Merzouga November 2012

Monday 26 Noember :
I pick up Alain's Toyota Land Cruiser in Marrakech. Even though navigating the streets of Marrakech in a big 4x4 is no picnic, I grin widely. I love that car. The exhaust pipe is still emitting a thick black smoke. Everybody (by that, I mean every man) has an opinion as to why : " It's the regulating pump", "it's the filters", "it's a diesel, what do you expect?", "it's Allah's will!"
Anyway it seems that black smoke is better than white smoke. If your 4 wheel drive emits white smoke, be worried, be very worried.

Tuesday 27 Nov :
I pick up a friend, Hassan, owner of Hamadaa du Draa in M'Hamid, at 8.15am.
600km to Merzouga, through the Atlas Mountains. Hassan is with me to help with the driving but as he's partied all night, he decides to go to sleep. He wakes up near Rissani before sunset and starts driving. I am grateful that he is driving the last 8km of piste in the dark. I am not yet used again to driving in the middle of nowhere in the dark!

Reunion with Jamila and Benoit, our trainer. Jamila, her friend Bushra and I are sharing a room, and a bathroom with no doors. If you like your privacy in a toilet, I do not recommend Auberge du Sud in Merzouga.

sunset in Erg Chegui

Wednesday 28 :
Breakfast at 7.30am outside in a tent. Cold but not too bad.
We plan our day. Mostly it's about navigation. There will be some "Herbes a chameaux" to drive through but not much difficulty for the driver.
But first thing first :

checking the tyre pressure.

According to Benoit, a pressure of 1.5kg should see us through for most of the rally. However, in the dunes, I must come down to 1kg and even 800g.

Thursday 29 :
Today is DUNE day. I'm feeling a lot of trepidation.
Something under the car has been leaking through the night. Benoit quickly establishes that it's the brake fluid. Rear brakes. Hassan thinks the rear brakes haven't been working for the last 2 days. I'm glad I didn't know that.
Benoit doesn't want to waste time at the mechanics in Rissani and decides to stop the fluid from reaching the rear brakes so there's plenty left for the front brakes.

a manly job

Yes but how do you stop the rear brakes rather than the front brakes? Benoit makes a decision...
I take the car for a little spin to check it's all in order. Unfortunately, Benoit stopped the fluid from reaching the front brakes. And as I don't have rear brakes, well, the result is that I drive straight into the parking barrier :

trying to repair the barrier!

After this we decide to all go to the mechanics in Rissani and get the whole thing fixed. And amazingly, it is in 1 hour and 15 euros later.

We also decide to eat a "medfouna", a culinary speciality of Rissani : Madfouna in Moroccan language means "Buried" and it is quite similar to Calzone and Sausage Rolls with spicy meat and vegetables tucked between the crusts.

It's now dune afternoon; it is decided that Jamila will sit with Benoit in his car for navigation purposes and Hassan with me. Hassan, " l'homme du desert" has never been inside the dunes of erg Chegui. Well, with me as a worried driver, he's in for a treat. Somehow, he is a calming and reassuring figure. In the middle of the dunes, when I'm hyperventilating, he decides to put the radio on and insists on translating the love song currently playing. At first I suggest he f* s off but he insists and I end up laughing my head off.
Jamila, in the meantime, is seriously learning to navigate with the map and the compass. 

Benoit : "Jamila, ecoute moi. Mais ECOUTE MOI!"

Friday 30 :
More navigation. Long distances with only the car compass helpful.
Jamila and I are astonished at how little we knew about navigation for the first rally. No wonder we were always lost. Benoit has been brilliant. We're not the only gazelles he's training.

Saturday 1 Dec :
We find out it's been snowing heavily in the moutains. Jamila and Bushra's way back to Meknes is blocked and unfortunately so is the Tichka pass, which is my way back to Marrakech (on my own this time as Hassan goes back home to M'Hamid).
I head off to Agdz where I can decide to drive towards Tichka and hope for the best or drive the long way to Agadir to take the motorway to Marrakech. 
In Agdz by lunch time, I'm told the Tichka pass is still closed. So it's the long drive to Agadir for me. At first, it's more piste than road and it's very lonely. Mountain after mountain of stones and the odd palm tree. Barely a soul until Taznakht. Things improve after that and I just drive with barely a stop to Agadir and Marrakech.

READY FOR 2013!!!

HERE WE GO AGAIN!

Jamila and I have put our names down for 2013!
After all the hardship and the frights, we want more!
Alain of Baroud Terre du Dud is lending us his car again, we're relying on Helene in Casablanca to get us organised before the rallye, and we're going to train with Benoit in Merzouga end of November.
We don't want this anymore :

Although it's highly likely it's going to happen again!

And we don't want to get lost anymore :

It does look like our old sponsors will be following us again and we hope to add new sponsors :

Costcutter is opening a new shop in Marrakech in La Massia

So how was the rally?

TOUGH!
So that was already 1 month ago that Jamila and I spent 8 exhausting days rallying in the Moroccan South where we had heat, rain, lightning, totally disorientating experiences, but thankfully limited mechanical problems. We loved our Toyota Land Cruiser, rock solid. While all around us cars disintegrated, ours  held on.  Jamila had to repair the exhaust pipe once with a bit of string and I had to keep an eye on the tyres (2 flat tyres were repaired with anti puncture product which lasted until the last day) but otherwise it was all going well.

Jamila and I before the rally

us during the rally. spot the difference!

Waking up every morning at 4 wasn't the hardest thing as sleeping in a tent is not actually the best way to a good night rest. That said, the 2 nights we camped outside the camp with no one to wake us up, we did rest until 6am. The one night we spent in the dunes was the most magical. Only 4 of us, 2 cars, and no one and no noise around us. We made soup on our little camping gas, ate our French army rations and slept OK.

It was unfortunate that Jamila and I struggled to put the navigation theory into practice. Reading a black and white map and trying to relate with what we saw on the ground proved very difficult. 

time to calculate the next point

We did get better but it was slow and frustrating progress. I think a lack of confidence in our navigational abilities was the problem. When I look on the website at our trajectories, so often we headed in the right direction to then go off or turn round. For those friends and family who followed us thanks to the tracking system on our car ( which meant that while Jamila and I might feel we were utterly lost, they knew exactly where we were. This explains why we are not allowed phones during the rally!), it was rather frustrating, so we were told, and exhilarating when we found our way to the check points. 

found the check point!

The scenery is magnificent, with a combination of sand and rocks. Managing the tyres is necessary. 

And then we hit the dunes...Literally in one case. The first dunes we came across were not even big but because it had rained, they were muddy. Sure the sand is harder when it's wet so in theory easier to drive but it sticks to the tyres like mud and when you sink in, you're stuck. The gazelles are encouraged to help each other ( no one else will help you) but when there's no other gazelles near you, then you're on your own. The journalists are around and come to take pictures of you (smiiiile while you're struggling with your shovel), and then if you're not in the middle of nowhere, the bedouins come with a view to help you ( illegal) and get paid. In the case below, there's a Berber sitting not very far but not too close telling Jamila what we should do. Still all the hard physical work has to be done by us. We even had to use the jack to lift the car out of the mud and shovel sand underneath the tyres to make a sort of flat area.

Am I fed up?

In the second set of dunes, we started well. Gazelles are not allowed to follow each other except in the dunes. The most experienced gazelles set off first and the rest of us follow their tracks. This is where the word solidarity takes all its meaning. The first day in the dunes, we were able to go round all the big dunes to get to our checkpoint but the second day, there was no avoiding the big dunes. We had to take them full on. I'm afraid I have to admit that I was quite frightened despite Jamila's encouragement. 

going well

not so well

We all helped each other, pulling and pushing. Jamila was amazing. As I was the driver, she was the one walking all over the dunes to tell me what it looked like on the other side of the dune ( despite following tracks, you cannot assume that even the experts don't make mistakes), keeping the right direction, shovelling and pushing, not just our car but the other gazelles' cars.


Thursday night, after 8 days without phones and ipads etc... we got them back. First call home. No answer. It's 10pm in Morocco and I didn't know that while we were battling our way in the Moroccan desert, clocks had changed in England and it was 11pm back home. Did manage to wake up Ian while fireworks were going on at the camp.
Friday we drove to Essaouira for the final party on saturday.

the beach in Essaouira

we did it!

genuinely very happy

The left front tyre gave up on us on Sunday and we had to change it but by then, guess what? We had a male friend determined to do it for us. Way to go!


so how about next year?

Not long now

Only 2 days left before I set off for Marrakech to join Jamila, 4/5 days before we take the road to Erfoud, the door to the desert, 7 days before we must present ourselves and our vehicule for inspection, and exactly 9 days before the official start of the rally on the 22 March.
To say that Jamila and I are getting nervous is slightly understating it. We are READY to be reunited with our lovely Toyota Land Cruiser HDJ80.
We've been spoiled by friends who have given us free hotel rooms. Ahmed Nait of Travellink got us 2 nights at Hotel Chergui and Faical of the Moroccan Office of Tourism in London got us 1 night at the Xaluca Hotel. They're both 5 star hotels in Erfoud. And of course, in Marrakech, we're staying with my lovely friend Heather of Villa Dinari.

This rally takes itself extremely seriously and is full of regulations, things we can do or not, objects we can take and those we can't have for fear of elimination. We even have to give the organisers a cheque for about €1500 that they will keep if we are found cheating.

Three weeks ago, Jamila and I met in casablanca for the compulsory navigation course :

We were given 1960s black and white maps of the region we will be travelling in and told how to find our course to designated points.

I'm pretty sure the North is over there!

And then you grab your compass and hope you're going in the right direction, following the right course.

To make things simple, as you know, there are 3 Norths:

Grid North: the direction of a grid line which is parallel to the central meridian on the National Grid.

True North: the direction of a meridian of longitude which converges on the North Pole.

Magnetic North: the direction indicated by a magnetic compass. Magnetic North moves slowly with a variable rate and currently is west of Grid North in Great Britain. 

In Morocco, Cm (Cap Magnetique) = Cv ( Cap vrai or true North) + 2.

Right now, I have forgotten what it means, in concrete terms, for us and for finding our way in the desert.
Will ask in Erfoud.

Where do we have to go now?

  DECISION TIME :

The pain in my heels, although less than before thanks to my numerous sessions with Mark at Physio4life is still here however, so Jamila and I have made the decision she will be the navigator most of the time and I will be the driver, simply because it is our understanding that the navigator spends a lot of time walking ahead of the car, finding the way.

We are asked to use bio degradable soap and shampoo. I only found 1 company making them : Faith in Nature which you can buy in Health Stores.

MARRAKECH BIENNALE :

I can't resist the pleasure of putting a picture of myself with Vanessa Branson (sister of Richard and creator of the Marrakech art Festival) and the hero of all reading teenagers, Anthony Horowitz ( creator of the Alex Ryder serie):

I am also wearing the Rallye Aicha des Gazelles T-shirt which does not make me look thin but never mind!

I was interviewed by David evans, rally editor of autosport. The interview will appear this week or next week in autosport.com.

COMMUNICATION :
I will try to update my blog on a daily basis during the rally, except during the marathons because we sleep in the desert, not in a camp.

40 days to the start proper of the rally

After all the excitement of actually driving in the desert (see previous blog), I am back in the park and at the gym training to be fit.
Things are not quite going well on that score as I've been suffering from plantar fasciitis for over 5 weeks now and this has prevented me from walking. Plantar fasciitis is a pain in the heel caused by too much exercize ( or no enough and being overweight) and despite seeing the physio twice a week it's not getting better in a hurry.
However no walking doesn't mean no exercizing :

There's always cycling in Richmond Park.
Yesterday the air was cold and pure, a day before it started snowing again and Charlotte and I went round the park in 56mn ( we lost time walking up one of the hills!).

Jamila's taking a course in sophrology which Wikipedia says is : Sophrology is a personal development method that is designed to reduce stress and promote mental and physical well-being, through easy-to-do mental and physical exercises that can be done any time and anywhere.
Basically it's to remove negative energy and leave only positive ones.

So when we're stuck in the sand, at least one of us will be serene about it!

We are pleased to have new sponsors : Costcutter in particular is helping us.

The nice thing about preparing for the rally is plenty of friends helping in different ways, like Ahmed Nait of Travellink booking us a free room at Hotel Chergui in Erfoud before we start camping, my friend Heather of Villa Dinari accomodating us and keeping our equipment, Charlotte giving me free massages (and a survival blanket), and all those friends who are helping financially.

Downloaded the Rallye's technical specifications which sent me into a frenzy of emails to poor Alain about making sure his car complies to the 20 sheets of exhortations from the organisers. We got an email about being on time for the "flocage des gilets". I had never heard of the word "flocage". The good thing about it is that Helene, our coordinator and great help in Morocco hadn't heard of it either. Anyway it's about putting your sponsors's logos on your vests ( pink this year), in case you were wondering.

Went to the Hajj exhibition at the British Museum. The Hajj is the trip to Mecca that every good Muslim must try to undertake once in his/her life. It attracts 3 million pilgrims every year.
It's a very interesting exhibition which also shows extracts from an IMAX movie called Journey to Mecca, in the steps of Ibn Battuta. Ibn Battuta was a 14th century Moroccan traveller who undertook the Hajj journey 3 times. The IMAX movie shown in an IMAX theatre is astonishing as it transports you to today's Hajj and for a non muslim, this is the closest you'll ever get to feeling what the pilgrims feel and undertake.

At the British Museum it's on a small screen so it's not as impressive but it's still very interesting.

Next week I'll meet Jamila in Casablanca for the compulsory navigation course. I just read on Twitter that the Moroccan American writer ( and friend) Laila Lalami will be in Casablanca at the same time for the "Salon du Livre". Not sure I'll have time to see her but will try.

And then off skiing in Austria with the family.

Beautiful snow today. Will go to the gym

At last we see the Sahara and wow!

Jamila in our Toyota HD80

Jamila and I made it to M'Hamid in the South East of Morocco, in the Sahara. But what a saga to get there and once there, what an experience!
Those pictures I've sent you of 4x4s going up and down frighteningly steep dunes, it could now be us. Those pictures of gazelles pointing their compass in a direction and looking somewhat confused, us again!
We learned to read latitudes and longitudes, to place 29degrees 16 minutes and 366 seconds latitude and 3degrees 39minutes and 120 seconds longitude on a 1/100 000 map ( meaning, you know, 1km=1cm).
We learned to look at distant points on the horizon and make them our "cap". I was utterly useless at that. There'd be Jamila and our fantastic instructor Benoit saying things like : "you see those 2 trees over there, that's where we're heading" and I'd have no idea where those trees were.

trees? what trees?

That's me here going up the dune, following Benoit. I was more daring than Jamila in the dunes : Jamila had a tendency to stop dead at the top :

sorry, Jamila, couldn't resist

However Jamila was an excellent driver in other terrains so we'll share the driving. We'll probably share the navigation as well. I'll just have to buy a pair of binoculars! Both driving and navigating required intense concentration. You really don't want to make a mistake driving in the dunes as it can end up in your car overturning and the navigator must constantly find the way towards our point of destination and this can involve a fair amount of walking.

Slept in the desert, in a bivouac for 1 night. Dunes at sun set and sun rise are unmissable:

Sunset

7am, ready for breakfast

Jamila chatting with a local: what's that chaine of dunes over there?

The bit protecting the fuel tank has detached itself.

time to put air back in the tyres. 

We did or rather since I was the driver I should take responsibility for this, I did manage to get us stuck in sand at 4.30pm on our third day. Not fun, not fun at all. No picture of this because, frankly, we were not in the mood! I will do anything I can ( that is stop pressing on the bloody accelerator when it's pretty obvious we're stuck but not that stuck yet!) to avoid sinking in.

It all started well : we arrived in Marrakech and went to see our possible car, Alain's car :

in front of Costcutter Marrakech, one of our sponsors 

Then things went wrong : the driving instructor I had booked for 3 days cancelled Wednesday night at 9pm for a start the following day. There we were in Marrakech and no driving instructor to teach us to drive a 4x4 in dunes.
This is where the "telephone arabe" got into full action; by 11pm we had a possible instructor called Benoit. Benoit was extremely busy preparing a rally called the M'Hamid Express and not overly enthusiastic about taking 2 ( not 3) days out of his schedule. However he took pity on us and agreed.

Jamila and I set off from Marrakech for what was to be a 10 hour journey, including a pit stop for a delicious tagine near Teghdouine and another one for tea and chips in Zagora.
We were met at 11pm by Hassan who was just sitting down for dinner with a few friends.

so we joined in and from then on we simply had a fantastic if sometimes scary time.

Thank you Ali, Moaz and Alain in Marrakech, Hassan and Benoit in M'Hamid, the 5 men thanks to whom we women shall hopefully have a great rally.
And a big thank you to a sixth man, my husband Ian for his moral and financial support.
Thanks Heather for welcoming back 2 exhilarated but quite dusty gazelles.