Morocco’s notorious Rif region, a mainly mountainous area in the north, stretching over 300km from Tangier in the west to the Melwiyya River in the east is a natural boarder between Europe and Africa. It is also an area synonymous with Marijuana production.

According to some sources, the country is home to approximately 220,000 acres of Marijuana fields and it is believed that Morocco produces nearly half the world’s hashish supplies.

Called “kif” by the locals, hashish takes on a new culture and power in the Rif Mountains; unfortunately this isn’t a positive thing. Despite the production, sale and use of Marijuana being illegal it is still a massive income for the country and one of its biggest exports. The areas reputation also attracts tourists only interested in getting stoned.

Unfortunately if you are travelling in this area the locals assume you are only interested in buying drugs. For us these vast limestone mountains with forests of towering oak and cedar should have offered up what the guidebook described as “One of Morocco’s most memorable journeys”. 

With previous knowledge of the areas notoriety is was with no surprise that on arrival our vision was impaired by a thick dense cloud and seemingly the Rif was living up to its reputation. Upon opening Bee-bee’s windows and not being hit by a recognisable stench it become blatantly apparent that the dense cloud obscuring the road wasn’t a thick weed haze but a naturally occurring fog.

As with most criminal activity the drug business here is far from friendly, Ketama in particular is by all accounts a rough and dangerous place with plenty of scams involving tourists, drug dealers and the police. Driving through this busy town we didn’t see one woman.

The fog only exaggerated the seediness of the area as ghostly men desperate to make sales appeared through the haze at the side of the road and attempted to stop our car.

For most of our journey between Al Hoceima and the beautiful town of Chefchaouen visibility was at times down to about 15m. Driving on these narrow roads in such conditions, often with sheer cliff edges (we think) and impeding doom around every corner was not a pleasant experience. 

Occasionally we’d make a futile attempt to wait for the fog to lift in small laybys. These were always hampered when our car was surrounded by groups of men who’d appear from the forest edge aggressively trying to make a sale. At times our car was tail-gated by gangs of menacing men in Mercedes and vans who overtook and attempted to stop our vehicle.

Sadly what should have been a spectacular drive through some of the countries most impressive scenery became quite a stressful 6-hour chore until we descended the 1500m high ridge and the fog cleared. Fortunately our final destination at the end of our perilous journey was the beautifully friendly town of Chefchaouen; restoring our faith in what is a wonderful country.


Andy    

Driving in Morocco is hazardous in many ways and off-road driving on the ‘piste’ even more so as we discovered when we hit a large field of Fesh-Fesh!

“Fesh-Fesh, what is Fesh-Fesh?” I hear you cry.

Fesh-Fesh, as the Arabians call it, is the by-product of thousands of years of erosion; sand that has been worn down from it’s granular size into a fine dust, not too dissimilar to talcum powder.

What makes Fesh-Fesh so dangerous is that you don’t see it coming until you are in the thick of it as we discovered whilst driving a 90 mile off-road route from Tafraout to Taouz along the Moroccan/Algeria border in the South-East.

When encountered it can spell instant disaster, as its smoke-like plumes can quickly obscure vision and it’s quicksand like qualities can leave you with a sinking feeling. Tread too deeply or too slowly and expect the Fesh-Fesh to envelope your vehicle. Luckily for us we had aired the tyres down on the friendlier, slightly forgiving, soft yellow sand prior to hitting the Fesh-Fesh field.

In a slight panic and with Emma crying “whatever you do, don’t stop” in my ear I nailed the accelerator and was thankful Bee-bee’s gas guzzling 3L turbo engine had the horsepower to get us through it. A quick glance in the wing mirror revealed the volcano-esq clouds slowly engulfing Bee-bee as the power and traction got sucked from the vehicle. Wrestling with the steering wheel I attempted to aim the car at the surest tracks ahead and by some miracle after about 500m managed to find some firmer ground.

Once airborne, this billowing dust can linger, creating havoc for anyone following in your tyre tracks. Due to its powdery qualities the Fesh-Fesh adheres to anything it can settle on, and it wasn’t until the following day at our campsite that the Fesh-Fesh really started to cause me some real problems.

Whilst doing my daily undercar crawl I inhaled a face full of Fesh-Fesh that had gathered in the chassis rails, my nose started streaming instantly and a bout of sneezing begun that has lasted 8 days and counting. A full-on dry cough developed and a quick email to Doctor Lois, our resident expedition doctor, revealed the rather over-priced cough sweets I had purchased weren’t going to do much.

Inflammation of the airways or ‘Sahara Lung’ as we called it was the diagnosis and not much can help except a Ventoline inhaler and time. After a week of sleepless coughy nights I still have a croaky voice and the slightest of dust sets of a sneezing fit that has slowly been depleting our supplies of Anti-Histamines!

Despite feeling rather poorly and sorry for myself I would still rather drive that track on a daily basis than commute to work everyday!


Andy

(Photo by Thomas Ozanne)

We received extremely sad news last week that two of my good friends, ex-work colleagues and fellow artists from my home island of Guernsey were tragically killed in Thailand. Peter Root and Mary Thompson were hit by a pick-up truck in a province east of Bangkok last Wednesday whilst in the middle of their 'around the world' cycling odyssey.

Pete and Mary have always been a great inspiration to me, both creatively and in their adventures. I've had the pleasure of working with them professionally when they exhibited at the gallery I used to own as well as working with Pete for several years at the local art school. Both Pete and Mary were two genuinely beautiful people who will be sorely missed. 

It is comforting only in the knowledge that they died following their dream. Pete and Mary were cycling around the world and we had planned on meeting up with them in the 'stans prior to our unplanned return home.

Our condolences go out to their family and friends, you were great people and will be missed greatly.

Andy

Prior to our Truckin’ hell we’d made the decision to head straight back home; unfortunately we were 8000 miles away in Mongolia. In hindsight our departure from Mongolia was probably a little too hasty; a bit more Dakar Rally than Mongol Rally.
Bad roads coupled with some wannabe Sébastien Loeb-esq driving damaged Bee-Bee’s rear axle.

Luckily my daily under-car crawl exposed the hairline crack in the right-hand side upper trailing arm mount early on. The part that had cracked is essentially one of four main connections holding the entire rear axle in place. The discovery was an unnecessary blow – talk about kicking a man when he’s down!

Due to the remoteness of our location we had no choice but to lash up the mount with a heavy-duty ratcheting cargo strap and hope for the best. I kept a close eye on it over the following 300 miles of bad road. It gradually got worse, by the time we arrived in Russia the mount had completely sheered off but luckily the pot-holed corrugated dust roads of Mongolia had been replaced by relatively smooth Russian tarmac. The ratchet strap was now holding everything tight in place.

A weld job would mean we’d lose a valuable day’s driving and a complete axle replacement would mean we’d lose a good week. Given the situation and the need to be with my parents we re-evaluated our options and decided the temporary fix was secure enough to last the journey home; it did. Macgyver would be proud!

On our return to the UK we started the process of getting Bee-Bee back into ‘adventure’ shape. A new axle was sourced from Jap 4x4 Parts and a visit to the Hilux Surf Forum secured a date with Tony the Hilux Surf oracle. Whilst the axle was off it made sense to replace anything that might have already taken a battering. A visit to Rough Trax secured a Super Pro polyurethane rear panhard rod & trailing arm bush kit, some new bump-stops, anti-roll bar bushes and a couple of front anti-roll bar link rods which had also taken a battering. 

The axle swap was fairly straightforward, especially with Tony’s knowledge. One area that could have been problematic was swapping the trailing arm bushes. Luckily Tony has access to a 25 tonne press and a lathe. The press ram was a little too large for the bushes so Tony hit the lathe and knocked up a couple of male and female adapters to fit either side of the bushes. With the press the old bushes popped out pretty easily and the new ones straight in. We had trouble undoing a couple of bolts, reminding me of the importance of Copaslip, nothing the reciprocating saw couldn’t deal with though.

When replacing axles on 4x4 vehicles it is important to check the diff ratios are the same, if not you’ll have back wheels that’ll want to turn at a different speed to the front wheels making for a very interesting ride. On a Toyota this information can be found on the VIN plate in the engine bay. The axle code is four digits, ours is G294, this translates to a differential size of 8.0", final ratio of 4.1, and a 4 pinion set up. This website was very useful for translating the code. You can also double-check the ratio as Toyota colour code the end of the diff, double check the two axles are the same and you should be right!

When fully loaded Bee-Bee has always had a bit of a saggy back end. Whilst we had the springs out we fitted a pair of spring assisters to help firm up the already upgraded springs.

A couple of days in the workshop gave us a great opportunity to not only replace the axle but complete a few other jobs refining Bee-Bee’s status as number one adventure mobile.

One modification we carried out was to remove the air-con unit and air-con radiator. This would improve access to the alternator and improve airflow through the main radiator as well as removing one of the three fan belts (less to go wrong and less to carry). The left over air-con electric radiator cooling fan is now acting as an emergency, manually operated cooling fan aimed at the main radiator.

Whilst the main radiator and fan were all out we topped up the oil in the viscous fan. This modification is a very simple but effective one. The fan on these vehicles is of the viscous type. This means that is has an oil operated clutch in it. When the engine heats up, the oil changes consistency and the fan starts to grip more and turn faster. The oil in the fan can be replaced with a different consistency making it kick in slightly earlier, cooling the engine more effectively.

The mods to the cooling system now make a noticeable difference to Bee-Bee’s running temperature and we have the option of turning on the electric auxiliary fan when the temperature starts to rise too.

If you want to read more about some of the other cooling mods we’ve made to deal with the extra weight, click here.


Andy

The eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed that our last ‘Spot’ GPS location had deviated from our planned route. In actuality we have just arrived back in the UK after motoring home from Mongolia in 15 days (a feat any Mongol Rally team would be proud of). This slight temporary change of plan has come about after receiving news that both my mum and dad have been diagnosed with Cancer. Both Emma and I decided that the best course of action was to return home whilst our visa’s still allowed us to do so easily.

For now adventuring is temporarily on hold whilst I spend some time with my family. We will continue to update the website and blog, whilst the period back in the UK will give us valuable time to give Bee-Bee some seriously needed TLC before we head back out on the road again.


Andy

Embarrassingly, us Brits too often rely on others knowledge of our mother tongue when travelling. With every good intention to communicate with the natives, we armed ourselves with phrase books and even spent the last few weeks prior to our departure driving to work listening to a ‘Леарн Руссиан’ CD in favour of the breakfast show. Russian is the largest native language in Europe and spoken by 144 million people. Unfortunately, following our initial attempts, this statistic is highly unlikely to rise to 144,000002. 

The problem with phrase books is firstly you have to frantically flick to the relevant page (hoping your topic is included), and then piece together the sentence. Secondly, you have to be able to pronounce the phrase correctly, taking into account the prolific use of unfamiliar zh, v and rrrr sounds in Russian speech. Finally, even if you successfully complete steps one and two, the chances of understanding the response to your question are slim to none. Even if that response is repeated several times in increasing volume levels.

Our guidebook speaks of wonderful places of interest but the town names are in English and our Atlas in Cyrillic; cue painstaking conversion letter by letter (ю is a letter?!?) to translate the place, then locate it on the map. Take for example looking for signs for the town of Жиздра. Our initial description would sound something like this “spider, backwards N, three, chimney, P, A” when in fact it is pronounced zheh-ee-zeh-deh-rrr-ar. Add to this the fact you’re travelling 80kmph on a motorway and signs are infrequent at best and you have a real navigational challenge. We now have a series of post-it notes stuck on the dashboard listing the upcoming towns in Cyrillic and have learnt to recognise essential words such as “Centre” “Stop” and “Diesel” through repeated observation. 

Striving to taste local cuisine yet being faced with an indecipherable menu is a frustrating predicament. On one occasion we had to settle with ordering “one meat, one fish” to a confused waiter. Dictionary in hand, a second determined attempt to decode a basic menu took so long the kitchen had closed and we were left with a bag of crisps. You would think supermarkets would be easier, being able to see the food items, but twice we have poured drinking yoghurt into our tea and bitten into cheese pastries to accompany a beer only to discover they’re custard. Then we discovered the canteen; a traditional eatery for workers, these bustling eateries are self-service with all the food on display in various counters; salad, soup, cold food, hot food and dessert. Extremely good-value (around £3 each) we are able to try all the typical Russian cuisine we had only read about until now (even if some of it looked as unfamiliar as it’s Cyrillic name).  

Verbal communication is by no means the sole way to interrelate with local people. We have experienced some memorable interactions; laughing with a husband as his wife waded miles from the lakeshore in an attempt to reach deeper swimming water, the bemused couple who on seeing our rooftent invited us to their home to stay with “tea, coffee… vodka!” The giggles of an ice-cream vendor as she realised she had given me a cone plus double its value in change and hilarious pictionary-style ‘games’ indicating details of city directing, diesel filling and grocery purchasing. Occassionally ‘Lost in Translation’ but as the days go by in Russia, increasingly finding our way. 


Emma

Driving allows us to get a real feel for a country, especially in a land as vast as Russia. In 10 days we have probably seen more of the country than most of its inhabitants will in a lifetime.

On our trip it has become apparent that each country has a style of driving that is representative of that countries people. The Germans drive with precision, The Norwegians are courteous and the Russians chaotic!

In Northern Russia many of the roads are literally falling apart at the seams. Most of the roads are subsiding and it is not uncommon to hit 5, 10, 15, 20cm deep potholes. Driving is tiresome and not too dissimilar to playing some kind of concentration heavy computer game. Your eyes are constantly flitting between the immediate road ahead and what canyon sized hazards may be approaching in the distance. This demanding style of driving means that swerving cars are commonplace. This makes for a challenging ride in a right-hand drive vehicle once you take into consideration the Russian approach to overtaking!

Steering Wheel Shrines, at the sides of the potholed roads, covered in bright plastic flowers mark the spots of fatal accidents. These tragic mementos do nothing to deter the Russian drivers who choose to ignore the solid white lines and no overtaking signs and insist on passing on blind corners, hill brows and occasionally on the inside on the even more potholed dirt hard shoulder. Apparently overtaking as close as you can to the car in front is the only way.

Occasionally we’ll witness an act of stupidity that demonstrates the prevalence of verge memorials. Once you’ve witnessed a man on a moped with no helmet being towed at about 60mph by a rope wrapped around his handlebars and back to the car it’s hard to be shocked by children cycling or teens riding on the roofs of Ladas on the motorway.

Driving on the M8 south, the main carriageway joining Arkhangelsk in the north and Moscow in the south, we are part of and often overtaken by huge road trains of lunatic Russian truck drivers. The trucks, many un-roadworthy, travelling at speed and often no more than 3 metres behind the one in front, belch out black noxious diesel fumes as they motor through the Russian countryside on this single lane highway. Woman work the fields, raking hay occasionally looking up as this ‘Mad Max’ train rumbles by, the scene is reminiscent of Turner’s famous painting ‘Rain, Steam and Speed’ where the workers in the fields marvel at the steam locomotive racing by.

Driving in the cities is equally as dangerous as on the rural roads. The road surfaces are generally better but round every corner the possibility of swerving cars and potholes still beckon. At times the 8 lane wide streets don’t even have a centre line let alone individual lanes.  Like the rural roads, overtaking, undertaking and occasionally forcing your way through are all the norm. This lack of road markings can be a real nightmare at major road junctions. If you are lucky they have traffic lights, not that the Russian’s obey them, and if you are unlucky the junction collides at 90 degrees with another fast moving 4 lane wide highway where seemingly no one has right of way. To top off the whole junction experience often the Russian’s will place a 50m long zebra crossing on each side.

Due to the nature of Russian driving habits accidents happen often and when they do the Russian way to deal with them throws another danger into the road. When cars collide, no matter how minimal, the done thing is to stop immediately. The drivers are expected to leave the cars exactly where they are and get out and stand next to their car, no matter how fast the traffic around them is moving, and wait for the police to arrive.

Chaos ensues as cars block the road and drivers take risks to get past the stranded vehicles and their owners. Don’t panic! As surely once the police are on the scene they’ll take some kind of precautions to calm the traffic, clear the road and make sure the traffic starts to flow?  Actually no, what happens is the complete opposite, the police arrive, park badly in the street adding to the chaos and spend about two hours deciding whose fault the accident was with the drivers involved. The whole time this is happening no warning signs are placed, no traffic control enforced and all the police focus on are the cars involved as traffic continues to motor past. Once the police have decided whose to blame the cars are moved and the police leave, clearly it’s not their job to sweep the road of any debris or clean up spilt oil and fuel!

If by some miracle you make it through this motoring minefield you’re likely to get pulled over by the traffic police who inextricably stop vehicles randomly. Luckily having a right hand drive car helps as they always approach the passenger side where Emma awaits with a smile and the phrase “Prabliem, turist?” at which point we are more than often told to drive on!

Luckily we have avoided any serious dramas. We have had a couple of close calls though; the most serious being when a red brick being carried by an oncoming overloaded truck bounced off on a bump and came flying towards our car on the motorway. We watched in slow-motion horror as the truck motored past obliviously at 50+mph and the brick bounced across the road towards our car (travelling at 50+mph). Some serious reaction swerving meant we missed it by inches, as small fragments ricocheted off the bottom of our car.

Andy

A Russian summertime brings with it glorious hot, sunny days, ‘white nights’ of almost no darkness, swimming in rivers and al fresco drinking and dining in cities. Unfortunately for wild campers it brings something else; a deluge of winged camp invaders in a variety of invertebrate forms. Pulling up to what from the inside of the car looks like an idyllic site has become a lottery as to what will be the flying organism of choice that evening. The ubiquitous mosquito makes a guaranteed appearance but at varying intensities; at times we have been met by hordes of the blood-sucking beasts and literally dived from the car, hastily putting up the roof tent then a mad scramble up the ladder, swatting at bare ankles and ‘battening down the hatches’ with skilful zipping action. The eternal daylight means it’s a constant aerial attack so come morning the ‘mozzy dance’ is performed in reverse, complete with air swiping, leg whacking and face wafting.

Could it get worse? Absolutely… giant horse flies swoop from the sky at another pitch, relentlessly dive-bombing and occasionally inflicting a painful bite. Large size isn’t always an airborne insects best advantage, tiny midges swarm in their thousands; their minute proportions allowing them to squeeze through the tents window mesh and land stealthily to nip unnoticed.

In contrast, we have arrived at tranquil countryside meadows to be greeted by more graceful, beautiful (and harmless) winged creatures in the form of butterflies, moths and crickets in a stunning variety of shapes and colours. One white butterfly aggregates in huge numbers, making even roadside rubbish piles aesthetically pleasing. When camping on the banks of the River Volga we encountered magnificent dragon flies and witnessed the metamorphosis of mayflies en-masse, leaving their ghostly white, fragile cases in their hundreds on one side of the roof tent as they emerged swiftly into fully-formed winged adults.

As with many things encountered during travelling in strange new countries, patience increases and (one of us) has started to learn that unleashing a tirade of profanities in the direction of any mini-beast is futile. As we cross into Asia from the European side of Russia we are ready to face whatever new life forms are out there (with an insect field guide in one hand and a raised flip-flop in the other).

Emma

Last weekend, little Bee-Bee spat her dummy from the pram for the first time. I had spent the day clay pigeon shooting and boozing on the little island of Herm, on my return to Guernsey, Emma drove Bee-Bee into town to pick me up from the pub. When it was time to leave Emma went to start Bee-Bee and all we got was the dreaded solenoid click. By this time the days drink had caught up with me and I wasn’t on my top car fixing form.

The lights, windows, etc worked and so the batteries (our Surf is fitted with a winter kit which means it has two starter batteries for extra ummmph) were not completely flat. Although being a little drunk I still knew that this didn’t actually mean a thing, to start the car uses ALL the power and if the batteries had run down just a little they might not have had the kick to get the starter motor going. In my inebriated state I did the classic repeating myself thing, and constantly asked Emma if she had left the lights on.

Luckily with the bonnet raised someone recognised the international symbol for ‘car help needed’ and offered a jump start (from a smug Range Rover owner no less). We rolled the car back and attached the jumper cables. Still the starter motor just clicked away. I tried knocking the starter motor with a hammer to try and get the solenoid to engage, I also tried rocking the car back and forth in gear a few times too. The Range Rover owner left and two minutes later someone else offered a jump start, again nothing helped. In the end trying to fix a car in the dark, wet (it was raining...I hadn’t pee’d myself) and whilst drunk seemed a little pointless and so we pushed her back into a car park space and got a taxi home.

The next day with a clear head, daylight and a few tools we headed back down to the car. We initially tried turning the key in the hope that she might have magically fixed herself, but all we got was the dreaded click, click, click, click.

A quick mooch under the bonnet revealed one of the two fan belts that run to the alternator had snapped. The Surf has a three belt system (one for the air con and two for the alternator/water pump) so that if one snaps, the remaining belts will still power the water pump so the car won’t over heat. The remaining belt that was running to the alternator was loose and more than likely turned the alternator but not enough to maintain a regular charge to the batteries.

After a bit of tinkering and some butchering of some incredibly cheap jumper leads we managed to fire Bee-Bee up by jumping her off our Toyota MR2. I’m still a little confused why the Range Rover didn’t chuck out enough power to get her started whilst the little battery in the MR2 did the job fairly easily.

Anyway she was running and we managed to get her home. I ordered a belt kit with the plan to change all three belts whilst I was at it from Rough Trax. Two days later the belts turned up, along with a new heavy duty set of 3m jumper cables. I also collected my multimeter from work, with the plan of testing the alternator, starter motor and batteries properly.

I had Friday afternoon off work and decided to get busy on the belts. This was the first time I had worked on Bee-Bee properly and everything was going swimmingly, a few bolts were a bit awkward to reach but nothing out the ordinary...until! I got to the point where it was time to put the new belts on, the alternator was as loose as it would go on the adjustors but the belts seemed to by mm’s too short. I had no doubt that the belts weren’t correct as Rough Trax specializes in Hilux Surf’s. The only reason I could think of was that because the alternator had recently been replaced and that maybe the new one was not a stock Toyota part and the spacing was set-up slightly differently. Anyway after an hour of trying every trick in the trade to get them on I decided I had enough for one day as the light was dropping.

Feeling very disheartened I hit up the Hilux Surf forum with the hope that someone else had encountered the same problem and that the answer was awaiting me in html format. No such luck. In bed that evening I had a bit of a brainwave; if I removed all the alternator bolts rather than just releasing the tension on it, then I could angle the alternator, hook the belts over and bolt it back in place with the belts on. In theory it seemed like a good idea. On Saturday morning I logged on to the forum again and posed the question, being slightly impatient I didn’t bother waiting for anyone to reply and decided to just crack on with it.

The alternator is held in place with just two bolts; one acts as a pivot and attaches it to the engine whilst the other bolts it to the tension adjustment set-up. It was a bit of a squeeze to reach both of these but they came out without too much of a fight.

The alternator on the other hand was well and truly wedged in place between both sides of the pivot bracket, with some seriously wiggling/prying it dropped out. Having the alternator loose meant that it was easy to hook the two fan belts over the pulley. When came the time to put the alternator back I was faced with yet another problem. The mount on the engine block where the alternator pivots has a shim in it that tightens up against the alternator to clamp it in place when you tighten the main alternator bolt. This shim was wedged in position, to the point where I wasn’t even sure it was supposed to move. The shim being wedged in place meant getting the alternator back in between the mounts was nigh on impossible. Again I went to the forum for help, and again being impatient I didn’t wait around for an answer. I popped to the hardware store and bought a nut, bolt and washer set-up with the idea of sandwiching the shim back in place by tightening the nut and bolt through it. It worked, with the shim back in the open position it gave me loads more room to play with and slipping the alternator back in with the belts on was a piece of cake. The second bolt was a little more annoying to get in but it went with a bit of persistence. After that everything went back together fairly straight forward.

Once back together with the batteries in place I checked them with the meter and discovered they still had just under 12v in them. I tested the new jumper cables and she started first time, I checked the meter reading again and the batteries read at 14.3v so no problems with the alternator. I left it running for 10 minutes to build up some charge and switched her off and tried her again, she started first time.

So what should have been a simple 30/40 minute job turned into about a 3 – 4 hour job. Once I had finished I checked back on the forum and discovered that a few people had commented on my post, most advised it was a bad idea and pretty much not possible.

So despite all the problems and against the odds I was just happy that I managed to find a way to do it. Although in hindsight there may have been an easier way to do it by removing the water pump pulley and hooking the belts over. Anyway, it has been about 10 years since I have worked on any cars and if I had not been able to sort this it would have really knocked my confidence.

One thing it has taught me is that improvising works but having the correct tools for the job really speeds up the process and lessons the stress.


Andy