No, it's not a banger rally, per se, but it does fit in with driving around southern asia, which was one of our thoughts for the next phase.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6454253.stm
Gabe brought this to our attention. Thanks, Gabe!
and what do you get?
This rally (in it's first, inaugural year) was started by the same guy that started the plymouth to banjul challenge. I think this one'll be intesting (I wish I was going). Emily, our defacto challenge guru and advisor, is going on this trip. Go Emily!
I think they might be having some issues with the site right now, but I assume it'll be up and running shortly.
http://www.greaseballrally.com/
or so they say. These guys have rallies all over the place, including the BABE rally (Big Apple to Big Easy).
http://www.streetsafari.com/index.esp
This is for the speed freaks out there.
http://cannonballruneurope.co.uk/uk/about_cannonball.htm
http://www.ramshacklerally.com/home.html
I haven't seen a rally that didn't seem like a ton of fun. This one offers 2 different routes, and one ends in Valencia, just in time for the Tomatina.
I've decided that we need to compile a list of other rallies, just to keep the ideas growing and the juices flowing. We need to figure out the next trip. Speaking of which, someone needs to follow up with Emily and see how her grease ball rally (bio diesel from the US to Panama) is faring.
here's the mongol rally.
http://mongolrally.instituteofadventureresearch.com/
As long as I'm on the site, posting, I guess I might as well throw this little tid-bit out to people.
We ran into 3 teams in Dakar before we left. 2 guys in a station wagon, 3 guys in a VW bus, and 2 ladies in a 4 door sedan (I don't know what kind of car it was). We'd crossed paths with most of the teams a couple of times before, especially the guys in the station wagon. Personally, I sometimes thought that they were the antithesis of our group - experienced mechanics, traveling light, with well defined plans and an efficient and direct manner. They took their own firewood into the desert. They traveled for weeks in Morocco before we got to Tarifa. They went all over the place. The group, plus another car, traveled across the Sahara with NO guide, just a couple of GPS's. That's crazy.
When we saw them in Dakar, they were planning on going to Banjul the long way around - driving all the way around the Gambia (within Senegal), and then approaching Banjul from the South. Sounded like fun - crazy, but fun (Casamance, in the south of Senegal, is doing a little seceding dance, and things are getting a little excited down there, from what I understand). Anyway, the complication to their travel plans was the intersection of 2 salient facts. One, that all cars that enter Senegal are supposed to be escorted through the country together. These guys had slipped away from their escort, which can be overlooked at the border, but were all on the same ingress/egress document, which means they all have to cross the border out of Senegal together. And, two, two of the teams had to get to Banjul earlier than the rest to catch their return flights home.
So, the plan was to leave Dakar (and, boy, did they get a late start. I remember them leaving way after lunch), drive to the nearest border with the Gambia, say their farewells, and then continue (the last 2 cars) on their trip around Senegal. Unfortunately, things didn't work out so well for them. They were stopped at some point in Senegal by the MPs, with a mismatch between the number of cars in the convoy and the number of cars stated in their travel documents, and got in a world of trouble. Last I heard they were back home safely, but had spent 10 days in "custody" by the police, or military, before things were settled. Here's an excerpt from the PB listserv:
As far as I know they were not entirely innocent and were the unlucky
ones that got caught.
They started out in a convoy from Diama with a customs guide, 2 other
P-B cars and 7 (I think) unrelated old Dutch tourist cars. A Dutch car broke down and the guide handed the "Passe Avante (sp?)" to the P-Bers and told them to go straight to the border leading to the Barra ferry.
Well, they didn't. They went to the next place up stream on the river. Still OK, the other two crossed into The Gambia and handed the Passe to Double de Klutz who headed further inland towards a national park.
When they were apprehended they couldn't prove that the other two cars had left Senegal and the last I heard they were held under threat of jail, waiting for proof to be sent from Banjul.
I'd like them to send me more deatils so we can warn people for next year. So if anyone can get them to do that or send info yourself, I'd be greatful.
2006/7, quite an eventful year for the challenge!
Cliff
Road Book Editor
I don't know what's going on with this blog of ours these days. True, we've finished the trip, and the blog's raison d'etre may have passed, but I feel like there's still lots of stuff that needs updating, and many loose ends that need to be tied up. We need more pictures, for one thing. And there's still the fund to distribute to our worthy charities. And there's work to be done to thank all of our sponsors and contributors. And more talk about our experiences -- the distillation of our travels into small vials of wisdom, rife with the complex bouquet of morals, victories, hair-splitting nuance, and inefficient activity. And our own special ingredient: sand. Lots and lots of that deep yellowy Saharan sand.
So? Where is it, peeps? Where are the deep thoughts that our friends and family have come to expect from us on this blog? Do I have to do everything?
Here's a short list of some of the things that I noticed on the trip that gave me pause, in no particular order:
1. Driving habits of various countries and cultures: I don't even want to get into this one. It's too long and must be saved for a later day. Suffice to say that it gets worse the further South you go (is that further or farther? I always confuse the two. God bless Google, it's farther, isn't it?). I think that this might be a universal truth - that driving habits get worse the farther South one goes. I smell a Theory, and a potential dissertation topic.
2. Toilets: No, this isn't a comparative analysis between western toilets and the eastern "squat" toilets. We were blessed with western toilets for most of our trip, thank the high spirits. That was one skill I wasn't looking forward to learning.
But, there is one distinction between our toilets and "their" toilets, over there. Many of the toilets that I encountered during the trip have a top flushing device, which isn't all that noteworthy, in and of itself. What was interesting is that the flush mechanism had two pieces to it - sort of like two half circles inside a ring type thing. These toilets are designed for 2 different types of flushes, 2 different flushes for the 2 different types of, well, business that is done in the toilets themselves (and looky here, google comes to the rescue again. They're called dual flush toilets. The picture's different, but you get the idea.). What's so great about this, you may ask? Water conservation. Minimize the load on the waste management system (infrastructure). These are good things for a "developing" economy. They're good for a developed economy, too, and basically just good for dear old mama earth. Not sure why they haven't caught on in the US. They have to be better than the godforsaken low flow toilets that were thrust upon the unsuspecting public back in the bad old days.
3. Siestas. Why are the Englishmen and their colonial descendants the only people in the world that think it's a good idea to do work, or anything else for that matter, in the middle of hot days? The rest of the world has figured it out. Find shade. Move as little as possible. Doze. It is just crazy that we try to soldier ahead in the heat.
4. Vacation time. This is more Europe than Africa. Europeans get 6 or more weeks a year of vacation. Why is it that Americans settle for 2 weeks? I know it has something to do with our Puritanical roots, but I don't understand why that can't change? I don't buy that it's bad for the economy - people working fewer hours should increase employment, not decrease output. And overall individual happiness should have some positive impact on an individual's production. Just a question, more than a thought.
5. Plastic bottles. The world used to get by with glass bottles for their soda, and other fluids. That was before we started drinking our water out of bottles, by the way (or paying $3.00 for a coffee). But glass was replaced, over time, with aluminum cans, and then by plastic bottles. It made sense in the developed world, back when we thought oil would last forever, and unbreakable bottles were good for the world (little Timmy will never get cut by a piece of broken glass again. Oh. Sorry, Scott). But now we know better. Why have "they", the manufacturing companies, exported plastic bottles and aluminum cans to the rest of the world. I can't imagine that the recycling process for plastic is better than recylcing glass bottles, that just takes hot water and a bottle deposit process. Maybe I'm missing something, but I think that bottles should be brought back. You would not believe the number of plastic junk strewn along the road in Mauritania. We're about as far from anything as a person can get in theh 21st century, and there are plastic bags (don't get me started) and plastic bottles everywhere.
6. Speaking of plastic garbage, think about the waste management infrastructure of this country, and rejoice. We discard a lot of stuff - mountains of it - and it goes 'poof!' and goes away. There is a lot of planning and activity around that seemingly simple occurance. Most countries haven't figured it out. Of course, most people realize at some point in their science classes that matter doesn't simply dissapear, and then we have to wonder where those industrious garbage technicians are taking our dirty diapers, and what they're doing with them...
Wow! This is going from an observation to an eco-rant! I'd better stop before I go on some sort of diatribe about the merits of reducing. More observations will come along later, I'm sure.
This has nothing to do with the rally, or the team, or anything that is going on in the "real world", actually, but Steve Rogers died yesterday. Whether you liked him or not, it's always a sad day when the world loses a hero.
Here's a story for you:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/books/03/07/captain.america/index.html
Here's a link to a Youtube piece on the Costa Blanca Dons, the guys who were lost in the desert for four days...
Non-penitent yanks shirts are available. The great guys from Carhaix gave us a bunch of the carhaix music festival shirts as gifts when we were picking up the bikes. There are a bunch of shirts left over that we would like to see worn and enjoyed. Let me know if you're interested. If you live far away, we can ship.
Details:
All XL
purple shirts
"Govel 4n Ereg Kozer 2005" (I think that's what's printed. I think, too, that this is Brettanish?, Britanian?, Brettonesse?)
bands on the shirt include:
deep purple (hence the color?)
franz ferdinand
buena vista social club
new order
mickey 3d
iggy and the stooges
amadou and mairam
michel delpech
louis bertignac
luke
tiken jah fakoly
and more... (what a show, eh?)
drop me a line if you're interested.
Okay, my little droogies. I've taken some of my meager pictures and put them up on the flickr site. You should notice that the picture badge (that thing on the right hand menu bar with the changing pictures) has lots of new stuff.
Being the geekishly interested person that I am, I've also tried to geocode the pictures that I have. Check out this link, and tell me if it works. It should give you a fun little interface that links pictures to maps. Some of the pictures are well referenced on the map (they are where they should be). Others are more generally placed in the general area where they were taken. You figure out which are which.
If that doesn't work, I've shared the set, so you should be able to navigate to:
http://www.flickr.com/gp/59447537@N00/D6nj0o
and see all the pictures. I think there's a link to the map section from there, as well.
Alternatively, you can navigate to the www.flickr.com, and search for all pictures with the "penitent yanks" tag.
If that doesn't work, we'll have to do it the old fashioned way -- you'll have to come over to the house, and endure a tedious slide show. Oh boy!
I can't wait until Mike is ready to debut the 5 gigs of pictures he took!
happy surfing.
I just found this - http://www.draginrun.com/02-23-07_Jack_from_Morocco.htm - online after looking through video footage from Marrakech and being reminded of our last day there.
While we were getting our new tires put on, an American couple pulled up on a beautiful BMW motorcycle with a side car. The gentleman said, "You must be the Americans who are looking for tires!". Apparently he had run across other PBC teams at the Marrakech campsite and they had told him our story...
Well their story makes ours look like a trip out of the house to the grocery store. Jack and Janet, both retirees, are currently travelling by motorcyle from China to Mexico. We ran into them seven months into their trip. They met the Dalai Lama in Tibet, travelled through Russia, the Middle East, and were spending time in Morocco before heading to Europe, then transiting over to Canada for a trip to Mexico, by way of Alaska!
Check out their site here, where we got a mention and a picture. I also interviewed Jack in the brief time we had together.
Good luck to you guys and travel safe!!!
While I still haven't gotten up the gumption to write a little post-trip musing, here are the few still photos I took on my video camera when I wasn't actually filming video...
Kate and Kara in Marrakech
The Yanks (minus me) on the ferry from Europe to Africa.
Essaouira
McAya's in Dakhla - home of the "Big One", and provider of Yanks sustenance for six days...
There was some discussion during our rest over period in Dakar about the expenses of our trip. We were fairly confident that the trip would have been a whole lot cheaper a year or two ago, based simply on the stronger dollar then.
Well, I did the research. It turns out that the exchange rate between dollars and Euros hasn't changed all that much over the last two years. Based on my rather slipshod math, it appears that the same trip a year ago would have saved us about 10% of the cost. That's real money, I know - but it's not the halfing that we thought it would be.
Do the math yourself, if you want. Here's the table I looked at.
After all that, I realized that euro to dollar might be easier for some of us.
Here's all the numbers, inverted for your pleasure. ( I think the math works).
Here's the main page of the site: http://www.oanda.com/convert/fxhistory
you can run comparisons on the Moroccan Dirham or the CFA yourself, thank you very much.
BTW, I'm going to get seriously PO'ed if I'm the only yank posting in the future. You better be careful, or I won't invite you to my goat stew brunch.
Final resting place coordinates:
N 23*45.850'
W 015*54.427'
Here's a link to the google map.
No, I don't think so. It appears that our experience of the chaotic Dakar airport has continued. I showed up last night to check in and made it as far as getting the baggage claim strip affixed to my luggage before Air France realized that the plane was full. I'll be taking the same selection of flights home today, getting in a day late - hopefully. On the plus side, I got to spend a night at the nicest hotel in Senegal (which is nice, but not as nice as you'd expect), got some flight credits and an exit row seat guarantee (not sure if i believe that one). On the down side, itùs another day until I can see Amanda and Ethan. 6 hours from now, I'll try it all again.
It sounds like the rest of the team made it through the tough part of getting out of Dakar. I hope they make it all the way home in one piece.
Scott, Kara and I are spending the day in the Almaides region in Northern Dakar. Mellow feel to it - definitely a well heeled area.
Sorry for the dirth of updates, everyone. We've all been busy running around, trying to soak up as much of Senegal and Dakar as we can before we leave. I, personally, have spent the meager time in front of the computer trying to post pictures that we've taken recently - all to no avail. We'll just have to wait until our return state side before adding any more pictures, I think.
Half the team returns home tonight (or early tomorrow morning). The rest of us get into Washington on Monday or Tuesday. By random chance, this means that the stragglers get to witness the presidential election tomorrow (on Sunday). Should be interesting. We're thinking that most everything will be closed for election day, so we'll spend our remaining time on the Northern end of the Dakar penninsula, at one beach bar or hotel or another.
Many things have been happening since we've been in Dakar. Most of the things entail convincing one persistent seller or another that we're not interested in their knock off products, or their brother's store (just around the corner), or a phone card. Then again, we do end up buying almost everything that's for sale from someone or another, so one can understand their motivation.
We made it out to the DIG project yesterday. We were able to spend some time with the outpatient women who are developing one of the DIG gardens and we talked to Steve at length about his plans and dreams. It's an interesting project. Lots of pictures and personal experiences will be coming from the other team members in the near future, I imagine. As for me, I was amazed that they have been able to grow anything in the area - the ground is pretty much sand and scrub. They are using peanut shells as the ground soil in the beds. Interesting, too, that the hard part isn't necessarily in the vegetable production, but in getting outpatients to change their diet, and eat vegetables they've never seen before.
Last night was spent eating at a great little ethiopian restaurant, followed by a night of checking out the local music scene. The local music is called Mbalax, and chock full of myriad drums and african rhythms that you'd expect. What wasn't expected is the communal nature of the music - people come up from the crowd and take a turn on the congas, or sign a verse or two of the song, and then go back into the crowd. We were also able to witness some pretty intense dance offs throughout the night. Guys flail and stomp, showing off their skills and making fun of their competitors. It's difficult to describe, and fascinating to watch. Interestingly enough, it's the men who show off on the dance floor -- the women tend to be very understated, sticking to some basic knee bending and hip shacking. However basic it may be, easy it is not.
That's about it for the update. Tourist stuff is on the agenda today - last minute shopping for family and friends, and maybe a short trip out to one of the islands around the city. Pretty soon, we'll be able to update everyone live and in person. We all look forward to it.
We met one of the guides who takes teams across the desert while we were waiting to cross the Mauritania to Senegal border a few days ago. He was on his way back from taking a five person team across the desert and mentioned that another team had lost a car during the crossing. They were eventually found and are doing fine, but put quite a fright into people. Nice guys, and we're all very happy to hear that they will be okay.
Here's the article:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007080154,00.html
I guess there are worse things than breaking down in a tourist town.
Well, we are alive and well in Dakar, arriving late last night via our new, reliable friend Abdu and his panel truck. I guess we should rewind a bit...
After almost a week in Dakhla, the Yanks were getting antsy - the probelm being we were meeting tons of people who MIGHT have the solution for us, but stories kept changing, prices kept changing, and we were getting a distinct feeling that we were stuck. The biggest problem with getting out of Morocco was the bus - in order for Eddy, as the owner to leave, he had to either get the bus out of the country or seal it with customs saying it was broken down and that at some point in time we would sort it out and either fix it or transfer ownership. By this past Saturday, we wanted to leave so badly we made one last exhaustive push for a solution and found a man that would both get us out of Dakhla and leave the bus.
The owner of a local campground quoted us a price for a mini-camion (panel truck) and a driver to Dakar and said the bus could "stay" with him at the campground. After six days of meetings, back and forths, and what ifs, Jay stepped up and did what needed to be done: he made an executive decision. We were leaving tonight!
We agreed and literally started cramming things in bags for our exit from Morocco. The plan was to check out of the hotel, stay at the campsite, and get a ride the next morning - a three day journey with two of us crammed in the front cab of the truck with the driver, and four living like sheep in a windowless shipping space in the back - human cargo!
The next morning we awoke with a sense that FINALLY we are moving again, albeit without poor Thomas. We packed the back of the truck with all of our belongings, the top with the bicycles, and left exra supplies with a very happy campground owner, and sadly bid our farewells to the bus. Before leaving, Eddy finally got to live his dream of surfing atop Thomas. The bus was, of course, stationary, but with a high desert wind, it was as close as we will ever come.
We departed at 10AM and stopped to get gas. As soon as we were about to leave the station, we got a call back from the campground to return immediately. A sense of impending doom set on us, as we had no idea what was going on. Did customs decide to step in and halt our escape? Apparently, the campground owner stopped in and was unhappy that we were leaving the bus without papers to support it. After a few tense moments and a sense that we might never get home, we were escorted to the customs office, where Jay and Eddy convinced a very begrudging agent to take care of our paperwork on a Saturday. We were fianlly on our way.
We could all go on (as I'm sure some of us will in subsequent posts) for a long time about our experience of the last three days. Travelling 10-14 hours a day, stopping occaisionally for a bathroom break and lunch - we really were human commerce traffic.
Our driver, Abdu was great and with some French and a little English we wiled away the hours talking to him up front, playing cards in the back, and taking in the landscape when we could open the big sliding door in the back.
Our first night we made it the border of Western Sahara and Mauritania at dusk and barely made it through the border. They were shutting down for the night, but with a little pleading from Kara and some help from Abdu, we avoided having to bunk down for the night at the border. Between Morocco and Mauritania, there is a 4km no man's land that is mined. We drove out of Morocco into no man's land well after dark and traversed a rocky, bumpy stretch - confident that Abdu, who had made the trip thousands of times, knew what he was doing. Once in Mauri, we drove until midnight then camped roadside for the night.
Day two was another long haul - from border to border- and ended at Rosso, the ferry crossing into Senegal. Rosso was surreal - it looked like a shelled German town during World War II, complete with goats wandering the streets aimlessly, random street side fires, and a general air of lawlessness. Abdu decided it would be safest to camp outside of town and we finally got our one night of camping on an actual sand dune.
The third day was the roughest, waking at 5AM so we could get into the line for the ferry. The flies were getting thicker in the back of the truck, no one had showered for three days, and we were all somewhat dehydrated. Hours of waiting, talking to locals, and listening to the prayer calls bellowing from every corner paid off in a quick ride across the river to Senegal. Once on the road in Senegal, Abdu confirmed to us that we had never driven in Senegal, and as we got closer to Dakar, we started having trouble finding our way to where we were supposed to drop the bicycles. One interesting thing of note that we observed was how Abdu was treated by police checkpoints in Senegal. Police were gruffer and gave him a hard time, we think based on the fact that he was obviously a Saharan African. At a few checkpoints we barely escaped fines, but since we were finally in the country that our bicycles were destined to reside, we got a lot of slack for our charitable cause. At one point Kara smoothed out a potential fine with a flash of our letter from the mayor of Carhaix and some sweet talking.
We arrived at the outskirts of Dakar at sunset last night, not knowing where we were or how were to get to our drop off point. After literally hours of traffic jams, asking directions, and driving aimlessly, we realized we were completely lost. Finallt at about 9PM we stopped to talk to a police officer. The funniest thing about the experience was that the cop had no idea himself where he was or how to get where we needed. He finally jumped in the trcuk with us, called our contact (with a conversation that started something like this, "Hello, this is the police. No, there is no problem..."). Thirty minutes later, we were at a random hotel, safe for the night, and completely exhausted from our three days of travel.
More to come about what we have dubbed the "post Daklha" portion of our adventure. WE all miss Thomas, but most important - we got the bikes and ourselves, in one piece, to Senegal.
