Banjul, The Gambia
We made it! We knew we would! We're now back in the UK (and the US) and the trip seems long, long ago… We're already planning the next one! Anyway, we had a great time and the Golves did very well. As you know, the grey one was sold in Nouakchott and the red one is going to auction very soon (see here for details: http://tinyurl.com/bvgt4 ). We're sad to see it go…
We loved most of the trip, especially the desert sections. However, The Gambia wasn't very nice. In all my travels I've never had so much hassle in one place. “Do you want to sell your mobile” to “give me your shoes” gets asked of you everywhere, from walking the streets in tourist places (fair enough), to the waiter serving your food (bugger off!). That coupled with the night we had in Barra sleeping in the cars waiting for the ferry – “You'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy”, ok that was about Mos Eisley, but works well enough for Barra. One of us ended up punching a bloke, other teams got stuff nicked, I sprinted after a kid trying to steal the Pel cases off the roof and we also got an Ortleib bag slashed (though the tent inside was ok). Hassle, hassle, hassle, that's all we got. We were glad to leave, but we had one more surprise waiting for us. Arriving back at East Midlands airport, the other Ortleib bag came out on the conveyor open. Shit, I packed the Epson P-2000 right in the middle of the sleeping bags as I wanted to it be safe from knocks as it had all our 800 digital photos on it. The only way that it was seen would be via an xray machine. Thieving Bastards.
Suffice to say I don't recommend The Gambia to anyone, go to Senegal the people are much nicer. I'm double annoyed that we got so much hassle and stuff stolen as we were raising money for them! I hate to lump everyone in it together, and we did meet a few nice people, but I would never go back there, nor would I give a penny to help any of them.
Anyway, that won't spoil an otherwise great trip, 4×2 in the Sahara? No problem!
Western Sahara
Arrived in Layounne, a city in Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara of 200,000 people and a host of UN Land Cruisers. And no pubs… Still, we had a nice drive of about 600km on good roads with little traffic, so we could cruise at 140kph. The cars are running well and getting 700km per tank. Tomorrow we're off to Daklar.
Near Burgos, Spain
Nice bit of snow for the time of year.
