Rallye Aicha des Gazelles du Maroc 2013- Part 1

A week since the race finished and back 4 days from Marrakech. What a week that was, smaller than last year on daily surprises but bigger on emotion.

This blog like last year is written retroactively as we are given only a temporary address during the rally and allowed only 200 words per email. We did however do a daily interview for French Radio London which was following us. You can hear Jamila’s and my impressions on their website.

THE START

For the Moroccan teams, the Rallye Aicha des Gazelles started in El Jadida on the Atlantic coast  Sunday 17 March 2013. The Moroccan channel 2M was there to interview us before the start

I’d arrived in warmish Marrakech Friday night and had taken possession of “MY” car on Saturday.

I would like to mention now that this blog, while primarily in English will be loaded with French and Moroccan words. Anything to do with the car will be in French, anything to do with the scenery like “douar” for village and  “Oued” for usually dry river bed will be in Moroccan.

So Alain, the owner of the Toyota, had put new “injecteurs” in the car ( which at first I mistook for new “ejecteurs”), new brake pads and basically my 21 year old Toyota was like new. It had taken us a while to come up with the décor for the car but it was Ian in the end who suggested the poster of a lovely Moroccan movie by Nassim Abassi called Majid. We had the slogan : “A life without a dream isn’t worth living”.

On Sunday I happily arrived at the Mazagan Beach Resort to meet up with Jamila and the rest of the Moroccan, Canadian and American teams. You have to admire some of these women who arrive for the first time straight from Montreal to Casablanca on a night flight and start driving a 4 wheel drive in Morocco.

It was great to see Jamila again although she looked somewhat exhausted : she’d had flu the week before and a ton of work up until Saturday night. 
The “stickage” of the car was due on Monday but due to risks of rain, it happened Sunday afternoon.

The Rallye Aicha des Gazelles has a fair amount of official sponsors. We, however, had few despite Jamila’s best efforts. Not easy to get sponsors in Morocco ( and quasi impossible in the UK where the rally is not known).

In bed relatively early, we woke up at 6.30 the next day. The adrenaline was starting to build up, this same adrenaline which would see us drive and navigate for 12 hours pretty much every day for 8 days until 2 seconds of inattention compounded by ignorance terminated our race on the final day.

On Monday morning, the organisers installed the tracking system on all the cars. This enables them to know where we are and at what speed we drive. It also enables you, family and friends to track us and our progress daily.

 Nassim Abassi, the producer and director of the movie whose title was decorating our car joined us in El Jadida

ERFOUD

After lunch, Jamila and I drove off from the beach of El Jadida to Erfoud in South East Morocco.

 Uneventful drive, half motorway, half busy roads but beware the police check points. They’re everywhere. Still, the gendarmerie had been told to expect 300 gazelles to head off towards Erfoud. We smiled and waved, they smiled and saluted, no problem.

In Erfoud we joined all the French and European gazelles for a briefing at 9pm Tuesday. Most French Gazelles had travelled from Paris Trocadero to Barcelona, boarded a night boat to Tangiers and drove down to Erfoud. Some of them already looked exhausted.

Next morning, we had to drive to a specific place for “l’etalonnage”. This is where the organization controls your kms, compares your odometer with theirs and gives you a coefficient.

Lunch in Rissani 

already hard at work

( unfortunately no time to order a lovely Medfouna as we had done in December during our training) and Prologue in the afternoon. For those like us who have already participated in the Rallye, it’s not a big deal. We didn’t do very well but we didn’t care as it does not count in the overall classification.

In the evening we gave up all technology : our phones, our ipads and computers for the next 8 days.

START OF THE COMPETITION

Thursday saw the official start of the competition.  The second check point was tough to find, hidden in an oued.

Last year, Jamila had been desperate to avoid oueds as they can be tricky to drive in when wet but this year, we used them a lot to go round areas we might not wish to get stuck in. They add in kms but help you with speed and even if speed is not of the essence, checking at all the check points is.

I can’t remember much of the day except that for the first time, EVER, we checked at all the check points and were back in the “bivouac” or camp by 6.30pm. We  were elated. In terms of distance we had done quite well as well.

at a check point

Friday’s parcours was very long but again, to our utter amazement, we checked at all the CPs.

What a difference with last year! All due to our training with Benoit last December and Jamila's hard work.

MERZOUGA : FIRST DUNES

Saturday was going to be a day driving the dunes of Merzouga. This is where we had practiced navigating (Jamila) and driving (me)for half a day in December 2012. Whereas last year I had been so petrified about driving in the dunes that I’d got a migraine and avoided them altogether, this year we felt good, not overly confident but good.

There are 3 choices on that parcours : the “X” one, toughest, the “Y” one, less tough but not easy and the “Z”one for those who’ve never driven in the dunes.

With our new found confidence, we decided to gun for the “X” parcours.  We got to a good start and were very surprised to join the top teams looking for CP 2X. There were 2 ways (probably 3) to go about it and both were a complete struggle. We spent 2 hours trying to go beyond a dune with the sand getting softer and softer. Eventually we took the strategic decision to give up and do the “Y” parcours. Better do most CPS in the average course than spend all day trying to find an alternative way to 2X, clocking a lot of Kms in the process.

that was fun

And thus it was that by the end of day 3, we were 16^th in the classification out of 120. Considering we’d finished 83 last year, we were very pleased with the work accomplished. To be honest, most of it was due to Jamila’s amazing new navigational skills. No more arguments like last year. I followed her instructions, paying attention to the difficult terrain in front of me while she kept her eyes on the horizon and the compass.

hard at work with our old maps

FIRST MARATHON

The following 2 days were our first marathon. Mixed terrain with stones, crevices, ravines, sandy oueds most of those 2 days, we checked at all the CPs on that first day. However we were stopped in a douar chatting with another car ( Geraldine and Sophie) when a moped driving at high speed hit a young girl and drove on without stopping.  This happened behind our cars and the first thing we knew about it was when a couple of children were screaming. I thought they were playing but Jamila got out of the car and saw the girl uncounscious. Jamila thought she was dead and rushed back to the car to call the medical assistance. We are not allowed phones but the Iritrack system  ( by satellite) allowes us to call for mechanical  (yellow button) or medical (red button) assistance. There’s a 3^rd button (blue) to call headquarters. In her panic, Jamila couldn’t remember which colour was what and pressed all the buttons, jamming the system. We then asked the other gazelles to press their buttons further jamming the system. Anyway, when we at last understood what to do, the medical assistance decided to send in the helicopter.

In the meantime half the village had gathered and we were very keen to explain that we had not caused the accident. 20mn later, the helicopter landed and the doctor on board took charge of the situation. The girl had regained consciousness and he felt there was no lasting damage. We found out the following day back at camp that the organization of the rallye had decided to send an ambulance to take the young girl to hospital.

 We left the douar and decided to set up our camp with 4 other cars in a sandy stretch. We had a lovely evening. Geraldine and Sophie had been given a bottle of excellent calvados which we enjoyed after dinner. Jamila and I had noodle soups warmed up on our camping gas and Julia and Celine had brought saucisson and bread and wine. What a picnic!

under the stars

Next day was going to be a bit of a disaster for us. 

early morning after our night on a sandy stretch

Instead of being given the usual lattitudes and longitudes points or the course and the kms, we were given an inverse course. So we knew where CP6 was and were told where CP8 was and had to work out where CP7 was. Julia and Celine had studied it during their navigation course and told us what to do. Good! Once we’d checked at CP6, we were heading North and then back South for CP8 and then back North for CP9. It looked a little curious but hey, you can’t always guess the organisers’intentions.

We all arrived pretty much at the same time at CP6. Usually Jamila takes a while to organize her maps. To be honest, it takes a huge amount of patience to organize the different maps we’re going to use throughout the day. Anyway, that day, Jamila was organized and we left CP6 soon after checking and before our friends.

Ahah, look how fast we were! Heading North, we were going to cross a douar surrounded by small dunes, soft sand. So soft that we “tanked”. Bogged down. Got the shovels out and started shoveling, helped by a couple of young village girls on their way to school. We gave them pens to thank them and proceeded shoveling on our own. We were absolutely exhausted so that when a young man showed up and started shoveling, we did not have the energy to refuse. As a gazelle, you are not supposed to be helped other than by other gazelles but there were no other gazelles ( something which should have alerted us that maybe we were not going in the right direction). We gave him 15 dirhams ( $1.5) and he got us out.

At last in the douar, we met up with the driver and the cameraman of the Moroccan channel 2M who were filming us that day. The cameraman pointed to the right where he was going to film us but oh no, our course was to the left. He insisted, to the right, no no, we’re off to the left. So his driver and he followed us through a mountain pass ( we were very pleased with ourselves to have found this mountain pass) for 15kms when we stopped as I needed to have a wee.

The driver (who has a GPS) came to see Jamila; he is not allowed to help but all he said was : “are you sure of your course?”. Jamila took the map out and we recalculated. Same course, different direction. We should have headed South, not North.

Anyway, it took us 7 hours that day to check at our second CP, which was CP7. All our friends had taken the time to verify their point at CP6 and realized their mistakes. They’d all arrived at CP7 by 10am, we’d arrived by 2pm. Below is the live video of us :

http://www.2m.ma/Media/Videotheque/Videos/Videos/Rallye-Aicha-Des-Gazelles2/2013/Rallye-Aicha-Des-Gazelles-Mercredi-27-Mars

The organisers who’d seen most teams in our group drive by in the morning were totally bored and rather pleased to see us! They even gave us each a bottle of coca cola! Being lost and late has its rewards!

After that, it was all fairly straight forward and we checked everything except the last CP(10). It was getting dark and we felt we’d spend a lot of Kms looking for something in the dark and it was much better to go straight back to camp where Julia and Celine were waiting for us, extremely apologetic. But really, it isn’t their fault, we are all responsible for our own calculations and driving.

To compound a rather poor day, we got to camp and couldn't open the trunk. Jamila had to perform some gymnastics inside the car to open the trunk from the inside ;

Not Jamila's favourite picture

 

there she is

LIFE AT CAMP

From 16^th, we’d moved to 24^th. Too many kms. But still we were feeling buoyant. The advantage of going back to camp early (ish) was that it gave us time to socialize with other gazelles, in particular the Moroccan teams ( and the Canadians who’d been in El Jadida with us). There were 7 Moroccan teams although out of 14 gazelles only 4 were truly Moroccan. Even Jamila who was born in Morocco actually has a French passport. It gave us time to enjoy the truly very good food cooked by the Moroccan cooks for us and this year I also enjoyed a glass of wine pretty much every evening.

The showers are basic and it can be a struggle to get warm water. Also and curiously they’re mixed, forcing us to dress and undress in the cubicles.

Last year we’d used 2 tents, one to sleep in and one pop up one to use as a dressing. But this year with 4 bivouacs planned instead of 3, it required too much effort to set up two tents and we slept in the pop tent only. Pop up tents are great to unfold but I could never fold it properly in the morning and ended up shoving it forcefully between the rear window and the spare tyre. 

All the Moroccan teams have their own press attache, the usually cheerful Yacine who also conducted an interview most evening with Jamila and me for French Radio London.