Day -1 – We kicked off with a monster 900km across Portugal and Spain. Uneventful, long and without incident. We arrived in Almeria port town just in time to meet the rest of the rally setting off for 6 hour ferry ride to Nador in northern Morocco.
Day 0 – Nador to Erichidia – 750km across Morocco and Ventura’s first drive on the African continent. The Atlas Mountains were stunning and as we crossed the wind started to pick up and the now Familiar Sahara. winds really greeted us with a fabulous Sand Storm filling the car interior up with our first load of ultra fine dust. It turns out Defender’s don’t real seal against the dust!
Day 1 – It turns out this is a proper race, amazingly under prepared for what an incredible experience it is to be in a full on rally through the desert. Insane speeds, incredible terrain, dust, dust, dust and typically some good comedy.
It rained, it hailed, our windscreen wipers have broken, we took on 300kms of wild off road, our fuel pump broke (maybe) we lost our camping equipment out the back window, we lost our cooking equipment to a similar fate, all our food for a week was destroyed by a loose tool box but somehow we are still going.
Classification is in and we came dead last. It turns out we drove TOO fast and have been penalised heavily for speeding…(quite proud)
Day 2 – day of exciting sand rivers, fast tracks and huge distance. We found ourselves pushing as far south as the rally goes, and heading into a tented camp (Bivouac) for the night.
Ventura let us down, despite winning best in class for style (a made up competition by me) with an over heating fuel pump that needed to be swapped out that night, so we placed a casual 24th (better than last!)
Bivouac – God knows how many people in one tented camp for the night. Maybe 400 people, 200 tents, amazing food, ice cold beer and a welcome retreat from the endless Sand storm that raged all night.
Garage Iriki set themselves up in support of the Maroc Challenge and do the most incredible job of piecing all the broken wagons back together. I needed only the smallest assistance to fit a new fuel pump. I’d liken it to heart surgery in a sand storm…I was the anaesthetist, I thought it best to let the pro do the technical stuff. We nailed it and the car was back on the road in a blink of a sand filled eye.
Day 3 – Billed as a nice easy day, started well with epic landscapes and bone jangling rocks. Before we knew it a wild sand storm enveloped us and reduced our speed to 10kmh for many hours. The sand was insane, I’ve never seen anything like it. We could see the bonnet let alone over it, following people became impossible and so we ran off a straight bearing from the gps like a pilot in thick fog.
We had GPS issues (my fault) and as such found ourselves facing the wrong way into the oncoming race traffic and after that were forced to always follow someone else to the finish line. We came 17th today, so are improving!
Ventura running smoothly with her new heart pumping diesel, just an increase in squeaks, bangs, knocks and pieces falling off. She still goes on! Tomorrow we aim for top 10.
Day 4 – Our fastest day so far, no car trouble, only one pee stop and a great track that took us through mountain passes, gravel plains and soft sandy routes. Superb fun with no wind and finally no sand storms to contend with! Had an amazing drive up the longest single dune climb I have ever done (7km) of slow incline up this vast big sand monster, Ventura started to struggle near the top but made it no problem. Awesome technical dune section that allowed us to pass the whole pack and meant we finished in first place, but sadly a navigation error (my fault) meant we missed a Waypoint and therefore placed 12th after penalties.
Day 5 – a rally special stage. Slightly unchallenging terrain meant we had a super fast somewhat terrifying run today. Over taking from 12th all the way to the front, I have never felt closer to being in an actual rally car in my life. Totally awesome and brilliant fun, sideways, jumping, power sliding our way through the dunes and gravel tracks. The car ran beautifully and I can’t imagine how she survived the brutal thrashing the speed gave her, only one major failure – The Mantec Tyre holder in the rear finally gave up and sheared itself clean off.
Sadly we can’t seem the avoid the speeding fines, so we placed outside the top 10 again. We have one last day to try and get into the top 10. All we need is to stay under 80kmh for one day!
Day 6 – a short 90km navigation exercise, designed to test our skill at piecing together the shortest route at precise speed. Like all things made much more fun by driving super fast, so we crushed the competition coming in a full 20 mins ahead of the entire pack…but we missed 2 checkpoints so once again took a dismal 37th position overall.
Day 7/8 – we left the race with no fanfare and pointed the bonnet North to Lisbon. We decided to push as far as we could go to get home for Sunday lunch. In 48 hours we smashed 40 hours of driving, a marathon effort through snowy Atlas Mountains, rain storms and all without a windscreen wiper motor using a make shift bungee cord wiper process. We rolled into Lisbon having covered 5,000kms in 8 days totally knackered but I already can’t wait to do it all again.
