After my failure in teaching the Spanish to drive on the English side of the road, and the subsequent destruction of Mandy the Landy, Richard and I piled all our possessions into a hire car and headed to Simon's flat in Tarifa.

The original plan was for us to join a truck that we had intended to travel with for part of the way, but while in Gibraltar I found out about a Camel Trophy Land Rover Discovery that one of the local car dealers had as his personal toy... a week later it was mine. It's an amazing car, and an amazing find as few other vehicles could do the journey without months of preparation; Search for Camel trophy or see more here.

I spent the next week kitting it out with the salvaged kit from the old Landy (we only lost the roof rack, awning and a bottle of cooking oil which went everywhere when we had our little roll). Meanwhile Richard had gone ahead to Morocco to escape the monsoon in southern Spain, and Roxana arrived from Switzerland to help out.

On the 30th of November, almost a month behind schedule, we crossed over to Ceuta.

We camped by a lovely beach and met Simon the following day for a long lunch before finally crossing the border in the middle of Ramadan chaos - the sun had just set, there was no electricity, and as we were still in Ramadan everything closed down for a supper break. After a two hour wait we entered Morocco amid particularly manic scenes, fake guides and a maze of confusing offices with apathetic officials in residence.