December 28, 2011

by Stephen Jan in Marrakech, Morocco

With the ambulance out of commission and the mission in jeopardy, I was in no mood to party on Christmas Eve, even though I was in Marrakesh. Every Moroccan since Tangiers insisted that Marrakesh was the place to be. So far as cities go, it was the city of cities. In Marrakesh you can find anything and everything for cheap.

Well we had already discovered by now that auto parts can only be found in Casablanca, not in Marrakesh. Mike’s hotel neither offered soap nor toilet paper. If you ask them, they’ll tell you to find it in the Medina. You can certainly find tons overpriced useless tourist stuff in the market. But practical stuff like toilet paper? forget it.  So much for being able to find anything and everything in Marrakesh.

Forget ever trying to relaxing stroll around the Medina. Foreigners get aggressively hassled and hounded to no end. Everyone is looking to pull a buck off of you: a young child pan handling for pennies, a teenager offering to guide you somewhere you don’t want to go for a dollar, and an old man walking a bicycle who’ll guide you through winding streets and unlit alleys to find this hotel, demanding 20 euros for taking you in a complete circle. Take a picture of a local, he’ll immediately demand payment. The place is overrun tourists, prices are tourist prices, and tourist prices are never cheap. Marrakesh so far, not a fan.

December 25th, Sunday : No progress on repairs. Nothing changed. Spent the day being hassled by the Medina. The likelihood of reaching Bamako seemed pretty dim, morale was pretty low, we got wind that the other teams have already moved on to Agadir. December 26th, Monday : Khalid ordered his crew to extract the differential housing and drive shaft. The damage was obvious, I didn’t need to explain anything, not that anyone spoke any English.

Khalid made some phone calls to look for the part. I loitered around the garage with fingers crossed, hoping for good news. His clientele was predominantly Europeans completely convinced that Khalid was the best mechanic in Marrakesh. Hopefully, he wasn’t also the most expensive mechanic in Marrakesh as well.

The day ended with Khalid telling us that a part was found, but not the part. The new anxiety of the night was that the part to fit actually fit – if not, we’d be back to square one.

The other teams were en route to Layounne.

December 27th, Tuesday:

The part arrived Tuesday morning. Khalid showed us, and went to work on installing the unit. We were hoping that was that but apparently we had another problem: the universal cross joint was busted. Now we had to cross our fingers and hope that another could be found.

After some scrounging, grinding, and sparks flying, we had an cross joint for us by afternoon.

By day’s end, things were looking up. The differential housing was installed, cross joint was replaced, and the ambulance was actually moving again. We drove off at 5:30 in a celebratory mood, drove 50 meters, and took an immediate U turn. The speedometer was busted and the transmission was making funny sounds.  Looked like it’ll be another night at the garage.

December 28th, Wednesday:

In an epic turn of events, the accelerator cable snapped while we were trying to demonstrate the transmission problem to Khalid. Once again, the ambulance was out of commission. Not only that, Kunal realized he had to extend his  8 day visa. Khalid told us that he’d try to look for replacement sensor for the speedometer but the part wouldn’t arrive until Thursday at the earliest.  Meanwhile, he started working replacing the accelerator cable and we were just going to live with the transmission problem.

By day’s end, things weren’t looking so hot. The visa problem remained an open issue with uncooperative Marrakesh police officers. The accelerator cable was replaced. The speedometer sensor was still unfound. We resolved to depart on Thursday no matter what came up.

The other teams should be camping at Dakhla tonight, 1100km away. For team last responders, this was the fifth night at the garage.

December 29th, Thursday:

Thursday morning, we made a stop at the police station which turned out to be a complete waste of time. In the end, after days of back and forth. They didn’t extend Kunal’s visa, which according to the Indian Embassy was a simple procedure. But just because it’s a simple procedure doesn’t mean it’d actually get done. The day before they told us that all the “paperwork” was “prepared” and ready to go. They sent us away telling us that they’d text us a phone number later that we could call. It was the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.

The other teams were 1500 km ahead at border. We’d be spending the next 24 hours trying to catch up.