Tangiers Red Tape

Pfft... where to begin? As soon as the convoy rolled off the ferry in Tangiers on New Year's Day, the local inspectors in the Customs office decided the ambulance wasn't a tourist vehicle and therefore an import permit was required. Cue impounding of the ambulance and a hunt for some local accomodation (Verdict: clean bedding but no hot water), followed the next day by a dash through the back-streets of Tangiers to rustle up the necessary documentation. First stop, the Embassy (Gawd Bless 'Er and all who sail in her) to get a bit of paper signed by His Excellency's staff stating that the ambulance was simply passing through and in the event of the team inadvertently mislaying it during their soujourn in Morocco, Her Maj's reps would foot the bill. Having secured this, the necessary "man who can" at the port who needed said document, had of course gone home for an African lunch, so after a long wait it was back to the port to add John Hancock's in blood to a seemingly ever-increasing pile of forms in the Port Commander's office. After 27 hours, the ambulance was released from custody around 6pm yesterday (2 Jan).

In parallel to this beuraucratic buffoonery was the hunt for a Universal Joint (UJ) for the ambulance... apparently, a man named Abdul had a cousin who could secure such a rare and prized delicacy for just a small consideration (I'm not making this up...) and promised to return tout suite therewith. Naturally, he didn't return at the promised hour of 8am this morning (3 Jan) but another has now been sourced by unspecified means. The team have decided they've had enough of Tangiers and are going to move on taking the part with them and fix the ambulance at a more convenient time. Last I heard they'd stopped for a spot of lunch as it was getting rather hot.

The upshot of all this is that the team are around a day and a half behind schedule. They need to make up a lot of time to reach Marrakesh soon enough to rendevous with the other teams and be attached to a larger group for the desert crossing. Hopefully, going round rather than over the Atlas Mountains will make up a bit of time but it will be very tight - so fingers crossed everybody.

The website should start to be updated from now on: I'll add the blog posts with some extra links and route resources etc., but the 'breaking news' will most likely remain here, although the team's texts to the PBC central computer system can be accessed from the Progress page on the website. Cheers - Phil.

UPDATE: The team are de-stressing at the famous Roman Ruins at Volubilis: soothing pic by Joe.