We arrived at a very special campground and waterpark. Yeah! a waterpark. Bright colours and lots of slides and water. We decided to wild camp, as the campground is really expensive, when you count how many people we are. They want to charge the same for all the kids and adults. We will come back in for a full day of playing in the waterpark. Some of our friends, Ales and Karim, have come with us so that makes it a birthday party. TJ has been to pools with slides but never a waterpark. This is TJs big birthday gift – a birthday party at a waterpark.

The wild camping was great. Karim found it. We are just north of Tagazhout (really nice surfing town) at some ruins on the beach. There were lots of little fishing boats out last night as it was a full-moon which apparently makes for great fishing. Abi and Alana made apple pie.

We all ate it from the tin.

Some other wild campers came up in their van to camp with us last night. Melle is a fashion designer. Very cool clothes but a bit fancy for me. She has been living in her van for 5 years and has fixed it up real nice. She doesnt have alot of suff so her van feels really spacious. She sells clothes through her website and her mom sends things out to people. I looked up her website at www.rhizome-fr.com and it doesnt seem to be working right now. Maybe later

It was a great nite. We had great food, great friends and even a guard dog that loyally sat outside our truck all night. When it got dark, Karim made a huge bonfire – as he loves to do and we finished off the night with some jamming.

After gazing out at Africa from different points in Spain we finally decided to take the plunge and go. When I was writing an email to my sister I realized that after so looking forward to going to Morocco I was kinda afraid. Silly really. Fear of the unknown I suppose. Terribly embarrassing for someone travelling full time to admit but there you go. I think it is one thing to talk about going to Africa for the first time, overland, with a truck full of children and teenagers. It is completely another thing to get on the ferry. So we got enough money in our account to book our ferry, with a little extra for petrol and food. Went to exit 112, found Carlos and bought our half price ferry tickets. While we were at the Lidl parking lot for the night, with the other motorhomes, who saw Carlos and were waiting to go to Morocco, we decided to head towards Paradise Valley. We have heard from many sources that Tangier is not the best place to hang around in so Paradise Valley was a good target.

The whole motorhome stampede to get onto the ferry was a far cry from the ferry trips we have had across the channel and to Orkney. It was actually quite funny. These little old men, some quite frail, behind the wheel of their “white plastics”, aggressively shoving into line ahead of another old man in his white plastic. Barely escaping bumping into each other.

We were so excited when we made it to Morocco but then had to wait in line for many more hours to be allowed in. The whole process took us 11 hours. Welcome to Africa? Or, welcome to the white plastic parade.

Actually the “welcome to Africa” came when we were getting off the ferry. Normally when we cross a border Andrew hands the person our wad of passports and the border official seems somewhere between overwhelmed and shocked. Here, when Andrew handed the wad of passports to the official the man looked up with a huge smile with all the other muslim men around. As they saw all the kids and teenagers they were ecstatic, commenting on Andrew’s extreme manhood, having so many kids. lots of energetic verbal and hand gestures. Andrew says, I think I’m going to like Africa.

While we were waiting in line at customs we made many friends. Seems like there is this brotherhood of self-builds and full-time travellers. We met a polish/french family in a semi-converted blue horsebox. We also met a dutch man with a self-conversion, it is sort of a caravan on the back of a mercedes van cab full of 9 hippies at the border. They were dancing around the other vehicles and singing and flute playing at the border. They were going to Paradise Valley too. They were going to a rainbow gathering there.

Perfect, we made ourself a convoy. We didnt know about the Rainbow Gathering there before but going to our first Rainbow is one of our goals for this year as we have so many friends that have been and have almost gone so many times ourselves.

We had a great time along the way. We learned about living on the road, raw food, african culture.

On one of our stops along the way Abi and Rachel went out to sit outside. Rachel (from the Hippievan) is a British anthropologist and speaks French, Arabic and Berber. Rachel was kind enough to translate Abi’s first 2 marriage proposals of the day.

A little later we stopped at a ladies cooperative that made argan oil. What a great experience! Apparently the oil is quite sought after for cooking tagines and skin care. The Argan oil comes from a tree that is similar to the olive tree but only grows in this valley. We got to have a go at grinding the oil and met some wonderfully friendly ladies. We were invited to move in with the berber woman on the left. This is also where Abi got her third marriage proposal of the morning.

I really, really like the berber people. I really, really like the villages here.

We also enjoyed the mint tea along the way. We were taught how to pour a proper mint tea. Donald is demonstrating here. You have the mint leaves and green tea and too much sugar in the pot. Pour the contents of the pot into the glasses from various heights. Pour the tea back into the cups. Repeat 3 times. Mmmmm. This is what they are drinking everywhere. Actually, the streets are lined with men leisurely drinking mint tea while their wives are…. where are the wives… I think they are home cooking or at the “Hamam”.

The Hamam. Now, I dont have any pictures of the Hamam seeing that it is a Bath house. It is where the women go in one side and the men the other. You walk into a room of mostly naked people with buckets of water and scrub each others backs with black soap and a scratchy mit. After your hamam the men go for a cup of mint tea and the women go…. I guess home. I know it sounds quite bizarre but we had a great time. The girls loved it. I really enjoyed being in this friendly all woman environment. When me and the girls came out of the hamam there was Andrew waiting across the street… with his mint tea.

Anyways, when we got to Paradise Valley, on the night of the full moon, the energetic teenagers left for the Rainbow gathering that night to walk by moonlight but us more sensible ones stayed at Mohammed’s for a night and walked the next morning.

We rented a couple of donkeys to help with some of the bags.

It was supposed to take us 2 1/2 hours but having small children it took us about 4 hours and we arrived right before dark. It was actually a stunning walk full of old villages, waterfalls, colourful people and goats.

When we got to the rainbow gathering there were about 50 people in a valley that is – well – it IS called paradise valley. We think it was well named.

Andrew is having a great time. There are interesting truck/homes wild camping everywhere. This particular group was mostly german and dutch.

So where are we now? After talking to Mohammed and a few of the other people there for the night we decided to go to Aourir. It is next to Agadir. We found Hassan and are staying with the other full-time travellers, mostly french, in the parking lot while we get work done on our trucks. We have a huge list of things to get done. They have already rebuilt our muffler and are working on opening our roof. It was part of the original plans for our truck before we got it and the truck has been leaking where the two pieces of the roof overlap. We couldn’t afford to get it done in Europe and the work here is really good, fast and cheap. Add to that to be able to be with some great people as the work is being done.

We went to Agadir one day to the Souk (Market). Wont be making that mistake again. Way too touristy and touristy here means you get hassled alot. We really like the villages so much more.

Oh yeah, language-wise. If you hang out in the cities French is great, villages Arabic is better, really rural they only speak Berber.

Anyways, hope you are feeling a bit more caught up. Sorry, havent shared some of our more heart experiences but, to be perfectly honest we are still processing.

Once you cross the border you walk or drive across the airport runway, through a tunnel and into, well, a great big duty-free street. I must say, we were a bit disappointed with the amount of English books. Maybe our expectations were a bit high. We did find a good second hand book store in a cake shop. We did have a good time.

We made lots of new friends. Full-timers, like us. Pen has lived on the road for years and is sporting a van conversion of his own creation.

Pen took off 5 years ago with some friends for one year. After one month he realized he wanted to do this full-time, went back long enough to sell his house and is living off the interest. It is just him and 2 stray dogs he adopted in Spain. “Boss” and “Wife” took off in the big green bus one month ago with 5 big dogs and her daughter, “Child” (10 years old). She became instant friends with TJ and Hannah. Here they are sporting their “best friend hats” they found at a Chinese shop.

Boss’s wife had cancer a couple of years back and after chemo realized she had strayed far from her teenager dream of travelling full-time. When her hair grew back in curly instead of straight she cut it into a mohawk and started to make plans to start travelling with her daughter. As far as wild camping, well, we are coming to the conclusion that Spain seems to always be hard. After 3 days in La Linea we were moved on by the police. I tell you in 10 minutes everyone was gone. All except 2 motorhomes. One of the remaining motorhomes had a blown engine and the second motorhome had the new engine for the first on their trailer. It is strange. Portugal seems to be quite accepting of wild campers as they spend money locally. France and Germany provide special low cost camping but Spain. It is SO HARD to bring a motorhome here. Campgrounds are really expensive and wild camping is really difficult. We are meeting more and more people with some experience on the road who skip through Spain as quickly as possible. They jump from Southwest France and plan their trip perfect so they can be in Portugal by the next evening. If they want to go further south they go to the south of Portugal and skip, as quickly as possible, to Morocco via Algeciras (where the cheap ferries are).  

We have now left the Gibraltar area and are in Tarifa. We have just spent one night in a campground. Taking showers, washing clothes, charging electricity. After being overwhelmed at my big bags of laundry I have decided that small and decentralized is better. Just like our trash. When we first started out we accumulated big bags of trash that were hard to get rid of. We switched to small plastic carrier bags. Problem solved. So, applying the same principle to our laundry. Everyone will keep a pillow case in their locker for their dirty clothes and they will be responsible for it themselves. Dispersed and personal. If this doesn’t work we will have to try something else.

Unfortunately it rained the whole time so we were at this campground, huddled in our motorhome, walking through a lake, that had formed outside our truck to get anywhere. We did get to hang out and watch movies with our ample electricity.

While gathering sticks for making Didgeridoos he found a smaller stick and used it to teach Lizzy how to make a rainstick. He taught “circular breathing” to Sam and Donald so they could play didgeridoo.

He had an impressive collection of Freakstock wristbands. He went up to Lisbon with the Hursts and then will go up to Porto to Paulo’s other tattoo parlor.

We will miss Peter and his gentle heart, wise words and good teaching and and and.

On the last day of the year Paulo and Edna’s van got fixed! They rushed off to the grocery store.

We had spent several days doing various “teambuilding exercises” that some people would pay dear money for.

We dug trenches, with our small foldable shovel, and made small roads for each wheel with buckets and buckets of stones we collected from around the land. We all carefully watched the wheels while andrew figured out the “locking differential” system. The sun had come out briefly and we were feeling determined to not go into the new year with a bogged truck. Slowly she climbed out of the mirey clay.

Just a half an hour later we took “Maggie” out to take Sam and Donald to the train station so they could go to a party in Lagos with Eddie and Rubin (from Conscious Earth). We also used this opportunity to go grocery shopping. Get the idea there wasnt much food in the house.

We had a great New Years eve and were collectively relaxed enough to miss the New Years countdown for Moscow (9:00), Turkey (10:00) and Germany (11:00) despite the presence of a funcional german in our midst. We were able to make up our own countdown for Portugal, only 4 minutes late, and most of us were able to take an ice plunge into the pool. I know what you are thinking, “Ice plunge? You are in the Algarve.” Well I gotta tell you it was cold.

Before, notice the ripples in the water from checking the water temperature.

And in. The sensible German guy, Petr, in the red shorts was the smart one. He calculated the dive needed to propel him to the quickest exit.

And seconds later almost everyone is out of the pool. Edna, being a great combination of extreme and relaxed is still in the pool – doing laps? Dang.

Anyhow, here’s to a bog free year full of taking lots of icy plunge opportunities, lots of friends, lots of sharing life and (at the risk of sounding too hippy) lots of love. What do you say. Lets hang together and be nice and loving and look out for each other. We want to try to be more selfless and look out for more opportunities to see the best and bring out the best in each other. We want us to be mother and father and sister and brother to others. You know, we think there is just too much fighting in our world and the God we believe in seems to think Unity is a pretty cool thing. We coined our own little saying this year, while we were picking olives, “Make olive oil not war”.

One of the many great honours this year was finally hanging out with Al and Tina. They would say “we just wanna love on people”. Hey, lets all do some of that, O.K.