Little Fiat Big Adventure

"Alan looked at me and said “Next year we’re going to Butlins!”

It all started in June when I’d just got back from the Festival of Speed at Goodwood. We’d driven the whole way in our Panda 4x4 (who answers to the name of Juppy apparently) and really enjoyed the whistle stop nature of driving 1000 miles in such a normally unsuitable car. How do you top driving the virtual length of the British Isles in an 18-year-old 4x4 utilitarian city car?

Well, you go and trawl the local ‘Ads4Free’ and find a Fiat Panda for around £100 and drive it to Africa! Though that was never the plan in the first place.

On one of my usual days of swapping mails and chatting with other Fiat nutters someone pointed out that there were 2 pandas for sale in the local rag. It was a quite weekend and I thought I’d go and have a look as they where both quite cheap and would be an excellent source of parts for the 2 pandas that Alan and I already own. The first one looked like the Red Army had marched over it on the way into Berlin so we didn’t spend much time there. The Second? It belonged to a little old lady called Sylvia in a nearby country market town called Ballymena. (Where the Famous Rev Ian Paisley is from, but we’ll not hold that against them…)  I grabbed Alan and he gave me that scornful look of ‘are we going to look at a car?’ and 2 hours later we were back at our front door with a white 1991 Fiat Panda 1000 Super with one of us grinning from ear to ear and the other looking on with an expression of ‘why do we need another panda?’

After driving it the 20 odd miles from Ballymena to our house I’d made a mental promise that it was way to good to break up for parts. Unfortunately that was the reason we had bought the thing! So what now? Well, I’ll punt around in it for a few weeks and we’ll see what comes up.

Roll on the next Italian car club meeting and the Club Secretary Stuart Leathem was going thou the usual items, membership, local shows etc and he finished with a polite ‘well, does anyone have any other business they want to bring up?’ So I had a quick scan round the bar and asked in a nervous voice ‘Has anyone ever driven a car outside Europe before?’ and over the next 20 minutes I went over the plan to take a 15 year old Panda to Africa and hopefully make it back in one piece to a room of people with there mouths hanging open…

So by the end of the meeting we’d decided that the club would put some graphics on the car and they’d have a word with the local Fiat/Alfa dealers Mervyn Stewarts about giving the car a once over to make sure that it wasn’t going to kill me.

By the following week the car had been graphic’d up and was sitting outside Mervyn Stewarts ready for its check up. The next day my mobile went and it was a very nervous Stuart to say that the service manager had been on to him and that the car was in poor health and would need quite a bit spent on it. Sharp intake of breath at my end and we agreed to sleep on it. Next day Vincent Taggart the service manager of Mervyn Stewarts called with an offer I couldn’t refuse! They’d fit the parts free if I paid for them and we agreed to putting some advertisements on the car. I jumped at it and we were on the road again! We got the car back on the Friday of that week and it flew through its MOT on the Saturday. All was looking well but my granny used to say, “Don’t count your chickens….”

I was using the car everyday to travel to work and a week before the ferry was to leave I was driving home and the temperature gauge started to climb and there was signs of coolant coming out that didn’t look particularly cool. Limped the mile back to the house and found the top hose had split. Luckily I had a spare and we re-filled the car but by that evening there was a brown mayo like substance in the radiator and round the oil filler cap. Things where not looking good and a few photos of the stuff were sent round to Stuart. There was nothing else to do but get the car back to Mervyn Stewarts and see if we could get them to have a look. Amazingly they took the car the next morning and started taking the head off and getting it machined right away! The days where ticking down. We where leaving on Friday 9^th September and the work was progressing at a cracking rate with the mechanics working till 10pm some nights just to get the car ready. I called up on the Friday morning to see how the work was progressing and Vincent didn’t look happy. Maybe it was because I’d turned up in another panda and he thought I was taking a fleet of them? Or maybe the cat had done something unpleasant in his shoes that morning?  Neither, it was ‘Sylvia’ (as the car had called after it’s previous owner). The re-assembled engine was smoking like a battleship and I’d a tough choice. Spend the day looking for the problem or cut to the quick and rip the engine out and replace it with another. This is at 10.am and we’re leaving Northern Ireland at 9pm that night! Vincent looked out the window at my other panda that I’d turned up in and asked, “Does it have a good engine?”

This is where my mouth was going to be hanging open…. The plan was to take the 1108 fuel injected engine from the Automatic Panda and try and make it work in an older 999cc car that was a manual and ran of a carburettor, all in 6 hours…. I felt like Scotty from ‘Star Trek’. “There’s no way it’ll work Captain, she cannie take much more of this…”

Vincent handed me the keys to a nice new Punto and said call back at 7 that night and I headed off to pack and point out to Alan that I’d told the local fiat dealers to chop up his car.

Several hours later, we were standing in the workshops of Mervyn Stewarts with our bags round our feet looking at what looked like 6 people performing the last rites on our Sylvia. Needless to say I was a little stressed. We had already organised import documents and insurance for Sylvia and it was too late to start swapping cars… I looked at Alan and he looked back at me, shrugged his shoulders and said, “Well, you wanted excitement…” True but maybe just not this much excitement. Then out of the blue the little panda started up. Cables were tied up and pipes clamped down and she was off the ramp and out on a 500-yard test run. Johnny who was doing most of the work on the car came back smiling and we threw our bags in the back and we where off to the port in a convoy of Fiats, Lancias and Alfas!  At the port we took a few snaps, Stuart cried and Alan thought he might of left the gas on but I told him he wasn’t getting out of it that easily. Mainly cause we don’t have gas…

The ferry took us from Northern Ireland to Scotland in about 90 minutes and we sat in the big armchairs in club class looking out the back windows at a rapidly disappearing Belfast thinking, “God, I really hope that we get back in one piece!”  And then turned to Alan and said “See, told you it would be fun.”

So when we landed in Scotland our first major crisis was that no one had thought to put fuel in Sylvia’s tank before we left and the nearest open fuel station was 70 miles away. So lots of worried looks and some running on fumes we managed to get there at around 2 am and shortly afterwards we were on the motorway heading south to London. By about 11 am on the Saturday we’d made it to France and we started to put our foot down on the Autoroutes. Well, we would of done if we didn’t have an intermittened fuel feed problem that limited us to about 60. Maybe the pump picked up some rubbish from the bottom of the tank from our running on empty episode last night. We plough on till late in the night crossing the Siene and staying in Bordeaux, glad to be in a normal bed (as compared to sleeping in a moving panda!)

Sunday 11^th September

We had a bit of a lie in after the 1000 odd miles yesterday. I think we deserved it. Had a late breakfast at the hotel and then was back on the Autoroute heading in the direction of Spain. We made it to Madrid by early evening and decided to pull another all nigher to Malaga. I took the second shift driving and while pretending to be in “Grand Turismo” driving over the Serria Navada  I noticed that the exhaust was getting louder, and louder and then it split. Alan woke up and went “What have you done now!” as he’d been dreaming that he was in a racing car and then realised that he wasn’t dreaming anymore!  We limped to the nearest service station and I got underneath with the tank tape, the chemical metal and the cut up coke tin and tried my best. Amazingly it worked and we made it to Malaga for around 7 the next morning just for the exhaust to drop off.

12^th September

We’re now around 2028 miles from home and 3 days into the trip. We’re starting to see the panda as our second home and it’s surprisingly comfortable, even to sleep in while we’re waiting on rescue.  Last nights repairs have got us to a filling station in Malaga where we now await the breakdown truck that is hopefully going to take us to somewhere that can fix the exhaust. As par usual we wait 3 hrs while some one in England phones someone else in England and they phone a European breakdown company that phones someone in Malaga to come to our aid….

And finally someone turns up but as usual doesn’t speak a word of English. We point under the car, they shake their head, we start it up, they get the gist. Our nameless helper hauls Sylvia on to the back of his truck and points to the Fiat badge trying to convey that we’re going to the nearest dealer. Unfortunately he didn’t mention that it was the Fiat Dealers that time forgot.

He leaves us outside the converted shed with our rather noisy panda and we go inside to find that again no one can understand us. In our best Basil Fawlty we shout and point and we then come across the idea of phoning Alan’s office where there are some guys on a Spanish contract. Our saviour was Oscar who translated the whole lot over the phone to the mechanic and the receptionist but what he translated wasn’t good news. The exhaust was going to take 3 days to get from Madrid… I gave them my number and asked them to call me when it was in but I’m sure that if I phoned them now I’d find that the exhaust was till in Madrid.  So, we decided that Malaga is a big town, it must have some Kwik Fit type thing around so we headed off in our now rather noisy panda with all the windows down trying not to die of carbon monoxide poisoning.

We headed in the direction of the Airport and seen Torino Fiat! The biggest and shiniest Fiat dealers I’ve ever seen! They must be able to help! I nipped into their car park and popped into the show room. Ah, they said, just drive into the workshop there is a reception there and they will help you. I jumped back in and headed round to the back of the big shiny building to a very big workshop full of busy looking people doing lots of car type stuff. I looked at Alan and thought, “Ah, we’re well in now. Be sorted in no time!” Jumped out of the car and hurried over to the little counter with Alan in tow. The lady could do quite good English but was a little unsure. She asked me to go over with her to the car and show her the problem. I was talking away and leaned in the window to start the car not realising that in my hurry I’d left it in gear and also had the choke on a bit cause of the earlier fuel problems. Sylvia thought this was her chance for a great escape and tore off across the workshop floor toward the showroom with me hanging onto the door getting dragged behind it in some horrible parody of Herbie. First hitting a brand new Fiat Punto, which took the wind out of her sails but didn’t stop her and then crashing into a brand new Fiat Panda that this little pensioner had just bought before finally deciding she’d had enough and stalled. I picked myself up and turned round to Alan and seen the expression of horror on his face. Needless to say we were not the most popular people in town, we spent the next half an hour our sorting out insurance and then we where politely but very firmly asked to leave. Mmm….. Not a good start to our first day in Malaga.

We got back into the car and headed back into town with a rather gloomy air (or maybe that was just the fumes in the cabin?). We spied a ‘Pimp My Ride’ type place beside the main highway and I decided to head over. Again not a word of English was spoken but he worked out what was wrong and got Sylvia up on the ramps. 10 euro later we where as good as new (Bar the dents and the broken bumper from the demolition derby at the Fiat Dealers!) and at that we decided that Sylvia was going into the car park of the hotel Las Vegas and we were going to the nearest bar where we pretty much stay for the next 2 days!

14^th September.

Alan has finally started speaking to me again, it only took 2 meals and a huge amount of alcohol. We’re taking the 11.am ferry to Mellile which is a Spanish colony on the African mainland. The ferry takes all day (about 7 hours) and isn’t in the best of shape. I’m convinced that it lists slightly to port but Alan pointed out that so did the Captain.  On board we meet a fellow traveller from Northern Ireland who lived about 15 miles from my house. He’s on his way to do some missionary work in Mellile and his wife and kids had already made it. We do the “It’s a small world” thing and then head off for a nap in the bowels of the ship somewhere trying not to be sea sick.

Ages later we hit dry land and it’s a mad tear to the hotel and then a mad tear to the hotel bar. It’s RallyRaid season in North Africa and the teams are in town. Sylvia looks very out of place in the hotel garage compared to the hulking 4x4’s of the teams. I try to teach them a bit of off road zen at the bar but I’m not sure whats the Spanish for “Drunken Irish Man”  but I got the gist of it.. Oh well, their loss.

Thursday September 15^{th  (the longest day!)}

^We head toward the Border with Morocco and the rather pretty town of Mellile starts to look more like down town Basra. Alan and I get a bit nervous as we pass old 1970’s Mercedes packed with blankets and disposable nappies being smuggled across the border.  We swing round following the queue of cars to the border crossing and we quickly pass thou Spanish customs and make it to the no mans land and park Sylvia up and go have fun with Moroccan border guards and appallingly complicated African beurocacy. Go to this window and get a form, got to that window to get it stamped, then find someone to wander round with the whole lot for 15 minutes and then tell you that you can go on your way… Great stuff and we’re into Africa! One quick stop at the local bank and we’re on the road down to Fes. But there is something wrong, I can feel the car is not pulling and then it starts to hiccup and stall. Alan looks at me and says “We make it across all of Europe and then as soon as where in Africa this bloody thing breaks down?”  I grin weakly then spot a garage a few hundred yards down the road and we freewheel onto the rough bit of ground outside the workshop. It’s pretty grotty but it’s our only hope. So having seen enough Monty Python I know that the only way the English are understood abroad is by speaking very loudly and lots of hand gestures. The main mechanic is about my age but slightly worryingly all his staff should really all be in school. Soon the carburettor is in bits and the distributor gets the same treatment with the kids all standing round giving chief mechanic knowing nods and getting barked at every time he needs some tool from the back of the garage or such. Alan goes and sits on the bonnet of a dead Renault 4 and contemplates hitching back to Ireland. 15 minutes later all is pronounced good and I offer our savour some Moroccan notes but he shakes his head. Is it not enough I gesture but he actually means that I’m giving too much for the work and he pulls one note from the many I hold and nods his head and wanders off with a wave. He took the equivalent of 5 dollars for his work when he could of taken 10 times that but for every good person that the world holds there’s always many more to balance it out….

We carry on towards Fes, it should take us most of the day to get there as its around 300 miles. The road skirts around the Riff Mountain range which is a very barren and lightly populated area. The Berber people are poor and they have experienced terrible hardship both natural, with the earthquakes that have hit the area and political as they are a different tribe to the ruling majority of Moroccans and they don’t seem to get much of the money that comes into Morocco. The Riff Mountains are also famous for the hashish that is grown on the hills that they export around the world. Hence the term ‘Reefer’ The police is also quite corrupt too and there are many bandits that prey on the unwary traveller. So I’m sure you get the picture that by now I’m sweating a little bit driving our now rather unreliable Fiat though such a place. We stall, and then stall again.

It’s the middle of some flat barren red desert. I’m getting rather hot and bothered and it’s not the African Climate. The car cools and we travel a little further till it can go no more. It’s died half way up a really steep hill on a little minor road a long way form civilization. I think I’m going to write my last will and testament but instead out of nowhere a teenager on a bike struggles up the hill behind us. He stops and gestures for water and we have lots to spare so we share and he works out that we’re not here for the view so cycles back down hill and the next thing a van appears with 3 men. There’s lots of French spoken that I don’t understand and a few broken words of English. We get a little worried when they keep asking if we are American as we’re not to sure how that would go down in these parts. The words ‘Northern Ireland’ seem to go un-noticed on the side of the car.  Towropes are produced and they tow poor Sylvia to the top of the hill and push her to the side of the road. The van disappears again leaving us with two of the guys. There’s lots of arm waving, pointing and then ‘transport’ is said and some of the local towns are brought up like Fes and Taza. They seem to want to take us there and Alan and I start nodding like our lives depended upon it. The guy who had disappeared with the van has now returned driving a dump truck. Alan just looks at me with one eye brow raised and I whisper “What did you expect the AAA? When in Rome go with what the Romans do!”. Alan looked back and said, “We’re a long way from Rome and the Romans would keep Fiat parts…” They back the dump truck up to a ditch and then man handle our poor panda up onto the ditch and into the back of the truck. Our driver points for Alan and I to get in the truck, which looked like Huggy Bear’s interior designer had decorated it. The trucks tailgate got slammed shut and we where off, not knowing exactly where too. I sat back in my seat and thought,  “Launce of Arabia would of made a much better job of this”. We drive for hours across the barren landscape coming to junctions with no signposts with our driver trying his best to communicate with us but the language barrier means conversation dries up as quickly as water would in the sands beside the road. Finally we get to a main road and we see a sign for Taza, which is a big town half way to Fez.  An hour later or so we arrive at the outskirts of Taza and pull over by some abandoned dwellings where the truck backed up to an earth mound and our driver and his friend who’d been sitting in Sylvia the whole time, started to round up the local kids to help. Soon there was a crowd round the truck trying to pull the little multi coloured car off the back where it had got stuck on the lip with two rather bemused British standing there, thinking “Where the hell are we?” The exhaust was getting a real hammering from the car hanging half on, half off the back of the truck in ‘The Italian Job’ style so I tried my bit at shouting and waving my arms around just like everyone else. 10 minutes later, with a crash Sylvia was off the truck.

Now the tough part, money! The driver comes over with a notebook and points to a pen. He writes a seven and then starts to right zeros and I think to my self he’s never going to stop writing bloody zeros!  Alan, who’s the smarter cookie of the two of us, says, “That’s nearly a thousand pounds!!!” This in a country where the average ANNUAL wage is less than double that.  I try to protest that we don’t have that but our ‘friend’ then tells his crew to put the car back on the truck. They where going to take Sylvia as payment!!!  I’ve never had such a moment of blinding panic and I shout over to Alan “Get him to take you to an ATM and get the money” and then I start to make the ‘beep beep’ sound of a bank machine and point to the town behind us. Our highway robber understands and takes Alan to the road, flags down a little baby blue Fiat taxi and they jump in leaving me with highway robber No2 to sit in Sylvia and await their return. With very little else to do except wait on darkness falling, I pull out my phone and start sending text messages home with the words “Your never going to believe this, but….”. Text start coming back to the handset from other club members worried about us. Highway robber No2 leans over and tries to read them but as his English is as good as my Arabic he’s got no hope that I’m grassing him up. So just before I threaten him with all the wrath of the British consulate Alan arrives back with Highway robber No1 and says that the machine will only give him the equivalent of 400 pounds which is well short of what is being asked. I tell him to double fold the notes like horse traders do when they’re trying to scam a seller and I start shouting at Highway robber No1 about how it’s too much money and I’d expect the car fixed for that. He lifts the bonnet and starts fiddling round while I keep up the show while behind me Alan has done a good job of making 400 pounds look like a lot more. You should be able to tell by now that he’s an accountant for a living so this sort of thing should be second nature! I jump into Sylvia and go to start it and it busts into life and at the same time so does a plan in my head. I go to Alan and take the money off him and tell him to get into the passenger side and I go round the front and start to put the bonnet down pushing the money at Highway Robber No1 dropping much of it to the other side of the car. He bends down to get it and I make a dash for the driver’s door. Before I realise he’s at my window leaning in to get the keys but I punch Sylvia into first and floor it. I look over at Alan and shout over the roaring engine “If this bloody thing packs in here I’ll personally turn this car in to bean tins myself!”. There might have been a few extra words in there but none of them would be printable in a family magazine!  Sylvia tore off down the road with our highwaymen running behind her, both of them seemingly forgetting that they have a perfectly good truck to chase us in. We career into the town not really knowing where we’re going but knowing we needed to get off the streets. Having seen that film “Duel” I really didn’t want to go up against our friends truck even if it did have a furry dashboard in leopard skin with fake palm trees stuck on it.

Thankfully we soon see a blue neon sign for the ‘Hotel Eiffel’ and I pull Sylvia up across the street and Alan and I quickly pile into the hotel lobby. The Hotel manager greets us in French and then quickly changes to English as he sees the confused look on our faces and I’ve never been so relieved in all my life. I babble out our story and Siad quickly goes into action flapping arms and shouting at his staff. Nothing seems to be able to get done in Morocco without this but if it works who am I to complain. The car is brought across the street and vehicles are moved from the hotel front door to accommodate the panda. A young boy is summoned and told to keep watch on the car and Siad then disappears into the bowels of the hotel shouting ‘Cook! Cook!’ and a few minute later a little fat man, dressed in whites smoking a cigarette appears saying, “ I cook you chicken, you like?”. I think it was a statement rather than a question so we agreed and we got ushered into the dinning area and our bags vanished to somewhere else. I got the sensation that not many British people arrived in this part of the world and Siad wanted to put his best show on for our visit. Dinner was a simple affair of chicken and couscous but as today I thought I would never see food again it was the best meal I’d ever eaten. Afterwards Siad said he would sort the car out tomorrow and we should get some sleep. I thanked him kindly and I thanked God that we’d ended the day as we had started by finding a kind soul that only wanted to help out two strangers in need.

Friday 15^th September.

We awoke early to find Siad at the front desk. It was his day off but he’d come in just to help us get to the mechanic and to do some translating for us. Sylvia seemed to have sorted her self out and soon we where on our way across town to the local mechanic. We pulled up outside a yard full of old Fiat Uno’s and Palio’s in various states of disrepair. The owner of the yard pointed for us to bring Sylvia in and I pulled up beside an old Peugeot 504 pick up that looked like it had crossed the Sahara several times. Again there was the usual 12 year olds hammering and banging at lumps of metal that may of once belonged to something automotive in a past life.  The top of the carb was removed and the float tank was swimming in petrol. Blocked jets maybe?  We wouldn’t know today as our mechanic was too busy and we’d have to wait till tomorrow near lunch for the work to be completed. Alan suggested a rental car and Siad was quick off the mark shouting, arm waving and snapping fingers. Next thing we know we’re in the back of another little baby blue fiat taxi taking us to the local rental agency.  We arrived and again followed in Siad wake as he barged in talking to everyone as if he’d know him or her for years (which he probably had, but it’s hard to tell in this part of the world). The proprietor wasn’t just quite as happy to see us. You could tell by his face that he fully expected us to have his rather smart new Peugeot 206 into a crate and smuggled out of the country by teatime. So he got his bit of paper out and started his number with a Seven and then started to put zeros behind it too…. I started to think, “Here we go again!!!” I said to Siad that we didn’t have that so he suggested the bank next door and our little entourage marched next door but the best that the Royal Bank of Maroc could cough up on my Visa card was again about 400 pounds. I think my Visa Company was getting wise to my spending habits in this part of the world and was making sure that I didn’t give my house away to get out of trouble! So Siad did a deal for the 400 as deposit with my passport and about 50 as the charge for the car for the day. With that we took Siad back to the hotel and we headed off to Fes for the day. Alan’s rental car plan was to go to one of the big companies in Fes and get a car which we would use as a support car for the rest of our stay in Morocco and that we could leave at the port in Tangier when we leave. So arriving in Fes we scouted round till we got a Europcar and for 194400 Dh we where the proud owners of a Fiat Palio for the next few days. We then took both cars back to Taza and returned the 206 much to its owner’s relief and I got my passport and 400 pounds back much to my relief! That night there was a thunderstorm as we dined at the hotel and Siad sat with us a chatted about his life in Morocco, about his wife, his home and his children. He spoke 6 different languages but had never travelled outside of Morocco. I felt really sad for him, as he seemed to imply that he had difficulty getting a visa to travel to Europe or the US where he believed that he could provide a much better life for his family. I really wished him the best and gave him my address and telephone numbers and told him that he could contact me when I was home if there was anyway I could assist him like he had assisted us here in Morocco. With that he said he must get home to his family as the storm seemed to ease and he bid us goodnight.

Saturday 16^th September

Up early again and for the first time there was a little hot water in the hotel plumbing. Hopefully a good omen! Siad was at the front desk and said that our car would be ready in 30 minute and we should have breakfast before we leave. So stuff with toast and coffee 30 minutes later we all piled into the palio for the short trip to the mechanics. As usual Siad did all the talking and the turned to us with a worried face saying that the repairs where extensive as the carb had to be rebuilt and filters and plugs replaced. I asked how much and it converted into 40 pounds… (Or about the same price as getting UK garage to change a wiper blade!!) We happily paid and I went to try and get Sylvia out of her parking spot but she was hemmed in. No problem, 5 or 6 men grabbed her around the rear and lifted her and spun her round 90 degrees much to everyone laughter and delight. It sort of sums Morocco up really. Why do you need a super computer and a mobile phone when all you really need is someone that can shout and wave their arms about and half a dozen men to do the donkeywork! It seems to get much better results in the long run.

We left Siad back at the hotel and we bid him goodbye. I wanted to repay him for his time and phone calls but he would not take a penny. In the end I told him to take a few notes and get something for his children to take home tonight. We jumped into our little Fiat convoy and headed for the main road out of town. Nothing was going to stop us making it to the Sahara now!

So an hour later and 30 miles down the road Sylvia is parked up with her bonnet up, dead as only a dead Fiat can be. Alan gives me that look of  “Do you remember when you said we didn’t need a 2^nd car?” and I’m looking daggers back at him. There’s nothing worse than a ‘Told you so’ at times like these. Out comes the towrope and we hitch the 2 cars together making us more than a convoy than I was comfortable with. For the next 90 miles I’m 6 feet behind the palio’s back bumper trying to think of something else other than “How the hell are we going to get out of this”. Finally we reach Fes and Sylvia will run again so we unhitch and Alan follows me into the maze of Fes. We head toward the centre of town and up the main tree lined boulevard that’s named after the king. It’s a rather posh end of town and we soon come across a sign for the Juan Palace (5 star of course!) and I give a signal to turn in. I can see Alan’s face in my rear view mirror and I can see him roll his eyes and his face says “You would pick the dearest joint in town to drive that heap up to!” We park up and head inside not realising that it nearly needs a bus to get you from the front door to reception but we make it and book a rather comfy room overlooking the pool with the all important mini bar. Poor Siad’s hotel was not really frequented by westerner so had no bar and it had been a stressful few day without the odd drop of the ‘devils buttermilk’ as they say in these parts. The hotel manager promises to get us assistance with Sylvia the next day. We go to explore the 2 pools, the 4 restaurants and the 3 bars and I really don’t remember much after that….

Sunday 17^th September.

We leave Sylvia with the mechanics from Europcar. The headman seems to be the spit of Danny Devito and runs everywhere shouting with his long dark blue garage overcoat flapping in the wind behind him.  He doesn’t speak a word of English but by now we can gesture ‘Breakdown’ in any language. We retire to the pool and then the bar and generally try and forget about that bloody Fiat!

Monday 18^th September.

We decide to leave Sylvia in Fes and head to the Sahara in the rental Fiat Palio. As the NIIMC Webmaster had emailed us that morning to suggest it was a good idea unless we where feeling particularly suicidal. The Palio had about 50,000 miles on it but most of them seemed to of been done back and forth across the desert as it was filthy inside and out with sand and dust. Our route took us out over the Atlas Mountains though everything from thick forest to valley views that where straight out of the bible. After a breathtaking but thankfully uneventful drive we where at the edge of the Sahara desert near Merzouga by Tea time so we parked up and and started to walk into the dunes to watch the sun set over the Erg Chebbi.

The only true Saharan Erg in Morocco which rises over 300 metres above the lunar landscape of the Ziz valley. It’s a magical landscape, which deserved more than the hour that Alan and I gave it to watch the sun set. Standing on the Edge of the Sahara is like looking into a shimmering abyss. It’s three and a half million square miles of the planet Mars but has a total population less than that of North London. The dunes where fascinating, changing colour from gold to pink to deep red in such a short time. Under that immense clear desert sky, listening to the camels call out to each other in the distance, I suddenly realised that I had driven a very, very long way from Ireland…

Tuesday 19^th September.

We’d stayed at a local Kasbah in the nearby town of Rissani. We where virtually the only guests staying in the huge walled fort with the exception of an English couple who had driven there in their Land Rover. They took one look at our rental Fiat and turned their noises up and that was the last we seen of them. Thankfully the food was good last night and we had eaten out on the terrace under the desert sky.  The waiter was an elderly Ethiopian who only spoke French. I ordered wine and I’m sure he brought me engine anti freeze but if it was it had the same effect as wine. Alan then told me the story of how I had engaged the hotel owner in conversation (who spoke fluent English) about how I wished we had flown to Morocco because of all the breakdowns. I then demonstrated the art of flying by flapping my arms around just in case he wasn’t clear on what an airliner was. The owner seemed not to be too offended but kept smiling at me in the way that people do when they talk to the mentally challenged. With that I paid the bill and we left the Sahara for heading north towards Fes.

We where on the main road from Erfoud to Fes when it became clear that there was something going on locally. All the towns that we were passing though were putting out the Moroccan flags at the roadside and men were putting little metal cones at the side of the road. I thought to my self,  “Better not hit one of those, they’d rip the tyre to shreds.” And was about to say the same to Alan, who was driving, when over the horizon came a motorcade of police outriders, a huge white Rolls Royce followed by seven Winnebago’s all with their headlights on travelling at high speed in the centre of the road. It was King Mohammed VI on his way to his winter palace at Erfoud with his family in the Winnebago’s and they were not for moving from the middle of the road as they tore down on our poor little Fiat.  Alan who isn’t really used to meeting a descendent of the Prophet Mohammed head on in a Rolls Royce had a bit of a panic attack and swerved off the tarmac and over one of the little metal cones and sure enough there was a big bang and the car skidded even further off piste. King Mohammed raced by at high speed, probably not even noticing our little drama from the comfort of his Rolls Royce. But I have to give him this, he knows how to travel in style! After changing the wheel for one that seems to of been from a John Deere we made a rather wobbly return to Fes that night.

Wednesday 20^th September.

Rest day beside the pool! (And got the Concierge to order us a new tyre for the Palio)

Thursday 21^st September.

We got Sylvia back from our ‘Danny Divito’ look-a-like and thought it would be best to test her out before we try and make a break from Morocco. I headed out toward the airport (because it’s a main road, was about 30 miles and had lots of sign posts to show us the way back). And sure enough we started to stall about half an hour into the journey. Alan had followed in the other Fiat so we limped back to ‘Danny’s’ workshop on a towrope. The bonnet was lifted, and the hand signals and strange noises started. Not from the car but from us. He pointed at the coil, licked his finger and made a sizzling noise – translated to “Does the coil over heat?” No, I shake my head. Next he points to the lash up of pipes and pumps to replace the mechanical fuel pump that would not fit onto our new engine and makes tic tic tic noises while slicing his finger across his throat – Translated to “Is the fuel pump still working when the car dies?”  This carries on for a good 15 minutes and we’re really making progress without a word of English being spoken! He’s worked out that we’ve had to fit a more modern Fiat engine to the car and that it dies after driving around 20 to 30 miles. I’d had trouble trying to explain that concept to people who speak English as their first language!!! So ‘Danny’ grabs the nearest teenager in his workshop, hands him a bit of paper, makes the sign for money and point at Alan and the Palio. The two of them head off for parts and 10 minutes later they re-appear with a bag of bits. New coils, HT leads, spark plugs, and a Mitsubishi fuel pump and all are promptly fitted in no time. Now payment and I start to dread what’s coming. ‘Danny’ starts looking for a bit of paper but his lost his pen too, so he goes to the rear window of the car and writes on the glass in the thick African dust that’s gathered on the car. Alan leans over and says, “It’s about 40 quid, is that expensive?”  I quickly point out that if it gets us back to Ireland it’s the best 40 pounds we’ve ever spent. One successful test run to the airport later and we’re back at the workshop and ‘Danny’ is all smiles, handshakes and I get a bear hug! Now if Fiat dealers here where like that they’d top the JD Power survey every year! We decide to retire to the hotel for food and get ready for an early start to Tangier the next morning.

Friday 22^nd September.

The hotel staffs loads our luggage into Sylvia at the front door of the Juan Palace. It seems so strange to have our little ‘Refuge from a Scrap yard’ parked outside such a posh joint with red carpet right up to her front door but then I realise that compared to the 1970’s Renaults and 1980’s Fiat’s that roam the streets our Sylvia is quite tidy and up market. In fact a few of the people that we had met along the way had thought we worked for Fiat and where testing a new car! We paid the same amount for the panda as I would of spent on a nice meal at a good restaurant back home, which sort of puts our ideas of western disposable possessions into perspective.

I lead the way from the hotel with Alan following in the Palio and we climb up out of Fes toward the Rif Mountains again heading toward Tangier.

To get there we have to go through the Ketema  region, which is the centre of all drug smuggling activity in Morocco. All the guidebooks advise against stopping in the area for the 150 Km that the road clings to the mountainside. Unfortunatltly I didn’t tell Alan any of this as I thought the cars had been 100% we’d have no need to stop so why worry him? The guide books also said that dealers can be very aggressive pushing Kif (Hash) onto travellers but I didn’t think much of it but a few miles outside the town of Lssaguen where the most unsavoury characters hang out, an old VW Golf raced past us and then slowed suddenly, the driver holding little ‘packets’ out of the window and beckoning me to pull over. I phone Alan and fill him in on what I really should of told him hours ago and the reply I got I really can’t repeat in public… Both Fiats’ pull out round the Golf and try to speed off but he flashes his lights and tries to get between the cars. We put our foot down and race toward the little village ahead and our ‘friend’ drops back and then finally turns off but as we leave the village on the other side an old 70’s Mercedes Benz pulls out behind Alan flashing it’s headlights and starts to chase us. I get on the phone right away and tell him not to let it past him but the Mercedes driver is determined to get past. The road plunges into the heart of the Rif Mountains through deep valleys filled with pine and cork trees, while well surfaced they’re twisty and turny and not the sort of place you want to outrun drug dealers in a 15 year old city car that you saved from a scrap yard! The Mercedes goes onto the hard shoulder and squeezes past Alan’s Palio. It’s a lumbering old barge in the corners but its big petrol engine is no match for our little 1.1 fiat engines. He pulls along side me and swerves towards me trying to run me off the road. I brake hard and pull out on to the other side of the road. Alan gains ground and we try and box in the Mercedes but he brakes sharply and the Palio just misses crashing into the back of the Benz as Alan swerves out. The Mercedes driver floors it and comes rushing up behind us belching blue smoke. I’m starting to feel like I’m in a really cheap Bond movie when all I want to do is get as far away from Morocco as humanly possible and I keep praying “Don’t break down, Don’t break down!” like some sort of mantra. The Mercedes has now pushed passed Alan again and is on my tail. He pulls out round me, one hand on the wheel and one hand holding a package that he’s trying to throw though the open window of Sylvia. Edging closer and closer he’s driving me onto the rough gravel of the narrow hard shoulder. I brake hard again and swerve to the left, catching the corner of the rear bumper of the Benz. He brakes hard and starts to skid off the road as Alan and I floor it and leave him in true Hollywood style in a cloud of his own dust. Lssaguen is just 2 corners away and we stop at the police checkpoint outside the town but there is no sign of Stuttgart’s finest so we don’t bring up what just happened. Probably for the best as I found out that the whole thing is a scam. The dealers try and run you off the road to buy Hash at very low prices (in a “Offer you can’t refuse” style) then after you leave they phone the police at the checkpoint with your description and they pull you over, find the drugs and then threaten you with Moroccan prison unless you pay a massive fine. The drugs get returned to the dealers and the money is split between the whole lot of them and they then head back up the road and lie in wait for the next unfortunate. I’m just glad that I’d bought myself a copy of “Burn Out Revenge” for the Playstation before I left for Morocco. I never thought learning that stuff would come in handy in the real world….

We make it to Tangier without any further drama and we return the rental car to Europcar and they don’t suspect that we’ve been re-creating ‘RidgeRacer’ with it so next stop is customs and the ferry port. We battle our way though the ‘Hawkers’ round the terminal trying to sell ‘free’ government forms or trying to get your passport off you. After the day I’d had they where lucky I didn’t try to impale them on Sylvia’s radiator but for the sake of international relations I smiled sweetly at them and moved on. We get tickets, but we’re not sure for what ferry. I really don’t care, it leaves Morocco that’s good enough for me. Then it’s the turn of the appallingly complicated African beurocacy again with more stand here, go que there, get a bit of paper, get your car tapped with a hammer, go que up again… Aaagghhhh, can nothing in this country be simple!!! Finally we get on the fast ferry and find that we’ll be in Tarifa, Spain in 35 minutes. I lie back in the big comfortable seats of the boat as it powers out of Tangier harbour and I turn to Alan and say, “After hundreds of miles of Moroccan roads, African thunderstorms, bandits, crooked policemen and demented border guards I never want to see sand ever again, not even an egg timer!” but he’s already asleep in his chair…

Saturday 23^rd September.

We had landed in Tarifa, Spain last night and got out of the car to wander round the old walled town. We found a little café where the waitress was English and they had Internet access. We’d ordered a big plate of egg and chips and sat back with huge mugs of tea surfing. We contacted the club back home to let them know that we’d made it out of Morocco and where planning our next leg. I’d suggested to Alan before that I’d like to take Sylvia back to her hometown of Turin and go see the old ‘Lingotto’ Factory where they built cars till the 80’s that’s famous for it’s banked test track on the roof. Alan said, “But we’ve only a few days left of our holiday and you want to head thousands of miles across Europe in the opposite direction from home?” “Erm… Yeah.” Alan rolled his eyes (he does that a lot round me) and said “Well we better get dinner in us and get started” Overnight we drove from the bottom southwest corner of Spain along the coast, up to Barcelona and by lunchtime we where approaching the French border. By about 6 pm we’re about 20 hours into the drive and as much as Giorgetto Giugiaro’s interior is quite good for cat naps in while driving we need a real bed so we pull over to one of those little cheap roadside hotels and we get some food and go to sleep to get ready for the run up the French med tomorrow.

Sunday 24^th September.

Another early start and we’re on the road by 7 am heading north towards Monaco. A few more hours and Sylvia is parked near Casino Square while we lunch at the Café de Paris overlooking the square. Taking in the 19^th century Monte Carlo Casino as much as the 21^st century cars that passes by. Everything from the yet unlaunched Mercedes S Class to a black Enzo drifts past at five miles per hour. 

There’s no point owing the world’s fastest car if people can’t see you drive it! The Monaco boat show is also on this week and there’s not a rubber dingy in site. If you had the gross national income of Latvia in your wallet you could pick something quite tasty up but as we don’t we move swiftly on toward Turin.

As we cross into Italy we start to see more and more other little pandas. Fiat kept them in production for about 10 years after they stopped importing them into the UK. I was getting worried that Sylvia may pick up a boyfriend and want to stay in Turin but I’d forgotten that Panda’s don’t breed in captivity so we’d be ok!

Again it’s getting dusk as we flow with the Italian traffic round the streets of Turin getting

hopelessly lost.

Then I suddenly remember a bit of road from the Italian job and we turn off down a side street just in time to see a sign for the Holiday Inn! They stash Sylvia into the underground garage and take our bags. One hot shower later we head for food and vino. Later on returning to the hotel I don’t give the receptionist a flying demonstration and thankfully head to be without making a fool of my self (much).

Monday 25^th September.

We give the Turin Shroud a miss and go to the Museo dell’ Automobile instead and I get lost for a few hours wandering round over a hundred and seventy cars.

Pride of place in the collection is one of Fiat’s first ever motorcars, an 1899 3/12HP and beside that is the 1907 Itala that won the Peking to Paris of that year. For those interested in more modern stuff there are cars from every decade as quite a few concept cars from Fiat, Idea, Pinafirina etc.  If you want to have a look yourself there web site is www.museoauto.it. After lunch we head over to the Lingotto centre. It was Fiat’s biggest factory in Turin till the 80’s where the production line spread over 5 floors till a completed car arrived out on the roof top test track to do a quick lap and then go down for transport to a dealer. Now it’s an office, hotel, shopping, cinema, arts and museum centre. We have a bit of a wander round till we find the information section and ask if there is anything left of the buildings car history and they say “Yes Sir, you are very lucky there is a meeting of the Italian old car club on the roof and there is Gianni Agnelli’s private art collection and a display of Ferrari Racing history too…” Quickly we get into a glass lift and we’re on our way up to the roof. Agnelli art collection is fantastic, his Ferrari racing memorabilia intoxicating and then finally we make it out onto the roof top track as the cars start to head off. Some of the Ferrari boys are giving the cars a pounding for the crowds as they race to the roof top exit. There was Alfa’s from the 50’s on display along side a pre production Alfa Brera that was getting much attention and even better wasn’t locked so we got our grubby little paws all over it. Ferrari has some very expensive cars from the 50’s and 60’s there too. Alan notes that I look like I’m wetting myself with excitement and I point out that I am! One by one the cars head off to the next part of the organised run until we’re left on the roof by ourselves and watch the sun gently set over the banked track.

That night over dinner and about by the second bottle of vino I proclaimed my love for all things Italian (including the rather undercooked steak that I was eating) and then started to make plans for lunch in Paris the next day!

Tuesday 25^th September.

Up early as Alan remembered the conversation about making it to Paris for lunch so it’s 600 miles before our next sandwich! Sylvia is quite a little continent crosser with her 1100 cc engine. We can sit at 90 mph for hours on end if needs be crossing country after country. Does have it’s down side though as you get used to the speed and forget about the limits. We left Turin by 4.30 am and put our foot down again but we got snapped by a speed camera going though the seven-mile-long Mont Blanc tunnel at speeds I’d not like to admit to. So far the Italian police have yet to track us down! Several hours later we are on the outskirts of Paris ready to see the sites. I’ve noticed that Sylvia’s exhaust note is a little more ‘sporty’ than it was this morning and I remember a few days ago (was that a few days ago?) Sylvia hanging off the back of a dump truck and the exhaust getting a real hammering when she came crashing off the back of it. I say nothing to Alan and we carry on into Paris pushing our way though the sea of little Renaults and Citroens. By the Eiffel tower we take a few snaps, walk up one of the legs where I suddenly find a fear of heights and head for lunch and eat on the pavement at the local tourist trap. It was a very nice tourist trap but a tourist trap none the less.

At this point Alan has to get a flight home as he has less time off work than me so I drop him at the airport and he’ll be home in time for ‘Desperate Housewives’ while I hit the Autoroutes by myself.

Fifty miles north of Paris there is a rather loud bang from underneath Sylvia and in the rear view mirror I can see sparks fanning out behind me in the darkness. Other French drivers flash their lights and blow horns as if they think I don’t see that I look like the space shuttle on re-entry. There are services a few hundred yards further up the road and I make it to the car park, pull out the mobile phone and call for assistance from my breakdown company. After what seems an age a tow truck turns up with the world’s most hateful French bloke. “Hi, can you take me to Calais?”  “Non Parlez vous Anglais” “Oh right….” “Where are you going to take the car?” “Non Parlez vous Anglais”

“Before I beat you to death with Sylvia’s wheel brace do you think you could possibly try and say something else?” “Non Parlez vous Anglais!.”  At this point I could really see why no one likes the French…. Right now if he was Moroccan he’d be dancing a jig, pointing, and making all sorts of ‘tic tic tic’ noises while grinning like an idiot! It’s only been a couple of day but already I miss the simple ways of Africa!

Sylvia got loaded onto the back of the truck and taken to a yard a few miles from the Autoroute and pushed into a corner between some old wrecked cars. Poor thing looked like she was going to end her days there. Napoleon’s great grandson then told me to get my bags and get out of his yard as he had to go and be rude to someone else before he got to bed that night… My heart bled for him, it really did.

So I’m standing on a street corner in a village somewhere north of Paris with my bag and a sense that I really should of taken that cheap flight home with Alan. Right now I could be enlightened on how Mary Alice died or why Bree Van de Kamp’s husband thinks she’s having an affair… Sometimes life’s just not fair!!!

Wednesday 26^th September.

Having found a hotel last night I spend the morning being tortured by French television while waiting on news of the car. We get round the “Non Parlez vous Anglais!.”  Bit by phoning the breakdown company and they then phoned the garage and translated. I’m starting to get over my general dislike of the French as the hotel staff are offering lots of free tea and sympathy to my plight. I finally book a taxi to the garage around lunch and find that Sylvia is still where she was parked last night and that everyone is about to go for the French 2 hour lunch! By about 4 O’clock they have returned from eating an entire horse garnished with frogs or snails or what ever the hell they eat for 2 hours in France at lunchtime and fit the back box of the muffler. I pay the man a vast amount of money and I get back on the road as fast as possible! We make it to the ferry without further incident and drive up though England till about 10 pm where I finally stop about Nottingham for the night.

Thursday 27^th September.

It’s my last day and I drive up though England toward Scotland for the ferry home to Northern Ireland. It’s a very short journey of only 5 or 6 hours and we make it to the port without any drama. I pay the extra for 1^st class (even if the young man at the port thought it a little odd in my scrap yard refuge. So different from how it got treated in Morocco) and I disappear to the club lounge and sink into the seats for the trip back to Belfast and think of ways to top this trip next year…