Musings

Things we should have brought but didn’t

• Torque wrench
• Engine & gearbox mounts
• Shock absorber bushes
• One Shot grease
• Tin opener (the first one we bought broke, the second was left in Gambia accidentally)
• Spare tea towels
• Photos of home
• Pepper
• Drawing pins
• Mosquito nets for all the windows & hatches
• Supernoodles
• Spatula (purchased in Spain)
• Better thought-out selection of food
• Spare bulbs for the spotlights
• Toothpicks (essential in endemic mango regions)
• Lots of squash, because it brightens up the water, and it’s really hard to buy in Africa
• Matches (easier to avoid burning your hand when lighting stove)

Things we brought which were a total waste of time

• 4 different hats (David)
• Gallons of moisturiser
• Steering lock
• GPS cable (didn’t work properly)
• Laptop mounting bracket (moved around too much, too hard to hide from police, so sat laptop on engine cover instead)
• 240 PG Tips tea bags

Things we brought which turned out to be really useful

• Baby wipes
• Lots of bin bags
• 50% deet in non-aerosol spray
• Hand Sanitiser (alcohol-based cleaner, needs no water)
• Awning
• Foldaway chairs
• Gaffa tape (for waxing Nicki’s legs)
• Carnet de Passage (useful in all countries south of Morocco)
• Photo printer
• Nicki’s piece of material: used to lie on at beach, used as a towel, used to block exhaust fumes from getting into cab, used to stop seatbelt burning her love handles
• Spare set of engine gaskets
• Spare clutch master & slave cylinders
• Vacuum pump/gauge (for checking vacuum-operated diff and bleeding clutch)
• Decent nozzle for fuel jerry cans which lets air back in as they empty

Places we particularly liked

• The beach at Tujering, Gambia
• Mali town, Guinea
• Niokolo-Koba National Park, Senegal/Guinea border
• Dakhla, Western Sahara
• Nouadhibou, Mauritania, considering it’s basically a big ore terminal
• The desert north-east of Smara, Western Sahara

Places we were particularly unimpressed by

• Rosso border crossing, Mauritania/Senegal border
• Barra ferry terminal / town, north bank of the Gambia river
• Kaolack, Senegal (David didn’t mind so much but Nicki was not a big fan)
• The campsites at Agadir

Recommended food to take (with hindsight)

• Supernoodles
• Squash in large quantities
• Tinned puddings, eg sponge puddings
• Custard powder
• Salt & pepper
• Small amounts of rice & pasta
• Tinned fruit
• Tins of mixed vegetables
• Pasta in sauce
• Packet sauces, eg cheese sauce
• Sandwich fillers in jars
• Tinned tuna
• Baked Beans
• Smash

Recommended food to buy there

• Bread – baguettes everywhere, round flat baps in Morocco
• UHT milk
• Fresh fruit & veg
• Bottled water
• Rice
• Mayonnaise
• Crisps
• Nuts (not as cheap as you’d think)
• Biscuits (varied quality)
• Ice creams

Things you have to remember when you get back

• Don’t finger the bread to try to find a loaf that isn’t stale and doesn’t have ants in it.
• Don’t toot your horn when the traffic lights go green.
• If somebody is driving like an idiot, it’s not because they are used to a different method of driving, or that there’s a cultural difference, it’s because they’re an idiot.
• Don’t talk about people out loud assuming they probably can’t understand you.
• Drive on the left!

Nice things about being back

• When you have a shower, you don’t have to worry about the water going cold or running out altogether.
• There’s nice food in the fridge and it hasn’t gone off.
• The cheese isn’t Laughing Cow.
• You’re not likely to get malaria.
• Mobile calls and texts are cheap again.
• Nicki doesn’t wake up, look across and think “Oh no! I’ve pulled a man with a beard!”
• The putty on the car windows isn’t melting.
• All your stuff and your living space isn’t totally covered in red dust.
• You don’t have to give out pens to the officials at the border.
• Everything’s really green!

Things we learned

• West Africa is not a dangerous, edgy place to travel. We even heard of somebody who’d been through Liberia and said it was fine. There may be occasional dodgy areas, like any part of the world, but I’d say on average it’s no less safe here than in Somerset.
• However, malaria is a serious risk. Each year, British tourists to Gambia die of it. While we were in Morocco, a Polish traveller in Ghana died of malaria.
• Bush camping is more comfortable than camping in a campsite, in every respect we can think of.
• It’s quite hard to work out who is trying to rip you off and who is just being friendly. Unless they use a giveaway phrase like “It’s nice to be nice” (see below).
• The Mandinka for “white man” is “toubab” – but we didn’t get the hang of the more complicated word for “black man”.
• It’s useful to pick up French-speaking hitch hikers when crossing French-speaking borders.
• The roads and pistes here really do pound the daylights out of your truck.
• “Ciel” bottled water is made by Coca-Cola and is bottled tap water, somewhat like their Dasani fiasco in UK. It’s the only bottled water we actually disliked the taste of.
• The little sturdy-looking brown & black goats fart something chronic.
• You should write down your passport & vehicle details on a sheet of A4 and photocopy it, to give to police checkpoints as a “fiche”.
• The Moroccans north of Tiznit are out to get your money. Possibly all of them, but certainly the vast majority.
• If anybody says “it’s nice to be nice”, “it’s good to be good”, or even worse, “it’s nice to be important, but more important to be nice”, then you can guarantee they’re NOT going to be good or nice. Ideally run these people over straight away.
• Dollars are useless in West Africa. Euros are a much better bet. Travellers’ Cheques are a pain to change because you have to use a bank in most places. Euro cash is king here. I wish I hadn’t brought any dollars at all, and had brought mostly cash and only a small amount of Travellers’ Cheques for emergencies.
• You get much less hassle in the tourist-centred souqs if you go in the middle of a World Cup football match.