Slovakia-Mauritania journey

I was accompanied by my brother and my nephew, we spent 8 days together while camping in Slovenia, Italy, France, Spain and Portugal and had lovely time exploring some lakes, caves and beautiful cathedrals alongside the way. My brother did most of the driving which was very helpful.

They flew back home from Lisboa and I was on my own. The car I chose for the journey is Mitsubishi Outlander from 2008. I decided to buy an older car as it will be easier to repair in Africa if something goes wrong. My brother did a tremendous job and made sure all the necessary things were exchanged and repaired so I am good to go.

I crossed to Morocco via ferry from Spain and arrived at 3am in the morning. There were 2 different quues and I thought I only need to wait in one of them. Big mistake which I realized after I got off from the ferry only to be returned back to empty ship for another document:) After an hour I finally found the police officer and got the correct paperwork.

Car insurance is mandatory in Morocco but everything was closed at 3am, so I drove to Tangier and waited for the shop to open up. There was almost no parking around so I parked on a busy street with another 3 cars in front of me and hoped for the best. People at the agency were super nice and even managed to print out a lot of documents for upcoming police checkpoint as police often require it. After half an hour I returned to my car, which to my surprise was gone. After the initial shock I asked in the nearby café if they seen anything and I have been told that police took it with one more car. In this case I am definitely the one to blame, as I parked like an idiot:) I went to the police headquarters and then they sent me to the Fourriere, a place for confiscated cars. My phone died and nobody there spoke English or Spanish so we had a lot of fun communicating with each other as I don’t speak French at all. Long story short I realized that my insurance is valid only from midnight next day and they wont release the car till then. I went back to the agency and asked if the date can be changed. Unfortunately, that’s the law and I had to wait, the lady from Sanlam agency was super helpful and drove me to back to police and made sure that they will release my car at midnight and even helped me to find a hotel nearby. The gates at police opened exactly at 00:01 and I could start my journey in Africa.

I drove whole night to Marrakesh and visited beautiful cities Rabat and Casablanca. I stayed in Marrakesh for 1 day with Mr. Brian Callahan, the legendary organizer of Gibraltar open and then drove through Western Sahara to the border. I was aware that border crossings will be the biggest problem over my journey but didn’t think its going to be so early. Arrived there around 2pm, for some reason they opened the border only at 3pm. After couple of hours and multiple checks I made it to the last window at Moroccan side. The guy behind the window was absolutely useless, after a while there where many people waiting, some started to jump the quue, people shouting and quarreling etc. I spent around 1 hour at the last window but I guess he just put my Slovakian passport aside and dealt with Moroccan ones. Same thing happened to another French guy. Obviously, they closed the offices at 7pm, with around 20 people still waiting at the last window. I had to go back to Morocco, find the hotel and come back in the morning. My car had to stay between the Morocco-Mauritania border, which was borderline insane:) It took an hour of paperwork in the morning so I could get to my car and I was off to Mauritania border. Surprisingly, it was quite smooth there and I was through after 2 hours. Overall the border took my 10 hours to cross and online visa to Mauritania another 5 hours as their website is from nineties. Road to Nouakchott was quite bumpy but I made it without problems. I had a very warm welcome at capitol by chess federation and I am looking forward to teach here:)

Stefan