day.

Leaving Morocco and entering Mauritania, ignoring the excessive bureacracy, was more long than tiring. The hard bit was everything inbetween. Given that the two countries don’t really want to share a border, but still need eachothers trade, the 5km of No Mans Land between the two is desolate, mine-ridden hell.

There is no road, just sand and jagged rock. Everyone seems to choose thier own path through, and we followed a car, who got stuck. So in the sand we were beside two vulchers whose job it seems to extort money from people in desperate need. Sitting with a sand ladder (does what it says on the tin) and the belligerent requests of 50 euro for help. Fuck them. We slogged, basically copying our angels attempt as much as we could, and it worked. Having got ourselves out, and about 20m down the path, we found ourselves stuck again. We knew the drill, we did the business, the vulchers realised we werent going to pay them, so they pushed the back of the car as we sped off directionless. Having found a sort of path that some BIG lorries were using we followed, got stuck in the tracks but managed to drive our way out. Having reached the Mauritanian gate on the other side elated, on with the bureacracy. If the UN is good for anything, it should be for building a road between that border.

After all this, the car is not in a good state. Bashed and bruised by us and by No Man’s Land, it is currently getting a seeing to by the Mechanic. The drive down to Nouakshott (Mauritania’s Capital) through 400km of sparse desert stressed the car and it felt for a time like the car might not make it. The journey was hot and beautiful. The roads were littered with cars that we had crossed the border with which gave us a sense of security and community in this foreign (apparently dangerous) place. Regular police stops would reunite us with recognisable cars and faces. On the road these aquantances also occassionally formed into small convoys - based on the unspoken allegiance between the speed of the cars in the convoy and an array of uninterpretable light signals between cars which took a bit of time and observation to begin to understand.

After a tyre blew out and was quickly replaced without the raising of an eyelid, the car seemed a bit happier with its new wheel. Overall it has been more our mother than our child taking more care of us than we have taken care of it.

Now in Nouakshott, I hope she will carry us to Bamako.

Once the Mechanic is done, we will soon see. PS: it is my birthday, there is no alcohol in this country and I have no phone signal…… Oh well.

Having driven from Chefcheon (where I last posted from) much has happened.

First of all, I got my - very expensive - Visas for Mauritania and Mali in Rabat, the country’s capital before driving down south to Hassi Labied, the site of Morocco’s only erg (HUGE sand dunes) where I repeatedly threw myself down the golden dunes atop a Snowboard we borrowed from the Hostel we were staying in.

The Hostel owner’s brother seemed to take a shinning to us armed with very limited conversational ability, and he seemed pretty pleased to accompany us on our exploration around the (small) town - probably due to the fact that there is not much to do otherwise. Having dubbed ourselves ‘Los Tres Amigos’ his company did not go unappreciated and he seemed genuinely upset at the brevity of our goodbye - the road was calling.

Having been told that the journey would take us a week to drive down to the border, we did it in just 2 days, eventually racing the sunset as to get into Dahkla before dark. Apart from a few brief encounters getting food, petrol and water in smalltowns on our way the only outside human contact we had was a series of nods with ‘Wind Watchers’, either road workmen, potential hitchikkers or just idle townspeople who sit by the side of the road on the way in or out of a town or more frequently, just in the middle of nowhere who seem to spend their time making sure the wind doesn’t go anywhere. Its safe to say, life here is pretty slow; they drive slowly, talk slowly if at all and walk no faster than half pace.

The road down to Dakhla seems a drawn-out blur of expansive desert (though sprinkled with shrubbery, not all of it looks like a Carling Advert) making slow and incremental changes to be observed maybe once an hour if that. Given that Western Sahara is an Occupied Territory owned by Morocco most of the occupants and buildings in its towns are military buildings and the 500-ish km stretch from Agadir to Dahkla was only really broken up by police checkpoints at which we would have to hand over our passports, fraternise and contribute to corruption (on one occassion being asked to change up Euro for Dhiram - do I look like a legal money-changer? - and on another using cheap cigarettes and Pistachio Nuts as bribes). At most points it seemed that these bored Officials were just looking for someone to talk to for fear prehaps of turning into a wind watcher out at their checkpoint in the middle of Desert.

(crap UK clubbers radio provided by proximity to Gran Canaria and Tenerife along the Atlantic Coast provided a bit of a reality check to the contrast between that world that we set out from and the one we are in now)

We arrived to Dahkla under cover of darkness - the sun won our little race - to see a huge National Celebration, Concert and Street Festival flooding the streets with thousands of people just when us weary travellers only wanted to find a bed for the night and some food. This made the task much more difficult but did it we did.

Next Stop, Mauritania.

Having spent a day in the beautiful whitewashed hill-top town of Vejer de la Frontera, Spain, and then crossed at Algericas-Ceuta to Morocco we have spent the last few days in Chefcheoun in the Rif Mountains. The people have been really friendly and helpful. Did a lot of reading in my hostel room (currently going through James Heartfield’s backcatalogue: need and desire in post-material economy, death of the subject next and green capitalism after that) and went exploring today.

(side note: they also have a form of third-world Fanta which is much better than the UK stuff. To all those who know what i am talking about, If i start a facebook group petitioning them to bring it to England would you join?)

On our voyage we encountered a maybe lovely, but definitely hospitable man whose quote i have posted as well. After a small streetside talk about football he invited us into his shop where we spent the day chatting, reading, drinking great mint tea and beer, watching the Japan game with a Japanese tourist and the shop-owner’s friends as well as eating AMAZING Tagine and Hobz (bread); It appears that we have amassed a little band of merry brothers on our travels.

Having then spent a good long afternoon with our new friends we decided it was time to use the al-hammam (public baths) for a bit of an authentic experience. Never in my life have i found cleaning myself such a thing of joy. When a small hobbit-looking creature emerged into our room with a bowl of hair-gel-looking soap gunk and a glove we enjoyed an amazing massage whilst laying on a cold stone floor, eyes closed, soaped up - it sort of felt like being in Guantanamo, but picture Guantanamo as heaven - being directed, scrubbed and soaked regularly. I felt like a pamperred Roman, but not like you see in those gritty BBC dramas, just a pure history-book utopia.

The road is great. a very strange thought is that i could just drive back. i feel a world away. this world is great.

PS: i think i was a trucker in a previous life.

Currently done 1,500 miles.

London-Dover-Dunkirk-Abbeville-Ruen-Dreux-Chartres-Tours-Chataulleraux(sleep in car, rain)-Poitier-Bordeaux-Bayenne-Sans Simon-Burgres-Valladollid-Salemenca-Some where beginning with P(sleep in tent)-Seville-Jerez de la Frontera-Cadiz-Vejer de la Frontera.

Getting a Ferry to Morocco Tomorrow.

Read: Book on street art and nearly finished Socialism: Scientific and Utopian.

Listened to: Top 16 Country Hits, Greatest Rock and Roll, Romeo plus Juliuet Soundtrack and lots of other things.