Day one’s report — crossing the sea from Spain into Morocco with the car!
Did you get to see it?
The report from the Sahara Challenge, twelve days and 4,600 km!
Today, on to day two.
Today’s route runs 372 km straight south through Morocco.
With no chance to recover from yesterday’s exhaustion, we finished the morning maintenance and set off.
Already covered in oil. Both this Sahara Challenge and the main event, Peking to Paris, mean handling all basic maintenance and repairs ourselves.
With no knowledge of cars going in, all I could do was learn by doing.
Unlike a modern, computer-controlled car, a hundred-year-old classic feels almost like a living thing.
There is a real sense of talking with it, hearts meeting, communicating back and forth.
The sunrise from the start point was dazzling, and I wondered what drama today would bring —
we set off carrying the energy of a fierce sun that made it feel, at last, like Morocco.
About a hundred kilometres in, the brakes started worrying me, so we stopped, crawled
underneath the car, and made a small adjustment.
This time’s challenge car, the 1929 Buick Doctor’s Coupé, has
mechanical drum brakes.
This was our shakedown test — a test run ahead of the real Peking to Paris — so we pushed forward,
clearing one thing at a time.
But — it was hot. However much water I drank, I could feel it draining straight back out of me.
Watching the other cars we were driving alongside speed off, light and easy, I fought impatience while keeping half an eye on the clock, trying to make the competition’s time limit.
Fighting off the fear of stray dogs barking furiously and circling us,
we pushed on through rough dirt track with no houses and no people in sight — stopping, driving, stopping, driving.
In the morning, pressing the brake pedal, I found it going straight to the floor — no brakes at all!
Adjusting the brake adjusting rods on both rear wheels.
And then, help arrived! The official mechanic came over and helped us get the brakes sorted.
I have been filming the scenery from inside the car, so look out for it on YouTube too!
Nearly 400 km straight through the dry Moroccan land, and there it was —
an oasis??
What looked like a town appearing ahead turned out to be
Chefchaouen, famous as Morocco’s “blue city”, a well-known tourist spot.
I tried to get a photo, but from this distance it does not look particularly blue.
And on day two, seven hours after the start, there was a time control at the lunch stop — so I actually got a proper lunch!
My first Moroccan food.
I had heard about it, and here it was — a tagine.
With so much fluid lost, what my tired body really appreciated was the tuna salad!
What meat is this?? I ate it despite a slight shudder at how it looked — eat what you can, when you can.
Something like curry but not quite curry, and plenty of bean dishes alongside it.
Day one had no lunch at all, and we only reached the hotel in the middle of the night, so this was the first proper meal I had had in far too long —
I thoroughly enjoyed this lunch on day two!
And by the way — the dust since entering Morocco had been fierce enough to irritate my contact lenses, so I switched to glasses.
With the sun this strong, prescription sunglasses were an essential item too.
After eating — a fight with drowsiness? No,
this was no time to be sleepy.
A landscape unlike anything I had ever seen opened up, and mountain roads where one wrong move would have sent us over the edge
kept us winding on, working brakes that barely gripped and a steering wheel that felt heavy in my hands.
Have a look at this brutal stretch of dirt track that made me gasp out loud.
No major trouble, adjusting the brakes as we went — this really was a shakedown test.
We somehow cleared the whole day’s competition. With the brake problem never fully solved, there was no way
we could push for speed.
And views this beautiful too!
Driving while making small brake adjustments the whole way, day two still went smoothly,
with no major trouble.
The 4,600 km Sahara Challenge is still only its opening chapter.
Do look forward to the day three report too!
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