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We hebben een flink stuk gereden gisteren. Een prachtige route door het rifgebergte van marokko. Steile bergwegen en adembenemend landschap. Dwars door dorpje Beni Ahmed gereden. Grote chaos van marktkraampjes nepkleding en berbers. Ook een prachtig meer gezien. Helaas zullen de fotos nog even op zich laten wachten. In het donker in Fez aangekomen op een leuke camping met een grote groep challengers. Lekker maaltje gehad maar Dirk heeft al last van zijn maag. Nu gaan we als de groep compleet is weer rijden. Het zal vast en zeker weer een leuke trip worden. Tot snel!

Counting down! Just 5 days to go! At 9 AM we will gather in Amsterdam North. At 11 AM we will depart. You can wave goodbye, but this is not mandatory. Pffiew, luckely our preperations went smooth and without stress. Last saturday and sundag we showed off our bushcraft skills to install the CB in our car. Neighbours must have looked pretty surprised when we used a saw to tear up a piece of the dashboard console. The roof rails and imperial steal the show (only when filled with the jerry-cans and spare wheel). A sticker from our main sponsor was applied professionally to our hood, in contrast to the solar strip for the front window. This stupid strip transformed to a nice piece of garbage after many attemps to application and a nice cursing prayer. Eventually thing turned out better than we expected and surprisingly we had time left for a beer and TV. The pictures of our final result can’t stay behind and can be admired at thegallery page.

Today me and my dad took the car for a ride. A small demonstration of a GPS track to show you where we have been. Quite handy for the people who would like to stalk us in Africa:

After many hours of video editting finally… A video compilation of the Ultimate Test Drive in Almere from Team Papwiel! Well, maybe the root cause was my lack of video editting skills. Fortunately I now have more video editting skills with the advantage and so a future challenge video will pop up much faster on our website.

Enjoy!

- Bart

Last saturday Bart and I traveled to Almere for the Ultimate Test Day (UTD). Bart had a hangover and I had a cold; so we were both in need for some offroading to get our blood flowing. Other cars got stuck and lost parts (like the wagon, which lost its plastic bottom-plate: see pictures) .

Due to our ‘excellent’ driving skills, with a bit of help from our AWD Subaru, we were trouble free. The only damage was a bent licence plate and a load of sand in the car’s nose, after it hit the ground. The ditch was at fault, since it refused to become less deep despite our ’great’ driving! 

The licence plate looked better and would have been cheaper in its new position, however we were quite sure the coppers would disagree. So we bent it back by hand; we are becoming quite the “bush-craft mechanics”. At the fist petrol station we cleaned out the sand using loads of water (see pictures). Movie-clips will follow shortly!

- Dirk

The Dutch Salvaged Tool foundation (stichting Gered Gereedschap) will provide us with tools for our journey. At the end of our journey we will deliver the tools to a technical school in Banjul; the only technical school in Gambia. This forms a win-win-win situation: The foundation has no shipping costs (which is their highest cost); we will have high quality tools; and the technical school will receive some much needed tools before the main delivery from the Salvaged Tool foundation.

Bart and I thought that the tools would take up a lot of space; however it seems likely that all of it will fit in a small toolbox. We will see if we have enough room remaining to take more tools for the technical school.

Error in maintenance cannot be blamed on ‘bad’ tools anymore, so the ‘tools’ carrying it out will be to blame if anything goes wrong!

- Dirk

Only 1 month to go before the adventure starts! Roadmaps have been purchased for Marocco, Mauretania and Senegal / Gambia. Also I compared navigation software to be used on a old PDA. Navigating through Europe is a piece of cake with use of TomTom software. Unfortunately there is no route navigation available for North and West Africa. We’ll check to see if we can navigate with the software application OziExplorer with calibrated maps for these areas. Hopefully OziExplorer will support the TomTom GPS receiver. If the GPS receiver is supported, we can keep records of our track and display and share it on our website. This weekend will also be a good opportunity for us to take the car for a test drive in the industrial wasteland of the Maasvlakte in Rotterdam and install our new 27MC system.

- Bart

Time is getting shorter, and there is still a lot of stuff which needs to be attained! During the past weekend I bought 6 jerrycans for 25 euro, so we’ve got pletty of those (I think we will only be able to take 4 or 5 with us). Bart bought a new radio transmitter (or actually his father bought it for him as a present if I understood correctly) for inter car communication. I was planning to visit some flea markets but the first one was canceled and the second one was also nowhere to be found. So we arranged some things, but not much. 

This weekend does not look promissing. I was planning to visit someone who was demolishing a car in order to get a spare set of supports ( supporting axles & drive shafts); however the car needs to be returned to the wrecking yard. I could call the scrap dealer on monday, but it is likely that he will want a fair amount of money for them …

I contacted the Salvaged Tool Foundation (Stichting Gered Gereedschap), they are willing to provide us with tools if we deliver them to a technical school in Banjul (the only technical school in Gambia). Only I have not had an email confirmation yet, and due to inside information (my Grandad works there) I know that the head office in Amsterdam needs to send it in to Voorst before monday afternoon (they only work on monday 9:00-12:00) or it will be delayed by 3 weeks! So I will have to call them monday morning, “fingers crossed”.

So, some “stuff” is getting done, but there is a lot more that needs to get done …

- Dirk

I checked all suspension bolts only to find the battery dead the next morning (probably due to an internal short circuit). There we were, Bart and myself … standing in the south of Amsterdam with a broken car. There were more than enough drivers around, however there were unwilling to help us out (by jumpstarting the car). Finally we decided to use public transport to get to the Banger-day. Since the Banger-day location was not suited for offroading we did not miss much (luckily). 

Yesterday I pickup a secondhand battery from Marnix. The battery had been used for 2 years and had been sitting in the garage for 1 year, I mounted it into the car and it fired up straight away! (So Marnix “saved the day” again!)

Check the pictures of the Banger-day and of our banger with its new stickers!

- Dirk