My "Saharagelber" 300TD

When I woke up this morning I already felt a bit better. I took a long shower, although cold, it made me feel better. We exchanged some Ougiya’s, arranged an insurance and took of.
It was about 12:30 and with 103109km on the clock we left the campsite. We drove through the mainstreet where this camping was situated. The cars in Nouadhibou were really something, we had never seen cars in a shape like this. The cars were in such a bad shape, a car demolition center in Europe would not even pick these up. The metal was rotten so much and the cars were full of dents. Bumpers were fitted to the car with ropes, huge holes in the body work, taillights missing, people holding the doors in place, otherwise they would fall out, all kind of doorhandles and strips were missing, broken headlights, wheels who all tried to roll to a different direction.. You would only believe it when you see it. It was not the case for every car, there some pretty nice W201 (190) and W124 series Mercedes cars. The W123′s, the old Peugeot and Renault buses and cars were the worst ones. Maybe the cars which aren’t of any use for the moroccans anymore were exported to Mauritania.

Mercedes W123 in Mauritania. But hey! Still rollin’! (if you look closely, you see there’s a chrome strip missing).

Mercedes W123 in Nouadhibou, Mauritania.

Nouadhibou: Sand, one story houses and electiricity cables. That’s all there’s to it. And of course Mercedes

Nouadhibou, Mauritania

Imagine you take a picture of a car and then print it on paper and then crumple it up completely and then unfold it again, this is more ore less how some cars look like.

Nouadhibou feels like Nowheretown. It’s in fact nothing more then some houses popped up in the desert, with no nice building or monument at all, no nice atmosphere or cosiness. These wrecks which are driving here transport the people, huge bags of rice and furniture from one place to another. With a couple of miles an hour they crawl through the streets. When a car moves to Nouadhibous it is definitely its last station.
The people around here are very strict muslims and it often shows they have a hard time living up here.
This place, full of small houses built from sand having corrugated iron roofs with satellite antennas on it, dirt lying everywhere and sandy dusty streets looks pretty sad to us. Huge piles of sand here and there and the old telephone poles make the story complete.

I found myself some oil in a small shop in a little bystreet. I had the default chat with some guys hanging around the shop. Soon a some people gathered around the car and we had the default talk again, about how good the car is, if we wanted to sell it, where we’re going to and again, how good these cars are. It’s always nice, to have these conversations and talk a bit about the W123 and travelling through their country. After I got my oil we said goodbye and started with our long trip to Senegal, we planned to do reach Senegal today.

At around 8 pm we arrive in Nouakchott. It looks already much better then Nouadhibou, but again, Nothingness plays the leading role here. A city devided in a nice raster of roads in the middle of this great desert. The now so very recognizable one story sand buldings. In the centre there were some bigger buildings to see. We manage to find an ATM and continue on.

The part between Nouakchott and Senegal is really beautiful, much more interesting in our opinion then most parts of the desert so far. Many big sand dunes to spot and now and then we stopped to experience the area. Ramon climbed one of the bigger dunes and rolled off from top to bottom.
The temperature was unhuman, I guessed it was about 50+ degrees. Sometimes the even hotter wind came from the inland, it then felt as if we stood in a hot-air oven.
Being here, in the middle of sand and stones was awesome. Noone to be seen and pure silence. Sometimes you see big dunes on the horzion, and sometimes the surface seems to integrate with the air on the horizon. While driving we had to keep the windows closed most of the time, the hot wind was even hotter then it was in the car.

Soft sand, Mauritania

Sahara, Mauritania (Transatlantic route)

Sahara, Mauritania (Transatlantic route)

Sahara, such a vast endless wilderness.

+50 degrees in the sahara in the summer and no airco, that’s just great . Having the windows opened just helped even hotter air coming in.

Some do survive with practically no water.

The Saharagelber in the Sahara.

Dunes everywhere

While on the road we had the luck to spot one of our favorite animals (we got lots of them at home). The gerbil. To see these funny little creatures in the wild was complete new for us. I saw some of these crossing the road before but then Melissa and Ramon were asleep. I thought I recognized them as gerbils because of their way of running, it’s different then a mouse or rat. This time we stopped to check out if we could see it. And there it was, sitting somewhere on the side of the road. We approached very slowly and kept sitting over there. We opened the door to have a clear view of him, as it was very close to the car. We gave him a dried peace of fruit, which is what they adore. The gerbil sat there and tried the peace of fruit. It was so funny that it just did not run away and stayed with us, just walking around and washing itself, as if it was quite normal we stood there. After a while we said goodbye and went on.

Rolling of the dunes!

and Roll!

What you see in front, you see in the back

Various colours of the dunes.

Such a cute gerbil we found in the desert.

We continued on to Rosso, a milestone of the Africa trip. From this point you more or less trade the sand and emptyness of the Sahara for the greenery and colourful Africa. But first, you have to pass Rosso. The place -not- to be, so to speak. It’s dangerous, tedious and the only way to cross except from a smaller border downstream the Senegal river. We had to find out if we could drive along this river. As we were tremendously tired. We drove through the whole of Mauritania in one day. As it was the middle of the night. The streets are deserted. We tried to figure out where the border crossing is. While driving through the streets which were covered with litter and goats we found out there is nothing here. Some fellow hung around the streets and overall it was very dark. The only thing we saw was a big gate and when we stood there someone was approaching us. We didn’t feel to comfortable about it, though I opened the window to hear what he had to say. He starts a story about the border which is closed and that he had a place to sleep for us. I thanked him and continued on. He starts trying to stop me but I kept on moving.
I left for the streets again, manouvering between the big potholes. The darkness, all the litter and the strange sounds all made the atmosphere not too cosy, to say the least. Nobody seems to be here and the small houses look like they’re deserted. On top of this, a car appears in my mirror and keeps following us. We kept on driving, and find out the situation here and think about what to do, if we would stay in a hotel somewhere. Trying not to hit the potholes or the goats we drove around, with that car behind us. We seem to drive on a dead-end road and have to go back.
We passed the car which was following us and saw to men sitting in it, one opened the window to start talking but I kept on driving. They probably want to stop us for some place to stay for the night, but we prefer to find something ourselves. We decided to stop at a place where some military guys guarded some building. They didn’t seem comfortable about me getting out of the car and asking about a place to stay. Then the car which was following us came towards us and the man got out of the car and started taking over my chat with the guard. He appeared to be very kind and offered us (indeed) a place to sleep. He told me there was no hotel of some sort over here, so there were no options to stay here. ‘That’s of course because nobody WANTS to stay here’ I thought. So there we are. I thanked the man for his offer and got in the car again. The man explains the border is closed now and we can cross it tomorrow morning. I asked him about the alternative route, the one to drive along the Senegal river to Bge de Diama. They told us the road was flooded because of the heavy rains and it would probably not be possible to drive this road, the piste would be tricky because of this. They still decided to bring us there and guide us to that border. To my information that is quite a distance! Before we knew we drove behind them out of Rosso.
I talked about it with Melissa and we decided it was not too smart to follow some fellows out of Rosso in the middle of the night. I flashed with my lights to stop them. I told them we were too tired to do drive it now and now we knew which way to go we would try it the next morning.
By the way, we had travelled for 12 hours already so it was wise to have a good night rest anyway, before continuing. After all, I was still sick this very morning.
We tried to drive out of Rosso, as there was a building that looked like a hotel. We entered the place and found out noone was there anymore. We to the entrance passing lots of cockroaches buzzing around on the porch. There was a bell so we rang it. After a while someone came and offered us a room, quite expensive but we now knew why: there was no alternative. While unpacking the car some guys from the hotel started to chat.
As I was awefully tired I was not able to follow their french too good, but it was important to get some info from them, like the ferry departure times, the way it worked at the border in Rosso and the possible flooded road on the alternative road. Then, apart from that, I had to think about every sentence to check if it would be in his advantage to say that. Was the road really flooded, as they wouldn’t make any money if we were taking that road? I was too tired and after I heared about the departure times of the ferry I said goodbye to them and I clearly stated that we did NOT have an appointment for this guy to guide us in Rosso, we would see tomorrow. I’d like to arrange it this way, otherwise this guy will probably keep bugging us all the time, so I preferred to find him if we needed him tomorrow.
I got up to the room which was too darn hot to sleep in. Also, it was quite dirty and the beds weren’t clean, so we slept in our sleeping bags.
Melissa and I discussed what to do, taking the guide tomorrow to spare us all the hassle of the border we heard so much about, or try to get the piste to the west. We could hardly thinkg straight and all this stress and being exhausted made us quite irritated. We decided to postpone this decision till tomorrow. Luckily we were able to fall asleep very quickly, 3am, great.. We were put to the test today, you could say.

In the morning while having breakfast there was a Landcruiser approaching us. A real desertman stepped out of the car and warned us, there could be landmines out there he told us in french. He told us it would be better to leave.I understood those mines were only lying in the border areas. I promised Melissa it was safe, so now it turned into a tense situation. We had to go back to the road and follow our own tracks as good as possible. We did not wander around anymore and I was rethinking about where I read what and how I could have make this mistake, and was this indeed true? The thing is, this man left after he told us it would be better to leave, so there were obviously no other (bad) intentions or wanting-to-sell-carpet stuff. After we calmed down we left the place.

Our romantic place under the stars (and between the landmines).

All alone

A heavily armoured woodlouse, probably for the landmines

Rough coastline.

Transatlantic route

We only drove to Dahkla today, about 130kms. We swam in the sea, saw a big ship wreck which you sometimes see when you drive via the transatlantic coastal route. Entering Dahkla is beautiful, a very nice and strange scenery, a combination of sand dunes and sea water.
We had dinner in Dahkla, which was quite good. The personnel wasn’t to happy, but we could understand, living here pretty much sucks I guess.

I can see for miles and miles.. (The Byrds)

Another anonymous place in the Western Sahara. Well, as Morocco want people to live over here, you don’t pay any tax over here, hoping that they this way attract some people to settle over here.

There is nothing to do, a place in the middle of nowhere. After dinner we found a camping and asked if we could stay for the night.
An old man was there with a cute dog, he told us we could stay for free. I know that trick, no way! We had to know. To cut this long story short, He did not know and he wanted me to call the owner, who was not there. I called this man and asked what they would charge for us and sleepling in the nomad thent, including breakfast in the morning. After asking many times, the owner continued to say it was up to me, if I wanted to pay. I got tired of it and we hung up, all right, we pay something tomorrow and it should be all right I told Melissa.
May be it actually IS true this time, I don’t know. Meanwhile the old friendly man made us some tea, we sat in a big in a real saharan atmosphere. We decided to sleep in a real sahara tent. There was no other person around here, it’s a camping before you enter Dahkla on your right.

Colourful seaplants

Cooling off in the sahara

Today we departed for the sahara, we saw some wild mules and an amount of nice birds. It was a long trip today we had already seen the big dunes. Furthermore the area consisted of great plains with stones. I found out the car was leaking motor oil today, which was strange and I hoped this would hold for the rest of the trip, I have to keep an eye of this. During the trip we did not see a lot of cars, and the cars we saw were mainly Mercedeses. Lots of W123 taxi’s but also loads of W201′s and W124′s.
That night we arrived at the camping ‘Le Bedouin’. After you see the sign ‘Le Bedouin’ you drive for about 5kms over a piste and then you arrive at the camping, there is practically nothing but sand and stones over there. It is windy and small place but very clean.
You just park on the sand and during the day you can stroll around.

The Cactus, a real die-hard able to survive in the dry sahara

Melissa being excited. Fort Bou-Jerif

Endless roads

Are we there Yet?

Bird watching

Some nice part with a small lake and greenery

The dunes, Sahara

Our favorite time of the day: cappucino with a bit of Amaretto while driving and enjoying the surrounding views.

The official beginning of the Western-Sahara

The camels

A camel with the sea in the background

Spooky..

When leaving the hotel after a good night sleep we were packing the car and preparing to leave. And old man explained to us we had to pay him because he guarded the car all night. I told him the car has an alarm and pointed at our room where we slept.
‘I watched it myself and did not ask you to watch it, so forget about charging me, we did not arrange anything and this is not how it works in Morocco’ I explained in my best french. Apparently he did not agree and was leaning against the car.
We told him we weren’t going to pay anything, He was demonstratively pointing at some badge where his photograph was on it too. I told him I didn’t car, I repeated what I said before and we left. The man got angry but did not jump on the car or something
We bought ourselves 3 pizzas and hit the road.

Beautiful door. Chefchaouen, Morocco

Today we took all kinds of small roads and wanted to take a beautiful route through the rif mountains. We drove via a lot of country and small village roads. We took the smallest routes and enjoyed the countryside, the moroccans were clearly not used to tourists here and this showed they then behave different from what we’re used to: They don’t scream at you and they don’t bother you, they’re just curious and very friendly. When you stop they come over and just watch you and try to be friendly, without any commercial interests.

Rif mountains

A touristic route we took today.

After a while we were in the mountains again, driving over dirtroads which were winding through the landscape. Then we were very luck, as bird watchers we were stunned by what we sawn then. Golden Eagles! They do live here but as our birdwatcher book told us, it’s a very rare sight in the Atlas.

Enjoying the small roads through the Atlas. At this place we spotted some golden eagles, very rare!

We ended up in Ouezzane today and parked the car on a guarded parking lot. Then we tried to find the cheapest hotel around, but that was a bit too miserable. The rooms were filthy and the shower on the roof which we had to use in the morning, was used as a toilet too, the shit was on the floor and this was a bit too primitive for us
We managed to find another simple hotel, only beds and no shower but we had a washbasin in the room, pretty clean and enough for us, which was important.
The room costed us 80 Dirham, no discounts. According to the hotel owner, there had never booked any dutch person in this hotel. We checked in, filled in the paperwork (which needs to be done at every hotel) and ate some shitty fries at the cafe downstairs.
While eating the crappy fries, we sat in the middle of the live on the streets. There were only men outside in the evening. The local nut hang around here too. They seemd to care for him, one of the people around took his stone which he was carrying in a plastic bag, trying to explain him he mus not walk around with it. This man threw the stone away and warned this man again (or so I think). After some time, we saw the local nut wandering around again with his stone in this plastic bag.
We then went for a walk through the main street. This street was full of life in the evening, we did not see any tourist around here the whole night and we seemed to be an interesting topic for them. They stared at us, when we stopped by to find some slippers, and dealing about the price was funny for them . they stared and laughed at us, as if we were walking around naked,
After some research we found that the first one offered the slippers for 20 dirham, the secnd for 100 dirham and the last for 25. So we bough them for 25 dirham at the last place. The moroccans were in fact were very friendly. We all enjoyed it very much on the market and when we were done we went to some odd place and drank a mint tea (of course).
When we were back at the hotel we drank some wine at the balcony and stared at the same street again where we sat and saw how the restaurants cleaned up for today and backing the last meat and then putting back the decorative lettuce leaves again after they cleaned those display cases, great All the waste was neatly put into garbage bags and put at the roadside. After a while the streets were quiet and everyone went home.
We sat there on the balcony for quite some time and saw how first recyclers came on the stage, the homeless people. They opened the bags again and started to pick things out and consumed what they thought they could eat. After they disappeared the next participants entered the stage: The dogs. They ripped open the garbage bags and started to look for their food and consumed all they could, leeaving the place scattered with old garbage and teared open bags. When the dogs disappeared, the cats came by to see if there was left something for them.
It ended up as a big mess on the streets, and we were wondering if they did not think about garbage cans or something.

From now on, it’s only half a day to arrive in Algeciras, where the boat departs to Africa (Morocco)! Still not bad, with this very inefficient way of driving-sleeping-driving

I had slept perfectly well! I slept on the ground for 8 hours, not too much people around and it was a very quiet place. We alread saw a lot of moroccan people who were of course heading to Morocco.

Roads much travelled..

Coastal Highway of south Spain

Today we took the boat to Ceuta. In Algeciras we were able to find some tickets at the counter. The meter showed 98368km, so it’s about 2200km from Almere to Algeciras. Before departure a moroccon guy walked around with white pieces of paper we had to fill in, then he charged us 2 euro’s after filling it in. Nice trick dude! But no, we already know how it works around here, it’s not the first time. He walked away disappointedly. These papers were just the pieces of paper you need to fill in when crossing the border, but that’s not somehing to pay for. I was shocked to hear the price of the ferry with our car: 286 Euros roundtrip! The price was for vehicles with a maximum height of 1.90m, and we’re abit above it but we got through it, otherwise it was even more expensive!

Port of Algeciras

The powerferry to Morocco

Then the boat arrived in Ceuta after 35 minutes, we knew the situation at the border so we try to look as we were home, so they didn’t bother us with all that crap that we need help and about ‘vague and difficult formalities’. After some time we were done, even the car was not inspected at all. We’re in W123 paradise again! W123′s all around the place here, It’s still the same as back in 98, when we visited Morocco too, but now we’re driving in a W123 ourselves too.
We took some pictures of the well known spot, after entering Morocco, all those blue W123 taxis standing on the big parking place. Through the whole of Morocco you’ll find W123′s. That quality monster is used as a Taxi all-over, but it’s also a much used family car.
Out of the bigger cities it’s the car you see most I guess.

You don’t need a station to transport a refridgerator.

The taxi standing place in Ceuta

After that we stopped for a swim, Ramon was amazed about the difference between Europe and Morocco. We saw the moroccan women swim with their clothes on, which was a strange thing to see. While leaving, I circumvented a crazy man who wanted to charge us for parking somewhere on the sand.

Ceuta, Tarred roads, but not too much pebbles in it, so it sounds like you drive in a parking place and you don’t have too much grip

No drinking water and electricity in the room? Take it with you

We continued to cosy Chefchaouen today and stayed in Hotel Sahara, next to the old medina. We could park the car in front of the hotel, so we could see it. Then we went to the room, to avoid the heat and to take a nap (I was still tremendously tired).
We wanted to filter some water so we took the jumpstarter with us and the filter and the waterbags. After the nap we went for a walk and a meal into the medina and then walked through the tiny streets of lovely Chefchaouen. The first day in Morocco pleased us all.

Typical moroccon door

All kinds of color for painting stony surfaces

Departure 00:30 – Almere 96386km

Tonight is the night, we’re leaving, and a miracle, we’re finished with everything. The days before were like hell, but we ended up finished.
The last couple of days were quite stressful, buy all necessary books (Sahara overland, maps, Lonely Planets etc), insurances, carte grise, visa, vaccinations and things like that. The stress raised as the departure date approached. It was only yesterday that I arranged my international drivers license and international car papers.
At midnight we went off, in our Benz which was about to be both our transport and our home. Melissa and Ramon were sitting in the car and this remembered me of myself, sitting as a young boy in the back of my fathers car, when we went off for the holiday. Back then, I was jealous at my dad cause he was behind the wheel, now I am myself I started the engine and she started spinning. Running like a clock, 96386km on the meter. This year she had already hit 13000kms from the travels to Turkey and France this year.
We’re all in a fine travelmood, curious about what to expect. Saying goodbye to our families was difficult, but the only thing we can think of right now is adventure, so this makes it easier to bare. After some minutes we entered the high way, it was already very dark and we drove a hole in the night. I feel comfortable, driving in this very strong diesel from Stuttgart, and I’m sure she will make it all the way to Africa and back.
At 6:15 we were south of Paris and I made my first stop. We then continued for another hour to get some sleep. I set up the rooftent and tried to get some sleep, unfortunately I only slept for three hours. We filled our waterbags and tested our waterfilter and left the ‘Aire’ again.

At the Aire we’d set up the rooftent for a short nap.

The filtered water is awesome, we smelled the water before which contained chlorine but when we drank it was just perfect, no nasty tastes. This is succes number one, filtering water yourself, we save us buying bottles and we save the environment by not buying plastic bottles all the time.

At mid day we were back on the road again, we’re eating kilometers, but at a peaceful speed around 110km/h. Once in a while we see buzzards circling above the fields. Sometimes I’m listening to for example the Rolling Stones and Metalica on the Ipod while Melissa and Ramon are asleep. I enjoy the drive in the W123, the meters point to values I expect and the nice 5 ciilnder diesel runs smoothly. Not bad, 23 years old and driving like new, in fact, it is of course nearly new. In fact, I feel even more secure than being in a new plastic car, with all kind of electronics which can spoil your journey, as I found out when I drove to Sicily, Italia, in a brand new BMW cabrio and the coolfan steering unit broke down. A simple mechanic can’t help you. We ended up with a cool fan of a Fiat Uno, which was fitted badly and as a result the complete car was shaking while driving, let alone the disturbing noise. Of course this happend in a weekend of festivals on the farthest point of our trip, close to the Etna, oh well.

On the road: Nice (paid) highways in France.

Close to Bordeaux we stopped again, I was pretty tired (again) and so we had a long stop. Next time I really need to rest a bit more before departing for a long journey. After some rest we went on and passed the border of Spain in the evening, we kept on rolling..

The waterfilter is already a succes!

There she is, with the new imperial and rooftent installed. Furthermore the jerrycans and the sand ladders were installed too. Thanks to the help of Destination Adventures it was alle configured perfectly, you can shove the sandladders underneath the imperial. The jerrycans and the spare wheel go up front.
Then he installed the waterfilter on a wooden board. Perfect service, so if you live in the neighbourhood of Amsterdam and you need stuff for overland trips, give it a try.

http://destinationadventure.nl

The saharagelber @ Destination Adventure. The rooftent is just installed.

Today we left for Korce to have a look around and to get some stuff and finding an ATM. We departed on time, said goodbye to the sweet hostess (she waved us goodbye with here grand daughter) and we proceeded our Albania trip. When we left, a W123 was parked in front of the hotel, and the first car I saw driving on the road was a W123. Yes, awesome
The poverty showed itself today pretty good. To believe this is so close to home is hard to believe. Albania has of course been isolated for a very long time. You go back in time for at least 50 years when you arrive here from a western european country.
Tough, if you love the old Mercedeses this is really walhalla, If you wonder where lots of them have disappeared to, you’ll find out that they are here in Albania. All the W123′s, W124′s and W201′s.

Korce was a whole experience in itself. There was market in Korce today. We parked the Saharagelber and went into the city. The streets were full of life. Our tour started a bit unpleasant, we heard an awful screaming from a sheep close to us. This sheep tried to escape from his owner, it had already smelt death. The sheep are transported easier alive and for the people here the best prove of the meat being fresh is to see the ‘meat’ alive. The sheep are traded on the street here and they cut their throats and poach the sheep on the street too, horrible. Melissa did not want to stay too long here. we felt very sorry for the poor sheep. When we went on, we saw lots of chicken in too small cages, poached animals hanging in trucks.
Indeed, it happens all on the streets. A bit further lie the entrails of a sheep with the rest of the garbage, the fresh skins lie somewhere else in a van. There is a lot of waste lying around on the streets. People are walking their way trhough it.
We will try to find a supermarket and a ATM and leave the place rather sooner than later. We left the screaming of the sheep behind, it cut through us like a knife, we know now what’s happening over there.
The buildings are brown and grey and look like they can collapse every minute. It’s all a very miserable situation the people in Korce live in, Korce looks like a mess. It’s so poor and we were very impressed to see all this, we can know imagine how on of the poorest countries in Europe look like. We enter a big square, where people wandered around, finding their ways to somewhere, Mercedeses crossed the square and linebuses were waiting to set off to their destinations.
I was some people with plastic bags of the Lidl supermarket and I decided to ask someone where the Lidl could be found. I pointed at the bag and made gestures like ‘Where is it, I don’t know!’ by shrugging my shoulders. The man thinks I am crazy and walks away. ‘Gee thanks’ I thought. Again, I tried with a young man but he rigidly contintued walking. Melissa laughed at me for my unsuccesful attempts. I stopped trying. I couldn’t help looking around to see all those Mercedeses, it’s so odd. I’ve seen it in Morocco but there are so many of them here, All these old Mercedess rendered me useless and therefore Melissa started searching for the ATM and the supermarket herself. I kept on looking an tried to capture all this with my camera.
After a while Melissa found an ATM and came back to me, we continued to walk around a bit and checked if we could find a supermarket. When walking around, I even found a Saharagelber W123 station. Lots of the W123′s were in a terrible shape.
Then when we were back at the car, I thought by myself, that my W123 isn’t too different from the others now, because of all the mud and sand which made her look the same as the others.

After Korce we decided to take the same route back to Permet as we had driven yesterday and then continue from Permet in the direction of Berat. This way we could experience the nice roue again and then follow atouristic route up north.

It was again stunning to experience the Albanian landscape. Even with all the special bunkers which are scattered over the landscape. They were placed by the dictator who reigned over Albania in the seventies and eighties.
We made jokes about them. They looked like the top of a R2D2-like robot, as if the rest resided under the surface. So sometimes we yelled ‘biedebie’ to each other. We drove through the fairytale environment and it still felt weird, only the road, the ‘biedebies’ and us, no other signs of civilisation. We both enjoyed Albania very much, it stole our hearts for sure.

On our way Melissa asked me to stop, she saw a skull so she wanted to have a look (there were more of them, it turned out later). So she was wandering around and heard a very low grunting. When she looked behind here here she saw a big dog, skin to
the bone, obviously so hungry that he would tak any risk, even try eating a human. It was of course so desperately hungry and all bets were off. Melissa knew this was serious and started calling me. In fact, I saw this dog from my mirror in the Benz, but did no realize shed hadn’t seen it and that it was about to attack her. She made gestures to me to drive backwards, which I did. The dog stood still, waiting what this yellow thing that was approaching was about to do. When I was close to Melissa she started walking towards the car and finally got in. ‘Wow! That dog was trying to eat me!’ She said to me amazed ‘Tha was pretty scary though!’. This dog was totally bewildered and probably the skulls Melissa had founf were one of its family or friends. The probably were dumped here some while ago. Melissa felt so sorry for the dogs and wanted to leave some food behind, so we left some bread, that was all we had for them. Of course, it’s something, but not of much help for the coming week…
Melissa was happy she sat next to me again, I started the engine and we departed again..

After a while we were back at the intersection close to the border, we got here when we entered to and were this friendly guy read the signs for us. We drove in the direction of Permet again. Driving this part was amazing. In the beginning we had a river on our left hand side. Then after a while we went into the direction of Berat. Whle passing some houses situated along the road there were some fellows standing there looking as if they saw water burn.
The road got worse and worse and when we passed a village situated at the foot of the mountain this road seemed to end, well, in fact in continued but it meant a paved road with sand and stones. We checked on the map again, ‘Is this the road to Berat?’ we asked ourselves. ‘This has to be the road then’ I said, looking up from the map into the mountains. ‘Shall we do it?’. Of course we did, it will probably be fun anyway. So, there we went up to the hill over this stoney road. When we were climbing over the sloping road. The track got worse and much more difficult. The stones and boulders got bigger, so we had to find our way through it with the hillside on our left. The heavier parts were alternating the somewhat easier parts.
At some point I saw a car standing on the hill with noone around and thought about what we could do if the Benz broke down now. If we would run into trouble with the car we would have a very big problem in this place, in the middle of nowhere, no infrastructure and facilities. It would be stupid to leave the car alone here too.

We couldn’t imagine the road stayed this way all the way to Berat. In fact this had to be the route to Berat but it was hard to believe. Hopefully it would get better after a while. After a while driving over this difficult track we stopped the car again and tried to calculate how far it would be to Berat and how long it would take to arrive. It was already 8:30 and it should be approximately 60km from here. With an average from 30km/h we would arrive at 20:30hrs in Berat. But the road had to be better than this from now on, otherwise it could take ages. In fact, 20:30 is pretty late already, it will already be dark by then.

After curiously looking after each curve to see if the road got better we were pointed to the facts all the time. The road seemed to -stay- bad. The Saharagelber was doing very well, but for us the last one and a half hours were very temping.
The enormous stones, holes, the small road, often a steep hillside on our left or right, deep fairways and sometimes pools of mud and water made the trip difficult but very exciting too.

To manouvre the Benz over this kind of road in these situations was a good practice for Africa coming summer.

We didn’t see anyone else while driving. We drove through the unspoiled nature of Albania. There were mountains everywhere, in between times we passed a lake and now and then we saw a shepherd with his herd of cattle of goats and sheep and their dangerous dogs they have with them.
At 20:15u we stopped to put some vegetable oil in the tank. From a distance we heard a gigantic noise from frogs sitting at a small lake. It seemed to be thousands of them, it was unbelievable. From a distance we saw a shepherd with his herd of cattle walking over the hills and believe it or not, there was a scout on his horse in a special costume who went exploring the area. These people sleep and walk with the cattle for some time in these mountains. We felt we had landed in the middle ages.

While driving for hours through the mountains over this stony road in the middle of nowhere, without any villages or cities and noone around, something happened where I was so afraid of. While manoeuvring between the holes and stones I hit a big stone with the bottom of the car. A loud bang, but it was not easy to heard where it hit the car. I stopped the car and got out, I was recollecting the situation while driving in Morocco 6 years ago, where I hit a big stone which teared open the oil carter.
When I drove slowly backwards I saw a big pool of oil. That was in the south of Morocco, in the middle of nowhere too by the way. One of the cars that was passing by towed us to the next village (and charged us big time for that one).
So, when I got out of the car I immediately checked my precious Mercedes but did not see anything on the ground and no leakages. Nothing was loose and I got in the car again, tapping on the dashboard while Melissa gave me an odd look.
“We can go on, no worries” I said to her.
The twilight was setting in and still no sight of some city. After quite some heavy driving again, we arrived at small group of houses or better: ruins.
Until now, the Saharagelber was able to pull through and over anything we came across untill now (even without the lifting of the car I planned to do before the trip, but was not able to).
A few people saw us coming and stared at us, not used to see a car around here, especially a tourist! They seemed to be perplex to see a car with foreign license plates.
We saw some old wrecks which seemed to be old trucks, a couple of plastered old ruins and a bunch of other crap, like wasmachines and plastic bottles and everything in between.
Apparently there were two or three families living in these ruins. We asked a small group of people where Berat was, by just saying ‘Berat’ and then pointing in a couple of directions.
One of them, a friendly looking man, understood what I meant and pointed in the direction we were driving in. He raised 5 fingers and pointed in the Berat direction again, so it had to be 5km. So we thanked and continued.
On our left side we saw a tarred road, but that one went in the wrong direction. It was 20:30 so we had to make a decision.
‘When it’s getting really dark, we can’t navigate just by view’ I said to Melissa. The crossings aren’t easy to oversee (where the directions are heading) and we can’t easily see the holes. Also, we can’t see where these dogs are when for some reason we have to step out of the car. These dogs are very big and are used for herding, they’re very aggressive when you approach with your car.

On our left side we saw the sun setting which gave us a stunning sunset to watch, but with mixed feelings though. It was beautiful of course, but it also meant it was getting dark very soon.
It was starting to get serious now. We decided to continue, if it’s really 5km. Go back via the tarred road we saw on our left did not seem to be a smart solution, if it was only another 5kms, with this velocity it was only another half an hour driving.
When on the top of a large hill we oversaw the landscape, the hills on the horizon got black with the sun setting in the background. Perfect!

The mountainside road went further uphill and got smaller and smaller. This felt not right. We had a bad feeling about it now, it seemed to be another planet we were driving on, nothing is recognizable. We expected to see some light pollution from cities far away, but there was nothing. We expected to see at least some signs or bigger roads, other cars or any infrastructure so you know you’re not the first who’s driving here.
The road got smaller and this seemed wrong. We met a couple of women who were walking on this tiny road. We said ‘Berat’ again and pointed around us again. They shook their heads and pointed back to the small intersection we just passed, apparently we had to take the the other direction. So, I drove backwards and we took that other road, but this seemed to be better indeed.

This road winded through the mountains too. After quite some time driving we still did not have the feeling that we were approaching a city or something. Apart from the great views and nature itself, there was no sign for us we were heading towards a city or something. We agreed that we were lost in Albania. At a certain point we arrived at another intersection with two reasonable possible directions. There was of course no one around, this could go on all night, reducing the chances to keep on heading in the right direction. If we took the wrong direction we could go wrong for hours, without seeing a city or an indication that we were going wrong. Our map of Europe was quite useless for this, Albania was too small and only the main roads were drawed.
We decided to continue straight on, this was just a guess as there were no signs.
As it turned out, this strategy does not work here. At first we passed some houses, it was immense dark, some of the houses were lit with a simple outside lamp. A group of dogs had heard us and came towards us, they barked and kept running next to the car so I couldn’t see them. We hoped they did not do anything stupid because we couldn’t see them, so we drove carefully. They ran with us for a long time but finally they stopped, thank god we were far enough for them, they had decided to go back and we were of no ‘danger’ anymore. The road became a narrow path and led us along some small houses, it looked like this was only a path to connect the houses and we must have gotten of the main road. We decided to go back and did this thing a couple of times, finally we seemed to have found the ‘main road’ again. It went up and after a while we were surrounded by trees and weren’t able to see anything except for the road iself.
We approached a tough part. Before us, we saw a pool of water, then a muddy part and after that another pool. This was pretty unpleasant, because -if- we got stuck here, we would certainly stay here for some time, as we didn’t see any car in a very long time, it was like expecting a car approaching in the middle ages, or so it felt.
I drove back and looked desperately at Melissa “I think we have to give it a shot”. I shone with my headlights at the 2 pools and tried to make a plan, how to cross them. This was pretty exciting, as we really, really didn’t want to get stuck here.
We were tired, it’s pretty dark and tools to get ourselves out of it we didn’t have, and as I wrote before, we didn’t expect anyone to come by in a long time. Thus, getting stuck is NO OPTION! When I pressed down the accelerator adrenalin was running through my vains. After taking of I entered the first pool, the Benz kept on driving, it shooked a bit left and right because of lack of grip on the muddy soil in the pool, then we were at the middle part, where there was a big stone, but we came out on the left, just as planned .
Then we entered the second pool, the car is decreasing speed but still rolling. Anxiously we sat there, I was trying to steer around a difficult part and to leave the pool at the right side of the road, so we got on the solid sand again as soon as possible.
We felt the back of the car winding left and right, ‘Come on! Come oooooon! I yelled stressfully. ‘Bang!!’ I heard. That sounded like a stone at the bottom of the car. Then again the stone showed us its presence, but now from the back of the car. Another bang, but not as loud as the first one. We kept on driving, the wheels were spinning but we were still going. After a bit of more hard work in the pool from the read-wheel drive, we had to pass some mud before we were on solid ground again.
This part went slow but good and finally we could conclude we were on the solid part of the dirt road again. ‘We did it!’. We roared and we were very delighted. ‘This old Benz did it!’

The remainder of this track was better and we did not encounter other pools. We went a bit downhill and this was a good sign, as cities aren’t usually built on the mountains. At the foot of the mountains the road was winding through the landscape, we approached an intersection again with, of course, no signs. So, we chose to go straight on, as there were no signs with directions. This went pretty good, but after a curve the road became very small and lots of big rocks lied on the road, I sat with my head against the roof so I could see as much as possible in front of the car. A bit further the road was more or less broken. It went up a bit and there was lots of sand and some very big holes. We saw some small houses. These people for sure didn’t have a car or would use the road from the other side perhaps. We might be able to continue and give it a shot, but we wouldn’t for sure be able to go back, it looks very hard for the W123 to deal with this.
Also, we didn’t expect this road to be the main road anyway, we had to go back and so we had to try to turn over here. On both sides of the road there was quite some sand with stones and taken into account that the road is very small, it looks impossible to turn here. Driving backwards is no option, because the road is pretty steep and small and there was a curve, with one side on the mountainside. I turned of the Benz and opened the window. We start to talk about our options, which seemed to be none.
“Well then”, I said. “There we are, in the middle of nowhere somewhere in Albania. I can’t go back and turning is impossible, continue in straight on means a point of no return, and probably it’s the wrong road anyway”.
We seemed to hear some noise from the the houses over there, also, there was a big dog barking over there. It sounded as if it was coming closer, but not much. “The only option is turning around” Melissa said but I told her it’s definitely not possible.
I started to panic a bit “What the hell did we do! Why?!!” I yelled and hit the steering wheel with my hand. “Relax!” demanded Melissa “We are going to try it out”. “I told you that WON’T work!” I snapped at her, knowing that in fact she’s right.
I was able to bring out a ‘Sorry’ and said “All right, we are going to try it then, but then you have to get out of the car to help”. She isn’t too happy with that because of the dog but someone had to watch the back and the front of the car.
“So there we go” I thought. After trying to turn the first time I was standing already quite crosswise. Then I started to go forwards and backwards and when coming closer to the 90% crosswise the car was hardly able to move anymore. The space was close to nothing, the front and the rear were hitting the sand of both sides of the road now. It was pretty much stuck! “Try a little bit more!” Melissa yelled, but I wasn’t able to move anymore. “Darn!”
I got out of the car and tried to dig the sand away. The end of the exhaust pipe was completely in the sand. This didn’t look to good, It was completely stuck. We both tried to remove some sand and kept looking to see if this dog wasn’t coming.
Then I tried again, and after some digging and trying the car was able to move a couple of centimeters, and after this tedious work we managed to turn and the Benz stood in the opposite direction. We were able to go back to that intersection again.
We now guessed the other direction, hopefully this is the right one.
We thought about stopping and trying to get some sleep, if this would take much longer, it was already around midnight already.
Without good sight and navigation we continued the dirt road. After a while we passed car! That at least was a good sign. Far away we were able to see some lights, possibly a city, we were not sure which one, but didn’t mind at all anymore which city it was, if only we knew where the hell we were! From high up in the mountains it became clear to us, a city loomed up in the dark. After quite some curves through the mountains we were getting nearby, we were reassured we would make it now, it would last too long from now on. But 5kms? I think he meant 50kms! After we got out of the mountains we entered a tarred road again, it felt like we were stepping on land, after floating on a raft while being lost in the open sea.
A bit further there was a nice bridge to be seen, and in a short time we saw lots of youngsters walking in the streets, coming back or heading to a party or something. We drove along the water and crossed the bridge and went searching for a hotel in the city.
When crossing the canal we saw it was a very big city, this had to be Berat, as there was no other big city in this area.
Berat is quite a nice city, much different then Korce. Chances were high to find a hotel here, but the question was if it was open or not.
It was a relieve to find a hotel in a short time, as we were pretty tired. It was in a narrow street, which was close to a bigger street. The hotel had very big castle like doors which were closed, so that did not look too good. We got out and tried to push it, with a crack it opened. “It’s open?” Melissa asked. It was 00:30u, were we lucky? We walked in slowly, it looked very nice, dark wood all over, a lot of tables. It had a very nice, cosy interior of a very old restaurant some 100 years ago. At a bar a friendly man was standing and walked towards us when we approached. He gave us a warm welcome and we tried to explain we wanted to stay for the night. We wanted to know what he would charge us, as we did not have much albanian money.
We wanted to know if we could pay with Euros too. He tried to calculate this on a small paper and it seemed a hell of a job, we ended up saying that we would pay him tomorrow with albanian money, if there was an ATM around, because he seemed not to be able to work it out After we were done he showed us our room, it was not very expensive but the room was pretty nice, it had a balcony too. We agreed with the room and thanked the good man and took all our stuff from the car.
Melissa cooked us a dinner and after that we sat on the bed and opened a bottle of wine and chatted a bit more. I had one glass of wine and after that I fell asleep right away.

After waking up in our moisted room we packed the car again, ate some bread and enjoyed the nice scenery. When we stepped out of this room a tremendous paranorama is presented to us. We departed in the direction of Albania today!
After some ours driving we stopped for a picknick at a field near a lake. We were watching a herd of sheep which was grazing in the field next to us . They seemed to be very interested in us, because they followed us pretty closely. We saw some small snakes in the lake. I also found a pig skull. After this relaxed break we continued. At around 17:00hrs we were already close to the border of Albania, but there was no sign to be found there. We continued in the direction of Konitza.
When we arrived in Konitza, still no signs . After some small indication we checked with someone at a gas station which direction we had to go for the border, because somewhere we had to to eastward and we were looking for a small intersection. We only saw a very small sign but were not sure this was the right direction. This should be right the. It’s like Albania just doesn’t exist for the Greek.
After some kilometers we entered a small border post. The greek border post didn’t know how to understand our papers from the car it seemed. I tried to explain it but the because of the language barrier I was not able to help him very well. It took quite some time and I think he gave up. I got my papers back. He asked us why we wanted to visit Albania. He told us that in the 24 years he worked here he had never seen dutch tourists here at the border post who wanted to enter Albania.
We were allowed to continue. We drove further but did not see he albanian border post. We drove over a long bridge and at the other side was the albanian border.
We were curious if we would be able to get in. It seemed no problem, if was possible to buy the visa for us at the border post. The friendly people were looking a bit amezed, to have dutch tourists today. They got very enthousiastic to see us dutch people here who are interested in their country and want to voluntarily visit it. Like some people told me before, the albanese people really LOVE Mercedes. One look around at the border post proved this fact already; There were 6 cars and four of them were old Mercedes cars. The fact that Albania is hardly visited by tourists was clear to us when we drove by, all the people were watching as if aliens entered their area. The old and the young, man and women, small and big.
At the first intersection we stopped to see if we had to go to Permet or Korce. There was a bar were some people sat outside, soon one of them came towards us and asked where we wanted to go. At least, we think he said that.
We couldn’t understand a word from him and he didn’t understand any english. In fact, he wanted to explain what was on the sign. “Permet” and he pointed left, “Korce” and he pointed to the right. “Ah yes” I said “But we can read signs too” I thought by myself

Because we didn’t have a good map of Albania (we only had the map of Europe) we made the decision by guessing and went to Permet. This route as far we could see didn’t lead us into the northern direction. We didn’t have enough details on the actual map of course, so it was pretty difficult to find these things out. As a result we drove back to the intersection again, waved at our friends on the terrace and now went into the direction of Korce. This road hopefully went north, because this Korce place was not on our map we couldn’t verify anything.
We were astonished by how beautiful Albania is. It was already 19:30 and so we decided to find ourselves a little hotel to sleep. Of this 80km we drove until now it was clear to us: Albania is marvellous, tremendously beautiful!
Because we drove some part in the dark we were disappointed that we couldn’t experience it all. It was so full of green, lots of mountains and beautifully shaped. All human intervention you see is this small tiny tarred road that cuts through the landscape.
No signs, no houses, no parking places, no garbagecans, bars, restaurants etc. etc. No form of human intervention except for the road. Sometimes we saw a river and sometimes great waterfalls now and then. This is probably the fact that it all looks like a fairytale, because most of the time anywhere else in Europe you alway see all this marks of human intervention. Sometimes we pass a group of houses, but that is really once in a while.

The mainroad to Korce is a pretty bad road with a lot of stones and holes. We then passed a small village, where we drove versy slowly to look around. Everyone was watching us. This village was mainly one big street and everyone was outside, a police man walked around looking happy. As I already wrote, Mercedeses everywhere, lots of W123′s here. Furthermore one can say that it all looks very poort and miserable. The flats and houses are not much more then concrete cages.
We asked the police man if there was a hotel here. We really want to stay here and have a look at the daily lives around here. It felt very remote and with all people outside walking around and chatting we had the feeling we should stay here and experience this. Unfortunately the police man told us there was no hotel here (‘No hotel!, Korce!’) and because of that we had to continue. Because when it gets dark here in Albania it gets really, really dark because there are no street lights through the country, finding a hotel this way will become impossible then. And thus it became a very long trip, because driving through the mountains with only hairpin bends in the dark and the bad roads isn’t really easy.
At last, at 21:30hrs (20:30hrs local time) we seemed to enter a village. The first two buildings we pretty big and more or less looked like hotels but there was no sign or something which underwrote this. So, we stepped out of the car and walked towards the building where they seemed to have a cafe downstairs, there was a lot of light and some people were sitting in this room. We walked in, the music was turned on very loud. ‘Is this a hotel?’ I asked, while making a gesture that represented this place.
He pointed at the other building. That had to be a hotel. So we thanked and left the overexposed place. We walked towards the other building. The lights were on downstairs and carefully we opened the door.
There were some people sitting there. They felt silent (Where did we experience that befor? Ah yes… ) and a woman asked us, eh, something. We tried to explain we want to know if this was a hotel and if we could stay for the night.
It was very difficult to explain this, because she really did not understand a WORD what we said, and vice versa. Even ‘yes’ and ‘no’ wasn’t understood. We stood there, staring at each other, not knowing how to explain things to each other.
She was very sweet and laughed a lot, she wanted to express how amazing this was, us standing there not able to communicate. It seemed that besides the word ‘hotel’ the word ‘Accoord’ (all-right) was common with both of us, that’s at least something.
It was very interesting to see how we could solve this. We wanted one room, for two persons, for one night, and one bed. In the end we had laughed a lot and understood each other. She showed us the room and in 5 minutes we were sitting there in this nice room where all the furniture was crafted from wood. We only had to pay 15 euro’s for this relaxed place.

Today Henk and Esther and I took the car and planned to have a look how Rhodes looked like. Melissa decided to stay in the room. So we went for a nice tour and we decided to start with the inland in the southern part from Rhodes. Soon we forked from the main road and drove over smaller gravel and sandy roads. After a while we wanted to cross a bridge but this one was close, so we branched off again and came across a river. So we had to find out if the Benz was able to do this, after some investigation I thought I would be able to cross. Esther was curious and Henk thought it wasn’t too smart. But there we went and it all went fine! We were all proud on the Saharagelber. Then the road went through the hills and mountains and we got some great views. We were all alone over there and found out that the inland of southern Rhodes is very, very beautiful! Now and then we had some hard parts, with a lot of mud, and all the time the W123 managed to go through it. Henk and Esther were amazed, about what this car is able to go through, a lot of parts looked impossible but all the time we got through it.
We saw lots of butterflies, great mountain views, a wild river, nice birds and a beautiful green environment.
Then we came across a very muddy part, which was pretty long too. Henk and Esther knew it for sure, “This is way too tricky!” . This looked indeed a bit hard for the car, furthermore we had a problem if we got stock, because noone was driving here, we didn’t see a car around here. We stood there but I did not want to go back. I walked back and forth over the part and tried to think how I should go, via the left or right side, or even the middle. Adrenalin was running through my body, “I -think- it should be possible” I thought, but yeah, -wat if- I get stuck? What are my options then? Well, we’re in the woods, so in that case it will be a lot of work but it should be possible.
I told them I wanted to try, they were surprised and curious what would happen. It was time to give it a shot, and so I did. I drove a bit back and tried to drive exactly as I planned, because there were stones I had to be careful for these too. It went all okay, the Benz just kept going, the Saharagelber kept on slogging through the mud until she was on firmer ground again.
Henk and Esther roard enthusiastically. Happy and excited we got in the the car again and drove further. Sometimes we had some more difficult mud parts but it all went okay.
This was fun! As we continued we saw a snake crossing the dirt road. We stopped to try to find it but we didn’t see it anymore. Then we decided to continue to the south and sit somewhere and relax, having something to eat. We continued the path but our road let to an dead end, a steep slope of sand and stones made us stop. Again, I was thinking if it would be possible or not, Henk and Esther didn’t know but now trusted me that I probably know what’s possible or not. Together with Henk I removed some big stones because I thought it would be possible to drive over it, but at least we had to remove the nasty big stones. After that, I gave it a shot, it was quite spectacular, at least from the inside, the start on the hood had risen in the sky at the moment I took the slope, the Benz continued with enough grip on the rear tyres and pushed us up untill we were on the flat part again. Again we cheered, we did the trick again!
Then we were on a tarred road again and drove to the next little village where we parked the car and had something to eat. Henk and Esther loved the W123 from now on, the Mercedes gained a lot of respect from them today. They were even talking about getting one too
After that we drove a bit more around and then back. We had to pay a visit to the office for checking in on the boat on tuesday in Rhodes City. It was not easy to find and we drove a bit around, I dropped Melissa when we saw where it was and then I had to park the car somewhere. In Rhodes city there is a lot of traffic at the end of the day. When I finally was able and got back Melissa told me the boat broke down. We were not able to go back to Turkey, and the fun part was that they couldn’t tell us when it would be fixed again, it could take one day, but two weeks might also be possible they told us. Great, there we are, not able to continue our trip through Turkey. So we sat down on a terrace thinking about our options. Waiting was not a smart thing to do, it could take weeks… The travel agency offered us to go with their otherferry line, which goes to Athens. That option was probably the best one, but also meant we were not able to go back to Turkey. We thought about the option to spend some more time in Albania which made us very happy too, because we were so curious about Albania. We did not know about what we needed for Albania but then we will find out when we’re at the border. So, we agreed to go to Athens tomorrow night, that’s the first possibility we have. We didn’t have to pay anything extra because of the broken ferry, so that’s done properly.

We departed very early, the owner tried to rip us off by asking way too much and he put on his ‘I am very surprised’ face, but it didn’t help. The deal was made and I did not want to pay twice as much now. I ignored further arguments and stepped in the car. He waved goodbye and openend the gate, no further problems or whatsoever. We were bright on time for the ferry, it was a very small one where only four cars were able to enter. May this was why its so expensive. “Stop thinking about that!” I screamed to myself in my head.
After we had this relaxed sunny boat trip we disembarked in the port of Rhodes. When I drove the car from the ferry on the dock we were very surprised to see some of our dutch friends!
They wanted to surprise us, and succeeded! Such a surprise to see them in front of us here! They told us they planned to be here 2 weeks and this week they wanted to help at the clinic too.
So, first get through all the official stuff here and then we can start to enjoy Rhodes.

Then the disaster began. We had to take EVERYTHIING out of the car, which would be a hell of a job.
I never had to do this before and now we really had to do it, so it seemed. But the worst part was, we had to carry everything inside, we had to take everything out of the car and walk inside to the moving belt.
I tried to deal with one of the customhouse officials to just check the stuff by the car. This would take a very long time. This official was very mad, he started to scream at us and did not want to talk with us. Melissa got very mad at him but that didn’t help of course, there was no room for discussion or any deal, we had to take everything out.
Because of the medicine we were expecting problems and that they would take it. We had to cool down and just do it, otherwise we could not expect too much from them in a positive way anymore. But it did not matter, when we were waiting at the belt they were inspecting the medicines when they passed. ‘What’s this!?’ They asked.
We explained this were needles, tranquillizers, some sterile instruments, rubber handgloves and so on. We explained that this was for a animal clinic.
The sullen officials called another official and they told us we had to have paperwork for this and for that, otherwise they would destroy it. So, we started calling vets in Holland, we started callling the animal clinic in Rhodes, but it all didn’t help, when we we close to get what we needed they thought of more we had to arrange. This greek arrogance and hate towards people getting from Turkey (because that was mainly the problem we heard later) provided no room for us to arrange anything. It took us hours and we ended up with nothing. We had to leave the stuff here. This sucked big time, this was so valuable for the clinic, worth a couple of hundred dollars. DAPS told us already that the greek authorities were very much against their foundation, which was purely based on arrogance: People from western Europe who were trying to help the stray animals in -their- country. DAPS is trying to castrate all the stray animals on Rhodes, to stop the ever expanding amount of animals walking over the streets, which is very dangerous for them as many of the greek people over there are kicking and poisoning them or driving them over. This took us the whole afternoon and without any result. They at least gave us 8 days to arrange all the paperwork, but we more or less knew chances are that they would destroy it anyway. We left late in the afternoon and decided to enjoy the rest of the day. We drove via a Lidl (Yes, they have one at Rhodes too! ) to do some shopping and getting some fuel.
Some gypsies were hanging around at the parking lot of the Lidl, trying to get the coins of the shopping trollies when people brought them back, or just some food.
We decided to buy some stuff for them in the Lidl that they could eat.
Then we paid a visit to the DAPS clinic, where the vets were working hard at the moment we came in. They showed us their work and we talked about how we could help them the coming week. We then tried to find a place where we could stay. Some other volunteers who worked there knew a place and we managed to stay there for 10 Euros a day, quite a good price.
Our own one room appartment, and it looked very nice. Quite a luxury comparing to what we were used to.

Today we had a day of rest. In the afternoon we went to Marmaris, checking if boats were going to Rhodos which were able to take the car. In the centre of Marmaris we heard some strange things, at different places they told us it was not possible anymore to take your car on the boat to Rhodos, this ferry wasn’t going. I had to find a place where I could park the car and go without it. This was a very bad idea, we wouldn’t leave the car here with all the stuff in it, and also it is very impractical. We also brought a lot of medicine (three or four plastic bags) for DAPS, the foundation we were planning to help the coming week. We had to try other agencies, see if it was really true, we suspected them to just offer us what they could and desperately wanted to have customers even when they had to tell us we couldn’t bring our car. After a while we found an agency which told us that it was possible, although very expensive.
I had to pay 350 Euro’s only for the car, round-trip! For this very small distance! But, then, we were lucky because we could take the boat the next day. So we booked, bummer that it costed so much for an distance of practically nothing, but so be it. We went back to our private campsite and relaxed for the rest of the day. In the evening the owner gave us some fresh milk and salad. I think this man tried to live from all his own supply, gardening and the cow which was walking around here. This cow broke loose earlier today and walked over the campsite
Melissa was able to get enough rest now. We spend most of the time relaxing and reading.

After a good 10 hours of sleep we woke up. Finally we had some good sleep, the W123 seats are a very good sleep! We only had to drive for half an hour today, because we were already close to Marmaris. Early in the morning were driving around looking for a campsite. In a short while we found a sign along the road. We started to follow it but it seemed to be far away, we didn’t see a sign for a long time. But, especially that we wanted to find it even more, because it might be not too crowded then. After a while we had to go off the road over a stony track.
Driving over this route took another 10 minutes or something, but then we arrived at a place where they were building some rooms, and there was some building material outside.
I stepped out of the car and walked towards the freshly build appartment rooms. Someone was walking towards me and asked what he could do for me. I told him we would like to stay here for a while, but if that would be possible. He called the owner of this place. He told me we were the first visitors of this place and we were very welcome, he told us one of the rooms was ready to use but that they are still building and fixing the other rooms. I told them that was no problem fo rme and I asked if we could stay between the trees with our own car.
This was no problem, so I parked the car and there we were, finally some rest. This place is really awesome. We had our private beach and were standing quite relaxed between the trees, overlooking the bay which was wonderful, we’re all alone and have this great view. Melissa could get some rest now and we will spend some time here.
The rest of the day we rested here, reading, walking around and I checked up the car, because the waterheater refused to work lately. That night we slept in the back of the car, with the liftback open

Today we decided to go on to Nemrut Dagi, to have a look at the heads of Nemrut and enjoy the environment and hang around in this area. To shower before our departure seemed was impossible, it did not work. After trying to find some bread, in which we did not succeed we left this village.
After some driving we stopped in a tiny village. A village type you see often along the roads, a couple of houses along the main road, where all that may happen, happens here. Trading, talking, sitting, cars dropping an taking passengers and so on. We stopped at a mini market and my job was to find some bread around here.

We passed 75000km

Two turkish men were trying to understand what I meant, they didn’t understand what I meant, it’s difficult to depict. After a while I saw him open a wooden box and got a glimpse of what looked like bread. Actually it was bread! “Brot!” He replied, ah yeah, I should have said it the german way. The something funny happened, he was cleaning the table which stood there, put two chairs under it, covered it with some papers and took some vegetables and gestured if we wanted to eat something there, and drink some tea. I walked to Melissa who was still in the car and told her about the friendly guys in the mini market, who were very happy to have some tourists there, they wanted us to stay for a while.

Later on, when other people came in, a turkish man who was a foreign worker in Germany in the 80s, told us they they were happy to have us here, because tourists just don’t stop here.

On the road to Nemrut

We ate the prepared lunch with pleasure and they happily watched us, refilling the glasses with tea, when empty. How generous these people are, and how kind, is one of the best things in Turkey. When Melis was smoking a cigarette outside, she was hearing people talk about ‘Holland’ all the time, and sometimes a new person walked in to have a look.
After this special lunch, we continued our trip.

During our drive I thought of this second fuel filter from the Elsbett system, which can be closed because the original fuel filter is connected in parallel with the SVO filter, when you close the second one, the first one is used. The Elsbett filter is a fine filter, and the engine restrain might be caused of the SVO from the supermarkets here, which is probably more thicker and that’s why the fuel can’t get through the fine filter fast enough.
This was indeed the problem, the car had more power again and no restrain anymore.

In the afternoon we entered Malatya, this was a quite a big city, compared to what we had seen today. We found ourselves a supermarket and I got inside to find some fuel. They had the 18L cans of Sunfloweroil, and after I put the cart full of these cans we went to the cash desk. The woman saw the cans but could only speak turkish, she began talking to us, looking worried about what we were going to do with this. I ‘explained’ with my hands, that we are using this as fuel, by making gestures of steering a car. Now she looked even more worried and in the mean time while she was talking, more supermarkte staff arrived and after a while six persons stood around us and a couple of them tried to say we’re crazy to put it in our car, “you, cooking this!” (pointing at the oil) “Not in car!” I was not able to explain that we know what we are doing and we smiled and left, “Car kaputt!” the shop manager warned us yet, bummer that I was not able explain it, they did not understand a word.

We continued our trip, heading to Nemrut national park. We found the relatively small side road to Mount Nemrut and short after that the Benz started climbing the roads in the mountains, and did the job very well, this famous OM617 diesel engine. After a while, driving on the climbing road, we saw some very small puppies dribbling on the side of the road.
‘Did you see that?’ Melissa asked. ‘Yeah, puppies?’ I asked.
We continued driving and kept on talking about the pups. ‘Where that really pups?’ I told Melissa that there was probably someone around. But we couldn’t get is out of our heads, we hadn’t seen anyone around.
We knew, if we would drive back and they were indeed alone, we knew we ended up with these two pups, although we thought we’d seen two of them.
After 15 minutes we decided, we had to go back, otherwise it would bother us te rest of our trip anyway.

So when we got back we stepped out of the car we tried to see if they were still there. We couldn’t see them, I saw a big stone and a shock went through my veins. I saw a very big stone and it looked like the pups were under it! The stone was thrown on the pups to kill them!?!?! I told Melissa to get back in the car, then at least she didn’t need to see it. But she wouldn’t go back, she wanted to be sure. I saw something moving, I walked down the side of the road over the stones and checked the pups. It started to move, there were five of them, and they were just asleep, using the stone for warmth, as they missed their mother of course.

Unbelievable, 5 pups which were thrown out of a car!

‘There are five of them! All alive!’ I yelled to Melissa. She was so happy to hear and walked to the big stone too.
5 nice cute little puppies woke up and started dribbling around. We startet to catch them, the first one was very easy and the second one followed soon. Then after one hour we had four of them, we had put them in a box in the car.

Safely in our car.

The last one was difficult, after quite a while it was gone and I walked further away from our place, the place where we had seen the little pup for the last time. I couldn’t find it and was afraid we had los it. Then I heard Melissa scream it was over there.

I walked back and was glad that it did not run away from us deciding to find a place to hide somewhere else. So we started again to surround it but it still had energy to run or walk away.
So stupid, the pups were only a couple of weeks, 8 or something and already faster than us. We tried with the cheese and other food again but gaining trust was still a problem.

“It will get dark soon” I said. Then, when it walked up again to the road I was able to come close. It was between the side of the road and the stones from the slope. I walked towards it very slowly like we did all the time, and all the time when you’re about 2 meters close it usually starts to move. It looked very scared but this time I was within these 2 meters and still the pup was there. I move towards it so slowly, I had to get it now. It looked me in the eyes but didn’t move. Finally I was so close I was able to grab it, it started to yell like they did all the time when something scary happens. “I got it!” I yelled to Melissa, she ran to me and saw me standing with the pup in my arms. We could cry from happiness, we did it! After four and a half hours of trying we finally had all five of them! This strong pup was responsible for nearly the last 4 hours! It was a very emotional momen, standing there with the strongest pup in the world, finally it gave up and we were able to get it.

After we tried to convince the pup we didn’t want to do no harm we put it in the box too, where it’s brothers and sisters were waiting for some hours. Then we had to figure out the next step: Now what? First we put the pups in the front of the car, 5 of them in this box was really too small and in front of Melissa they had more space. They were totally exhausted and the strong one was finally tired too. Luckily it was, because that was probably the reason that it didn’t start to run the last time.

The last pup, it took us 4 hours to get it!

When they were all in the car we decided to go on to Mount Nemrut, try to visit the big heads statues and in the mean time we will try to call/sms friends to see if there is a stray shelter for them around here. On the way to Nemrut some guy in an old Mercedes bus which was approaching us started flashing with it lights. When we stopped he told us that the road was blocked a bit further, because of too much snow, we were not able to reach the top. Well, then we need to drive back from where we came from. in this place called Malatya we stopped to go to an Internet cafe and tried to find some dogfood, that, is not too easy in this part of Turkey. They really had to eat and drink so we drove around for a long time, finding big supermarkets and search them through. In the end, Melissa manage to find dog food, it was even puppy food! This was so cool, we could give them what they needed! Then, the search began, calling people, browsing on the Internet.. When I was in the Internet cafe, between a lot of young people who where chatting and gaming, I tried to find organisations who could help. In fact, at the end of the evening we got very helpful information of one of our friends. He spend all his time on the Net to find addresses where a good shelter was to be found. Melissa knew that municipal shelters were not the place to bring them too. These places are usually the end station of the dogs. So what our good friend Henk told us, was that there were only 2 municipal shelters in the vicinity. In fact, in Turkey there was only one good place, a foundation supported by some well known good organisations, there was only one problem: This was located in Fethiye, roughly 1200km away from here. As if you have to drive from Amsterdam to Barcelona over the national routes just to drop a couple of pups. From another organisation in Holland they told us that the only way to help them is taking them with us to the Netherlands, which was definitely no option, because we had some charity work plans in Greece ahead of us. So in fact, we had no other solution then driving to Fethiye, to give the pups a chance on a good life.
We were tired and found a place a couple of kilometers from Malatya to rest, as much that was possible with the 5 pups in the car.

All very tired, it were some scary days for them. Especially today, they we’re afraid and exhausted themselves nearly to death to escape from us.

We parked the car and were laughing about the situation we were in. There we were, in midnight sitting in the are, too tired to think, 5 pups walking and playing around.
I really had to sleep, we had 3 days of driving ahead of us, with stops every 2 hours or even less for the pups, driving from East-Central Turkey to the atlantic coast line.
We had tried to sleep in our front seats, Melissa had to go out with the pups when necessary, so I could get my hours of sleep because I was the only one to drive.

This morning we left Cappadocia and headed east, we will explore some parts of Eastern Turkey now.

Our friend at the Antalya Cave Pension

We were not able to visit the Ihlara valley, so that’s one the list for next time, hopefully next year, when we will (probably) travel to China/Mongolia. The departure today was a bit of a bummer today. We wanted to find out about departure times of the ferry in Marmaris for the boat to Rhodes. We will do some charity work there with the foundation Melissa works with. All in all it was not very clear to us, and we decided to give one of the agencies a call later on. After backing up some of our pictures via the pension computer, we thanked our family at the Anatolya pension for our pleasant stay. Alas we left at 13:30 hrs.

Very soon it was raining, but as a result, this made for a very relaxed atmosphere. on a side dirt road of the main road to Malatya. We had a nice lunch with tomatoes, pesto and mozarella on bread!

Having lunch in the W123

During the chomping we watched the beautiful sky and the mountain range at the horizon. We are heading to Munzu national park, which we chose from the map, but we couldn’t find anything about it in our LP, and no turkish person we spoke was able to tell us something about it.

Great cloud formation!

Clouds in the mirror

When we continued the ride I felt the car was holding back, and started to get a bit frightened of what it could be. It seemed to be mainly when the Benz had to climb, it was getting worse in the mountains, we could only drive 20km/h on some parts at a climb of say, 15%. We were already quite far into the Eastern part of Turkey, so this was not very practical! It was the same feeling as if the car ran out of fuel, so I was thinking it had to do something with the fuel supply. The vegetabel oil we’ve thrown in was only new oil, so that can’t be the problem as far as I can imagine. After filling the car up with some diesel the problem still existed. I also cleaned the air filter, which was a good idea anyways. But in fact, this wasn’t a problem either. Funny thing was, when I tried to explain the service station attendant, who was blind in one eye, what I wanted he was very helpful and took the job out of my hands and did it himself. A trucker who was standing nearby thought this was a good idea and did the same thing too. The very friendly attendant spontaneously shook my hand after I gave some money when the job was done. Still amazed how friendly the turkish are, it is such a relaxed country to travel in! At the time of writing I still don’t know what is wrong, but on the flat roads there is not really a problem, I try to think about it tonight, hopefully I can track it down tomorrow.

Impressive mountains when going east.

We were in fact able to continue the ride, albeit a bit slower than usual. We are now in a hotel 120km west of Malatya. Our hotel is about 120meters of a big minaret and when packing the stuff from the car, we couldn’t even talk to each other, well, we could, but without hearing wat the other said. This hotel was very cheap, about 18ytl (15 Euro), apparently less touristic, as we could see at the entrance, this man seemed not to understand any other language then Turkish. A clean room, and a not so clean bathroom was what we arranged for the night. Cool enough. We had a lot of fun together tonight, hanging around in our room. When we look back to our route today, we have to say it is a real amazing route, stunningly beautiful, we like the Eastern part of Turkey very much so far: Lots of rocky mountains, in many different colors. Sometimes it looked like parts of Morocco.

Melissa and me acting foolish	Even more foolish

After our great breakfast at the pension, which was included we were about to explore the environment together. After my orientation yesterday I knew a bit already to start with today.

Based on tips in the Loneley planet and on the map we had received from our friendly pension owner we had quite a full program for today. We took more than one hundred pictures today, this illustrates how stunningly beautiful Cappadocia is, at least according to us. In fact one cannot describe it really, I’ll show pictures of it, they can illustrate Cappadocia way better then my words.
We planned to explore at least the various cave valleys, like the yellow, rose and the red valley and the cave houses. There was also a church with various images carved in the volcanic stone. We’ve put the Benz away and walked through this area for quite some time, enjoying it, we were alone all the time, I wonder how it is in the high season.

After our exploration in these valleys we went to an ancient city which was carved out of a very big rock. When we got there some guy started to talk to us and wanted to know if we would climb that rock and he offered to guide us. We didn’t, and we also didn’t want to buy his turtle carved out of stone, and went on, this guy following us. Melis wanted to stay down and relaxing on a terrace with a cup of coffee.
I ended up with this guide, climbing on the rock It was not an official guide, I know, but he was so persistent and I felt really sorry for him actually. Usually I’m quite difficult with this, persistent in saying that I don’t want it He told me there was much to see and I wouldn’t be able to find it all by myself.
“Yeah, right”. Disappointedly he walked back.
I walked upwards on the huge rock trying to check out the things to see myself. This fake guide, did tell us that the inhabitants left this city after an earthquake some 600 years ago. He also told me there were nice fresco’s to see in the church.
After I paid the city a visit and walked downwards to Melissa I met our friend again. He asked me if I saw everything and I had to admit thta I didn’t. Thus, we went up again.
He showed me indeed a lot more and couldn’t tell me very much, but he was able to show things I didn’t see. I ended up paying some Ytls and bought his turtle of stone too.
I felt sorry for this guy, that he had to to go through so much hassle, for just a few coins.

After all this, we continued the tour through the area. On our way we saw a turtle crossing the road, a tour bus coming from the other side had stopped and the tour operator was already busy to speed the turtle’s process to cross the road. After that we visited another small village, which also had an old part with houses carved out of rock, as a lot of villages have in Cappadocia. At the end of the day we went back to the valleys around Goreme and drove on a couple of dirt roads, twisted through the landscape of fairy chimneys.
This way we had to drive between the walls of the chimneys and it became smaller and smaller, and after a while we were driving with our wheels completely on the walls, it was exciting to do this, but sometimes a bit scary, then Melissa had to get out of the car and check the space between the car and the walls and see if everything worked out.
The path had become deep in the middle and the curves in it made it even more difficult. After investigating a very difficult part, measuring, considering, thinking, thinking again, I decided this was not save enough to do this, and go back. The problem was if I would give it a shot, I couldn’t go backwards because it was really small and there was a curve in it too. The Benz was too wide to go through this tiny part and I wouldn’t take the risk. I was able to turn around and we drove our same route back, without any problems.
After the sunset it was getting dark so we drove back to our cosy cave. It was a very special day today, lots of beautiful things we saw and the adventure of driving here. We didn’t have the time to go to the Ihlara valley anymore, it was too much. Tomorrow we are leaving again and drive to the East of Turkey.
This night we went out for dinner in a restaurant in Goreme. We had a very good vegetarian pizza and after that we talked with the waiter, who spoke very good english. We had a very good conversation about life and our home countries. It was a pleasant evening and a perfect seclusion of our time in Cappadocia.

Cappadocia

Valley, Goreme

Odd shapes again

View from a cave

Ancient carvings

Ancient city in the rocks

Strange shapes by erosion

Me, driving through Cappadocia

Another W123 T-modell, you don’t see the W123 in Turkey too often.

Urgup, Cappadocia

Heavy steering

More exciting steering

Ballooning in Cappadocia

When it’s getting late in the afternoon, the light becomes very colourful

Sunset

Sunset