Let the adventure begin, [Vehicle 2, Day #1: 17.10.2023]

Some 24 years after the initial seed was planted in Trevor’s mind, 3 years delayed, and with some adjustments made to the original plan, departure day dawned. After packing a few final things, a quick breakfast, and saying farewell to Trevor’s cousin from the USA who was staying with us while finalizing the purchase of a property in Portugal, we set of at our planned time of 8am.

We made a quick detour to Faro to buy a fuel filter for the car as we were not sure whether the correct one would be available in Morocco. Fuel south of Morocco is known to be “dirty” and so we plan to have a new one fitted in Marrakech before we head south. As we came close to Faro it began to rain quite heavily and the early morning traffic slowed. The Algarve has been in the grip of a drought for a few years so any rain was welcome. This will hopefully be the start of the good rainy season. Fortunately the Ford dealership is near the entrance to Faro so we did not have too much of the heavy traffic.

Fuel filter purchased and we hit the highway to the east. The damage to vegetation caused by wildfires in the region north of Tavira a few years ago was evident. We crossed the magnificent bridge over the Guadiana river into Spain. The rain continued on and off for most of the day. The highways in Spain are not tolled, unlike Portugal and Morocco and perhaps the cracking and poor surface of parts of the highway in Spain is evidence of lack of funds for maintenance. Our route took us past Huelva and Sevilla before we turned south for Algeciras. But not before roadworks just before Sevilla caused the navigation to send us in circles on a route that was closed ! We headed closer into Sevilla to force the navigation to chose another route.

The vegetation in western Spain was clearly much drier than in Portugal, but as we headed further south it became a bit greener and more mountainous. Finally we caught a glimpse of the rock of Gibraltar, although the view did not resemble the picture we had in our minds. We headed for a camping ground that we had identified that is on the coast just north of Algeciras. As we came over the hill, this time heading west, the rock of Gibraltar that we pictured in our minds appeared in all its glory, what a sight.

At the camping ground we enquired about bungalows that we knew they rented out but since they only had 2 which were already rented, we had to camp. Given an early morning start to catch the ferry to Morocco the next morning, we decided to rather use the 2-man tent rather the larger one as it would take much longer to pack the larger one.

We then headed back into Algeciras to make sure we knew how to get to the ferry the next morning and then had a pizza for early dinner and headed back to the campsite stopping to refill the car on the way. The campsite was quite full, with new people arriving in vehicles that were clearly heading to or from Morocco.

We set up the tent, a simply process of taking it out of the bag and it quite literally “pops-up” by itself. We unfolded the blow-up mattress and then connected the small 12V compressor for pumping it up. Alas ! The pump was as useful as the proverbial f*rting against thunder and neither did it have the right fitting ! Usually Trevor is very meticulous in checking that things work properly beforehand, but this time he did not do. So, we had to sleep on the 10mm foam sleeping mats that we had brought along as well. It may have been more comfortable to have slept in the car as Charlotte had wanted to do but finally decided against. We will pass by Decathlon Marrakech and buy one of those big, mechanical pumps that they use to inflate inflatable kayaks, kites. And so ended day 1.