Tuesday 8 January 2008

1900 miles - more checkpoints and a new noise!

The latter being the more concerning! So we'll talk about it first.

We pulled off the road to take a photo of the emerging sand dunes, and, of course, sank into soft sand. No problem, we have 4wd. Engage 4wd and out of the sand, "pas de probleme". Except that there WAS a probleme, in the form of a new grinding vibrating kind of noise between 45 and 60mph.

I wondered if this might be the results of Ana's handbrake experiment earlier in the day, but neither rear wheel seemed to be bound, although one hub was hotter than the other. So we drove on, wondering if this simple bit of off-roading had caused the centre diff to eat itself, or one of the automatic hubs to lock up permanently, or something equally tragic. However after another 60 miles we turned the stereo down and noticed that the noise was gone. So that has to be a good thing.

We stopped for diesel at possibly the nastiest fuel station in the world (and found, in the process, that the last service station guy hadn't replaced the fuel filler cap properly, so we had a minor diesel leak...) and pulled straight out into another police roadblock. No problem, we're used to them by now - except this one didn't wave us past but wanted to "chat". Apparently we'd passed a well-concealed stop sign without stopping, in the 150 yards between the fuel station and the checkpoint. The policeman explained that this was a very serious offence, and I passed him my international driving licence, hoping to preserve my British one in case things went completely pear-shaped. We went into his little police hut at the roadside (I didn't feel that it was the moment to take any photos of it to share with you) to discuss the matter while Ana stayed in the car and tried not to cause trouble.

Using my mostly excellent but also somewhat broken French, I explained how lovely Morroco was and how lucky we were to be tourists there, while in turn he explained the magnitude of the offence I'd committed by running the Virtual Stop Sign. A 400Dh fine was looming (about thirty quid) which we could do without! When the time came to produce the money, I made a bit of a pantomime looking for the notes, 100 in this pocket, 100 in that, 50 in another... all the time explaining about our charity rally and the wonderful welcome we'd received in his fantastic country. After a bit of smiling and pocket-stirring, he suggested that maybe he could help me out by forgetting the Invisible Stop Sign offence and creating a new, lesser but equally-imaginary offence in which I would not have been wearing my seatbelt. This would only cost me 100Dh, and I agreed that it was a great idea. :-)

He filled out all the paperwork, called his mate into the hut to countersign a single sheet of the (duplicate) form (ahem), and gave me my copy ("Here's your souvenir from Morroco!"). I was expecting him to pitch for another 100Dh for "helping us out" and frankly I would have given it to him, but we'd crossed some invisible barrier by that point and he was more interested in stopping the next vehicle on the road. So we left.

By contrast, the UN and then the police on the outskirts of Laayoune were very polite and we had no problems - but we are getting stopped at EVERY checkpoint now, no more smiles and waving through.

We just arrived in Laayoune city centre, which is overrun with UN patrols, so we feel quite safe! Departing for Dakhla tomorrow morning (the 3rd). Maybe we'll only be able to upload this post tomorrow anyway as the mobile connectivity here is pretty poor, and getting worse the further south we head.

Oh, and the best news: THE STEREO IS NOW WORKING!!! Ana turned it up so much to drown out the grinding noise, we found that all three speakers actually do work but only at full volume...

** UPDATE ** have only just been able to upload this, mobile comms dropped out just North of Laayoune! Using an Internet terminal at a campsite in Nouakchott, Mauritania, for this and subsequent posts dated today **

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