IN TO AFRICA: Days 1-5 of 273, 13-17NOV15, Truck 179km, Sydney AUSTRALIA to Chefchaouen MOROCCO (Country No 1)

PLACES VISITED: Luton UK (Outer London), Gibraltar UK, Fnideq MOROCCO, Chefchaouen MOROCCO.

OVERNIGHTS: Etihad A380-800, Luton UK, Gibraltar UK (2), Chefchaouen MOROCCO.

DAY 1, Fri 13NOV15. I could not believe my luck. Golfin’s are never lucky. There were two empty seats next to my window seat in row 79A on our huge Etihad A380-800 flying the next 14hrs from Sydney to Abu Dhabi leaving Friday 10pm! Magic! After a white wine on entry I flopped down and slept 10hrs! Best sleep ever in economy! We touched down on a clear 25C day at 5:30am into Abu Dhabi with only a 2.5hr layover before climbing into the same seat but on another Etihad A380 for the 8hr trip to London. Given it was a day flight, I watched two movies and downed a few Bloody Marys and got some brilliant views of Cairo, the place I expect to finish my epic safari in 9 months! I also saw clearly half of the island of Crete and all three Peloponnesian fingers of southern Greece.

DAY 2, Sat 14NOV15. It was 9C and raining when we landed at Heathrow at 1pm on Saturday. Not surprising. My passport stamp took 30min to get and in that time I was able to book and pay online on my Mac Air in the queue for my bus ticket from Heathrow to Luton Airport which departed at 3pm. The ride took 80min and it was 5pm and exactly 30hrs since leaving Sydney that I walked into the IBIS Hotel at Luton Airport where I was to stay overnight for my flight to Gibraltar at 4:40pm the next day. Luton is reasonably hilly and green and home to a number of factories making foodstuffs and even newspaper printing. It was a relaxing evening of a few calls to Australia followed by ales and Beef pie and the movie “Tomorrowland” brought to me by free streaming site "http://www.onlinehdmovies.org/“ which I use when I travel. Fell asleep several times and finally at 11:30pm.

DAY3, Sun 15NOV15, 15km. What a sleep! Like eating lamb on the spit at Easter. Very satisfying. Woke up to a dark cloudy day with lots of wind and sitting at 10C. After a huge, hot English brekkie I called home, did some paperwork and settled down to watch the rest of Tomorrowland. Left the hotel at 1pm and walked 10min to Luton airport. Met Chris Wrede, the co-founder of "Oasis Overland”, our adventure company and 8 of my 19 fellow travellers who had already turned up.

I asked Chris to tell us the story of "Oasis Overland” while we waited for the rest of our company and our flight. Chris first got the travel bug when he and a mate travelled through Africa and Europe at the age 18 back in the 70’s with plenty of incidents. Chris joined “African Trails”, a rival overland adventure outfit in 1992, running trips and doing some admin. It was not long until Steve, a co-worker got bored and approached Chris to start their own adventure company. This happened in 1997 and by April 1998 they ran their first trip in from Egypt to Turkey via Syria including Gallipoli. This was very successful and Africa started later that year and the rest is history. By the time 3pm rolled around, all 19 adventurers where present including me. We have 7 gals and 12 guys. In terms of where they live: 6 England, 5 USA, 3 Australia, 1 Canada, 1 Switzerland, 1 Brazil, 1 Portugal and 1 Japan.

There are 3 Kiwis but they all live abroad. The youngest in our group is 20 and the eldest 63. Most people are in their early thirties and had to quit their jobs to make the trip. The average age is around 40 and we have three retirees. Most of our party are seasoned travellers, most have seen parts of Africa before and some having done camping trips over several months. Only 10 of us are going all the way to Cairo with 1 finishing in Accra GHANA and the rest in Cape Town. Our 4:40pm flight to Gibraltar (pop 32,000) took 3hrs with low-cost carrier Monarch and surprisingly for this time of the year, it was full. We arrived at 8:40pm. The runway runs east-west behind the 400m peak of the Rock of Gibraltar and the plane twists and turns to literally land behind the rock. The main road that connects the Gibraltan peninsula to Spain crosses the only runway of Gibraltar airport!!! 

After customs we were met by our tour leader, Andrea Petic (Andi) who takes care of our daily itinerary, optional tours, organises VISAs and explains what we need to know about tents, cooking and travelling in our new home - an orange truck. Andi then walked us to our truck where we met her hubby and our driver Grant Hastie. Andi and Grant are in their early forties, both based in NZ and joined Oasis back in 1999 and this will be their 7th trip through Africa. Our truck is called the Maxter G300 and was made by Renault. It was purchased in 2005 and was formerly used by the British Army on the Falkland Islands where it did only 40,000km in 7yrs.

The truck was especially modified to carry 24 passengers and their packs plus food, water, tents, camp seats and all cooking and eating utensils. It has a huge 10 litre, 6 cylinder engine and pumps out 300HP hence the name. It is painted bright orange and looks like a big USA school bus on steroids! The layout is clever since all seats face one another with no windows behind you so that you can take photos anytime by turning around and kneeling on your seat. Our first campsite was called “La Casita” located 15km east of Gibraltar along the Spanish Mediterranean coast. It was equipped with a huge toilet and shower block and even had recharging stations and wi-fi, all on concrete pillars outside!!! Our tents were already set up and quite spacious. They are fairly new and sized for three persons. My tent mate is Christopher Phelps from the USA. Born in Seattle, age 32 and now living on a 1000 acre farm with his girlfriend, 1hr North-East of Houston Texas. he was originally a plumber but now a quantity surveyor, estimating materials and costs for huge infrastructure projects in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past and now on Oil Rigs!!!

Chris is an experienced traveller and on the second night ended up setting up his own hammock between two trees, complete with rain cover! This means that I get a tent of my own from now on! Unreal except for when I have to set it up and pull it down!!! It was 10pm by the time we all settled into our tents and we were desperate for an evening drink, cheese/salami/olives and conversation. We gathered around the truck and talked and drank our way to 1am.

My initial impression is that we have a good group that will connect well and be prepared to help each other out.

DAY 4, Mon 16NOV15, 32km. Most of us were up by 8am. First light is late at 7:30am. Despite a very damp night, I slept very well on my self-inflating mat and kept warm in my -10C rated sleeping bag. My main bag fit easily by my side and everything inside is easily accessible since all items are in line and all clothes are rolled up and side-by-side in a single layer. You just pull out what you need and replace it with a rolled up version of what you do not need. Maureen pioneered this method and it works very well.

All the electronics are in my 40L day pack next to my head and also easily accessed. After a stand-up brekkie we all gathered into the truck for our trip de-brief held by Andi. She explained life on a truck and in a tent and how things would run. We will all be organised into 6 groups and take turns shopping, cooking and cleaning, three meals at a time on rotation. Each tent pair is responsible for pitching and de-pitching their tents. There is a big safe on the truck where we keep all our cash and passports.

The set up is really very good and efficient. By 10am we were off to Gibraltar to see the Rock and town. I was last in Gibraltar with Paul Pappas in 2006 filming “In Search of Eurotrash”. Having seen all the sites I decided to run up to the top of the rock and back down through the town using my GoPro for photos and film (the bendy photos in this blog). We parked the truck on the Spanish side and walked through customs, across the runway and through the main town to the bottom of the cable car. I started my run from there and it took me 30min to do the 4.65km to the top sitting at 372m. It was tough. I made a stop at the top to GoPro the monkeys - they had never seen one and kept slapping it - cannot wait to see the result on film! I ran back to the truck making a stop in the central Piazza to interview some school kids. 

After running across the runway I arrived back at the truck at 2:30pm after 12km of running. Fifteen minutes later we set out for a huge Carrefour Supermarket where we all stocked up for the next month through Morocco and Western Sahara. I bought 10L of cask wine (for easy and safe storage), cheese, olives, toilet paper and wet-ones for those days where we will have no showers. Tonight, Andi and Grant cooked us up a mountain of corn chips with minced meat, tons of shredded English cheddar and chillies. That evening I learned many interesting things about my fellow travellers over several metal cups of cask wine. Like Yuki from Japan who had previously travelled by himself using public buses from Cape Town to Cairo in just 3 months. Yuki is studying tourism at Uni and what better place to practice than here!!! Also, Daniel from El Paso Texas who has rejected life in the USA and has been teaching history in a private international America school in Cairo for the last 3 years. Co-incidently, Englishwoman Victoria who has been in Melbourne for the last 6 years also spent a year working in Cairo as a scuba-diving instructor. Wild stuff. I hope to learn more about my companions as time goes on.

DAY 5, Tue 17NOV15, 132km. Today was Africa day. Finally. After our first attempt at dismantling our tents (I had to get some help since I am now a single tenter) we were on the road at 7:45am. Our 32km Mediterranean crossing from Algeciras SPAIN to Ceuta, a territory of Spain since 1640 on the African continent, took only 50min of actual sailing on the huge ferry “Avemar Dos” built in 2005. Ceuta is only 20 sq km and the Moroccan border was only a 15min drive away.

The change of people, environment and smells as we drove through the border was like chalk and cheese. The border was chaos. We arrived there around 10am and it took nearly 2 hrs to get through. Some dodgy looking guys hid behind our truck to pass contraband from one side of the border to the other. We even saw border police beating up some people with batons. We sat looked up in our truck watching the chaos and listening to all the shouting and honking horns. Welcome to Morocco! Shortly after the border we stopped in Fnideq to change money and have our first walk around.

I explored the Medina (market) and stopped to have a cafe au lait (1.10AUD) in front of the main mosque. The Moroccan currency is the “dirham” (Dh), one AUD buys 6 of them. The French occupied Morocco in 1912 and most people still speak French. Morocco (Pop 33m, Capital RABAT) is descended from the Phoenicians around 800BC. It was occupied by the Romans in the 4th Century and achieved independence from France in 1956. It became Muslim in 829 and since then ruled by Monarchs. The predominant ethnicity is “the Berbers” who have an Arabic dialect of their own. Morocco made some economic gains when it took over the former country of Western Sahara in 1973 to exploit its phosphorus. Nearly 60% of the population lives in the main cities and apparently the median age is only 25yrs and falling! Our campsite in Chefchaouen (Pop 50,000) is only 80km from Fnideq but took just on 3hrs due to our ascent into the Atlas Mountains. Our camping site was called “Azilan”, high above the town of Chefchaouen and well-equipped with not just one but two wi-fi routers covering all external tents!!! Hot showers cost 1.6AUD.

I went for a run down into the old town which comprises a myriad of narrow, steep, cobbled streets surrounded by ornate Andalusian stye buildings mostly painted in a light sky blue, just like the houses on the Greek islands. I had to swerve and weave my way through countless people. I am told that the weather is unseasonaly warm so everyone was out. Women clad in colourful hijab, mother and daughters or old women holding hands and men in “jellabas” or flowing cloaks, many with pointed hoods almost ku-klux-clan style! Children were everywhere, playing soccer on small plateaus since the village is literally built on the side of a steep mountain and covers 350m elevation from top to bottom. Tonight I was on dinner duty with Dan, David and Chris. Luckily we did not have to shop since we were on the road all day but we managed to cook a storm: chunks of chicken breast marinated in spices and added to a stew of zucchini, mushroom, tomato and capsicums all washed down with Rose. What a feast. Our cook group called “The Monkeys” (I selected the name in honour of Tarzan’s chimp “Cheetah”) certainly raised the bar. We cooked over an open fire and later used it to engage in extensive conversation until midnight. The first night in Africa was a blast!

As I reflect on this blog, I cannot believe just what it took to get “in to Africa” from Sydney: 5 days and 2 countries over an estimated 19,000km. We are here. In Africa. The clock is running and the epic begins...

PS: The “curly” or “bent” or wide-angled photos were taken with my GoPro Hero4 Session.