Rabat

Yesterday was supposed to be an easy day - only 100 miles down to Rabat. Jo rode her bike for the first ever time having never riden a C90 before. Within 5 miles Paul's bike had a broken exhaust so he continued on the Reverand's bike. Jo's bike then had problems for 20 miles and Dennis fixed this by cleaning the fuel filter. It still had tick-over, battery and electrical problems. Seems the "free" service by a Honda dealer was not too good then. All the other bike are going faultlessly.

We arrived at Rabat around 2pm. We stopped here in order to try and get a 30 transit visa for Mauritania rather than the 3 day visa from the border. This is because part of the group require more than 3 days for their desert route there....

However we had some problems finding the place and tempers were challenged. Eventually Dennis and I were led to the right place only to be told by a tall and very dark man behind a tiny window that we needed to go back there between 9 and 11 the following day.

So that was it for the day's travelling except getting to the campsite - in the rain and across a very busy Rabat.

Once ensconced the Police Inspector then, again exceeded expectations by cooking a Carbonara - sheltered only by a flapping tarp.

The rain subsided and we enjoyed the grub, through it was too wet'n'windy for a camp fire.

In bed at 8.20pm - bliss since it had been a much harder day than expected.

Thursday 3rd

Steve and I set off to sort out the visas (whilst the others had a lie-in. We were first in the queue there and were joined by lots of Marocans and other adventure traveller (for the Lisbon-Dakar).

Turns out the forms we had spent a lot of time preparing were out of date and so Steve and I had to complete by proxy the new forms. We only had 2 hours to do this, including getting the forms corrected if necessary. All the wording was in French and Arabic and so we had to work hard to get all 8 forms done. Then we has to requeue along woth everyone else. One Marocan did not appreciate that we had 8 forms to siubmit and gave us a bit of agro, but we sorted the out and thankfuly all 8 formas were accepted, together with the 20 Euros, Passport, Photocopy of passport and 2 passport photos. Phew. Steve and I left there at 5 to 11 so just in time. Now we have to go back again to collect out passports - at midday on Friday. So even if this goes OK it will have cost us 2 days!

It was still raining when we left. It is still raining now and possibly tomorrow also. Quite an experience really. Only 1 tent has been lost (not mine). I'm v glad I brought 4 desert tent pegs which are fully employed right now.

Paul is cooking chicken tonight. We're using the shower block for this... It's dry and warm afterall!!

SMS

The Police Inspectors bike blew its exhaust so we got Jos bike out tho that had problems also. Superb Carbonarta cooked by Paul despite the rain.

SMS

Sms Monday\'s route here: http://www.wikiloc.com/wikiloc/view.do?id=81444

SMS

Sms M@start 19192. Off 2 Rabat today to get Visas for Mauritania. Will probably take tomorrow too. Yesterday visited Volubilis and Cafe Arina. VG roads 10C @07pm

SMS

Todays route:



We are camping (for the 1st time) and it is great. Logfire, Chilli-CC and lots of stars. All good

SMS

Sms We are hearing down to Voublis via the Rif Mountains today after spending a night at the Ibis Hotel, Moussafir. It is getting hot. Mileage at start: 19020

New Year's Eve

Dennis fell off his bike before we even left the hotel car park this morning! He broke his GPS bracket on the handlebar and damaged his camera. He was fine himself though and it was really quite funny. Even better is that its all on video - though Dennis does not know that yet....

Then later on at a petrol station Paul forgot his bike was in gear and revved the engine. When you do that on these bike the clutch releases automatically. Anyway the bike flipped over completely - absolutely hilarious and again no one was hurt.

After a 3 hour ride on the bikes we took the ferry to Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in Northern Morocco (look it up on the map). Once there we looked for a hotel because it was be quite late. However there was a major running race that was just about to start when we arrived. There were onlly 3 hotels and none of them had secure parking as we required. Also a Morrocan gentleman opened his cardoor on me. It was fine since he didn't hit me, but he did take my pannier off! Still this was no problem for us and I just off loaded both panniers into Jo's car.

We then spent the next 1.5 hrs trying to regroup and we eventually did this at the border.

Speggo and Paul then spent 3 hours tnegotiating with every Morocco custom official you can imagine to get the 2 cars and 7 bikes through.