What would you do with a £100 banger, a sense of adventure and three weeks off work? Why, drive to Senegal, of course…
You don’t have to be mad to enter the Plymouth-Dakar rally, but it helps. This was never more apparent than some 50km from the Senegalese border. It was 5am and Team Wanderlust’s prospects looked bleak. After driving all night we’d broken down on a shocking dirt track and stood watching our radiator bleed to death. Then, out of the dark, a sleek Porsche 924 screeched past with a bleary-eyed Scotsman screaming out of the window: “Get out the way… our clutch’s gone… WE CAN’T STOP!” Maybe our predicament wasn’t quite so dire after all.Having entered (‘Team Wanderlust: The Sandy Scribes’) and roped in a friend, Ian Wesley, we turned our attentions to pre-trip planning, not least, finding a left-hand-drive vehicle for £100 – one of the rally’s few rules. Several months of searching and our prayers were answered: one imported £100 Opel Strada (Vauxhall Nova) with 130,000km on the clock, countless careless owners, gooey brakes, no heating and a fine pair of furry dice.
Concern number two was a very real one. Neither of us knew (still don’t) the first thing about auto-mechanics. We’d frivolously blown the rally’s suggested modifications budget of £15 on flashing air-fresheners and a gleaming alloy exhaust-extension. And our uncomplicated solution to raising our suspension was to fit a set of larger tyres. So, step in Bryan, our charitable local garage owner who volunteered to show us rudimentary car mechanics. Not exactly bona fide grease-monkeys, we’d nonetheless leave for Africa on Boxing Day, knowing how to change an oil filter and with Bryan’s comforting words: “You’ve got a good little runner.”
Two days later, following a sleep-deprived 2,000km dash across France and Spain, we met the other rally teams on a ferry bound for Ceuta, Morocco. Our Nova had started promisingly, OK, it had a few foibles: a radiator like a colander ensured we routinely overheated, while somewhere around Burgos, in the snowbound Spanish sierras, our exhaust fell apart.
On board, it was reassuring to discover our fellow competitors weren’t Jeremy-Clarkson-loving petrolheads but once-in-a-lifetime adventurers from all walks of life. Such as Tim and Jill from Cornwall – the Middle-aged Maniacs. Jill entered the rally on an impulse just hours before the deadline as she celebrated her 50th birthday. Tim had never even left the UK before. Roger and Gary (The Last Post) were Ipswich postmen who’d brought along their mailbags; Sheffield’s Ruth and Jo (No Sleep till Dakar), one of several all-female teams; and ace-mechanics Strangely Brown, three Ford engineers who donned tweed suits and straw hats for the entire rally. Heading the cast of international eccentrics were the USA’s Clemens brothers (Creamy Treats). They’d taken up the baton of getting an ice-cream van to Africa after one failed the previous rally.
Arriving in Morocco, we had five days to drive the length of the country before a group meet-up in Dakhla. Our proclivity to overheat dictated we drove along the flatter Atlantic coast. There, we forged a sub-convoy of fellow (slow) teams including the Waingrove Wobblers and the Lost Samurai.
The days were long. We’d leave early, overheat, grab a tagine at a roadside restaurant, overheat again and invariably arrive at our destination in pitch darkness. There was, however, time for a bit of sightseeing. Venturing into Marrakesh to celebrate New Year’s Eve seemed a fine idea – at least, until we drove into the maelstrom of rush-hour traffic.
My pulse had scarcely stopped racing from the white-knuckle ride through automotive bedlam when we finally reached Marrakesh’s equally manic Djemaa el-fna square. There wasn’t a clock in sight to countdown the New Year, but the square pulsated long into the night to the heady mix of tom-toms and the snake charmer’s mesmerising oboes.
South of Agadir, Ian and I called in on Sidi Ifni, a stunning Spanish colonial town wedged between a wild Atlantic beach and parched hills dotted with argan-oil trees. The whitewashed art-deco architecture crowding its peaceful central plaza was little changed since the 1930s.
It was there that we met another addition to our convoy: Londoners Chris and Sacha (Yellow Peril) driving a battered 2CV van held together by gaffer tape. At its best it sounded like a sick lawnmower. “We first broke down in Dulwich, ten miles from home; then we were pushed backwards off the ferry in Boulogne,” explained Sacha, detailing a catalogue of mechanical woes that included total brake failure in rush-hour Paris.
Tales of such mishaps rippled around the campsite when teams finally gathered in Dakhla. Located on a barren, windswept peninsula in the disputed territory of Western Sahara, Dakhla was well stocked to prepare for the forthcoming desert and carry out running repairs.
For some, the rally had ended prematurely. Like Australian oilman Simon Boon’s green Mercedes (Team Blue Aardvark), which suffered the double whammy of engine failure and a shunt. For others, there was always somebody mechanically minded around to lend a hand if changing spark plugs wasn’t their thing. Staying faithful to the penny-pinching ethos of the Plymouth-Dakar, this invariably involved bodging. Baked bean cans made passable exhaust pipes, while anything from egg whites to black pepper could plug a leaky radiator. A few Spanish onions and we could have rustled up an omelette in it.
After crossing into Mauritania via a minefield (more urban myth than reality), the Sahara awaited. Adding a local desert guide (Lemhaba, an elderly Moor), Scottish Simon’s Porsche (Push 924) and a Mercedes aptly driven by two London bankers (Junkyard Dog), we entered the desert in a convoy of seven vehicles.
Ian and I thought we were well prepared for desert driving. Rev high, low gears, deflate tyres, keep steering wheel straight, etc. At least, that’s what it suggested in our desert-driving manual. Unfortunately, such literature tends to assume you’re in a 4WD, so within minutes of commencing our 400km drive south we were buried up to our axles in soft sand. It set the pattern for the day. Like lemmings, we’d pile one after another into sand traps necessitating hours of pushing and digging.
But, once moving, the drive was exhilarating, wheel spinning and slewing across the inhospitable flat plains of Banc d’Arguin National Park and passing occasional nomadic camel trains. By the first evening there was a great sense of camaraderie camping among the dunes. Reliving the day’s adventures and enjoying a job lot of ice cream courtesy of the Creamy Treats, whose refrigerator had just packed in.
However, the next 36 hours would’ve tested a saint. First Jill and Tim’s rally ended with a rock through the radiator of their Cherokee Jeep. We waved goodbye to them in the desert, driving ahead to organise a tow. Then, after a gruelling day of breakdowns, The Lost Samurai’s overworked 4WD Suzuki blew its engine in a puff of oily smoke. We towed it to Nouakchott (to be sold for parts) down a section of firm beach for the final 100km out of the Sahara.
With our convoy now christened ‘Team Jinx’, we were almost too tired to appreciate one of Africa’s most stunning highways. We raced the Atlantic’s tide, skimming through its creamy surf leaving waves of pelicans, rusting shipwrecks and brightly coloured fishing pirogues in our wake.
Besides not finishing, every competitor’s worst nightmare is the Senegalese border crossing. Horror stories of delays, bribery and intimidation had flooded the rally’s web forum prior to leaving. So we hatched a cunning plan: we’d drive through the night from Nouakchott, aiming to arrive first thing in the morning and catch the customs officials in a cheery mood.
The plan, like our exhaust, misfired horribly. It meant driving an abomination of a road down to Diama in the dark. Throughout the night, all five of our remaining convoy broke down and suffered punctures. At one stage, we thought it was all over for Team Wanderlust. Our power failed and a big metal thing called the manifold glowed red under the bonnet. We had an anxious half hour wait to see if any lasting damage had occurred. Happily, she refused to die.
By sun up, we’d crossed into Senegal. The border crossing was both relaxed and expensive after we’d handed over plenty of ‘administrative costs’ to the grateful customs officials. Literally overnight, we’d left behind Moorish North Africa and emerged into black West Africa.
Taking a well-deserved two-day break in North Senegal, we unwound at Zebrabar campsite and commuted by pirogue to nearby St Louis. Inhabited since 1659, St Louis squeezes onto an island near the mouth of the River Senegal. It’s a lively, funky city of great food, bars and jazz clubs. Forgetting all about cars and driving, I wandered its old streets admiring the crumbling colonial architecture and enjoying (after days of stale baguettes and camping rations) fiery Senegalese dishes such as fish stewed in maafe (spicy groundnut) sauce.
Beyond St Louis, the rally draws quickly to an end. Senegalese customs are reluctant to let vehicles over five years old stay, so we were escorted from Zebrabar by a customs official across the rest of the country in one hurried day. ‘Team Jinx’ delivered one final twist, however – Yellow Peril’s troublesome 2CV finally expired and had to be towed to the finish.
Dakar isn’t actually the rally’s final destination: it staggers on several hundred kilometres south into The Gambia. Until, at Barra ferry terminal, the finish is in sight. Crossing the yawning mouth of the River Gambia to reach the end in Banjul is an experience I’ll never forget. Our cars sat on the swaying ferry’s open deck swamped by locals on their way to celebrate the Muslim festival of Tabaski with their sacrificial sheep. Probably more tired than euphoric at this stage, we’d driven an epic 6,069km in 19 days, crossing six different countries.
Only eight of the 41 vehicles that had departed on Boxing Day failed to make it to the auction at Banjul the next morning. I felt just a tinge of regret when bids started coming in for our Nova. We’d treated her badly but she’d never let us down. When the bidding finished, Sulayaman, a local garage mechanic, bought her for a staggering £800. We were consigned to her list of careless owners.
In all, 2005’s Plymouth-Dakar Rally raised £134,000 for charitable causes. And I like to think that the Creamy Treat’s ice-cream van, its chirpy jingles forever etched into my brain, may just be selling lollies and choc-ices somewhere along the Gambian coast.
Log on to the official website, www.plymouth-dakar.co.uk. There, register your interest in participating and, when accepted, join the web forum discussion group. The rally has two unbreakable rules: vehicles must be left-hand drive (or they won’t sell well in The Gambia) and they have to be handed over for auction on arrival in Banjul.
The hardest part is finding left-hand-drive vehicles. Try www.ebay.co.uk, although you may end up bidding against other rally teams. Scan local papers and ask friends to keep an eye out. Also, keep a close watch on the rally’s web forum as fellow teams will often recommend sellers.
Personal possessions need to be crammed into a rucksack in case you have to abandon your vehicle and cadge a spare seat with another team. The minimum you need to take is: spare parts, two extra wheels, jerry cans and water containers, first-aid kit, camping equipment and five to six days’ food rations.
Morocco Besides Marrakesh, it’s possible to take the Atlas route visiting perhaps Chefchaouen or Fès, and crossing spectacular high-altitude passes like Tizi n’Test. Along the coast, the old medinas of Salé and Tiznit make pleasant stops.
Mauritania Visit Nouâdhibou’s graveyard of rusting shipwrecks.
Senegal A day in St Louis shouldn’t be missed.
The Gambia Beat the package-holiday crowds and head down to the unspoilt fishing villages of Gunjur, Tanji and Kartong, or upriver to Georgetown.
Visit your GP to bring all vaccinations up to date. A yellow fever jab is necessary to get a certificate, although we weren’t asked to show it. Malaria prophylactics are essential. Pack some Imodium and rehydration sachets.
The Plymouth-Dakar does a lot of good on two different levels: your vehicle is auctioned to raise money for various charitable concerns favouring small tourism and sports projects; and you can attain sponsorship before leaving to benefit other charities.
