(10) 18 March. Tarifa

Today (Monday) was a 'rest' day allowing people to get organised and catch up after their trips to get here. Some went to Gibraltar, others went to book ferries if they had not already done so, we chilled (and, as you will have seen, did a bit of shopping).

We had a get together with some of the other teams this afternoon. Herding cats was never so challenging but we did eventually get ourselves a plan for the first day or so. There will be four cars going across from Spain to Tangier at 8am tomorrow and heading towards Azrou (to the south east of Fez) where hopefully we will be joined by another group taking a different ferry later in the day. Whether we reach there or not will depend largely on how much hassle we get going through customs into Morocco, which is reportedly problematic at times, but at least we have an aim. To get to Azrou we will be travelling on decent roads but it then puts us in a perfect position to begin the more challenging routes across the High Atlas Mountains and then south to the desert.

This evening we headed into Tarifa with another group for a meal rather than eat in our hotel which is slightly out of town. Old Tarifa town is magical, a maze of narrow cobbled streets and tiny traditional bars, and it has such a chilled feeling about it with no crowds or cars. The only hold up we had was when some great float affair being moved for Semana Santa, shuffled along by two dozen people underneath, got itself stuck in the narrow street we were walking down. This place has quite a different pace of life.

Tomorrow the adventure begins...