1st december 1991: i just came back from israel, alexander has bought the bedford van from our father, and we bought equipment for 1500 euro for our journey. that included vaccinations against hepatitis a, hepatitis b, tetanus, yellow fever, meningitis, typhus and who knows what more. we left austria on the 14th of december 1991, for italy first, drove non stop to our aunt in gabicce , with all the new gear just stuffed in the bus and 2200 euro in cash. there we organized all the stuff in the car, packed the boxes with food, lashed the water barrels, our aunt sewed us a �pocket curtain� covering one side of the rear of the van to keep all the little items in place, stacked the large sand boards away and then left for morocco, through france and spain, via gibraltar.
200 km south of cartagena in spain we tested the dessert abilities of our vehicle: we drove down onto the beach, where we stayed put for the next three hours, until a german four-wheel-drive towed us out of there with a steel wire: dessert, here we come! we figured we would manage somehow, anyway. in gibraltar we bought a ticket from algeciras to ceuta, where we filled the tank (and all the jerry cans) with diesel. then we were about to enter marocco, but since there was a law back then forbidding the entry into the kingdom of marocco for hippies, i shaved off my beard, and we both tied our long hair in a tight knot under our boy scout hats. we passed as tourists... on the border we gave a moroccan a lift to the next town. but what he actually wanted was to sell us hashish. when we didn�t buy, he started shouting, and then spit in my face before he ran off. now we followed the main road towards algeria, and at times a tractor would have problems with this roads! we intended to sleep near a river along the way, but the police came with a jeep and moved us on, we continued to chefchouen where we spent the night in a hostel. we were the only guests, accommodation cost 0,65 euro. the next day we stopped for food on the way to al housima, and a moroccan invited us to his house. through an almost impassable little road in the mountains we came to a little village, which's only source of income is the growing of cannabis and production of hashish. we spent one night in briketto�s house, and when we wanted to leave the next day, briketto claimed 100 euro, because he had to pay a bribe to the police for every foreign car that made their way up to the village, and we had not bought any hash, so he would loose money. i told him to fuck off and we left. we continued to bab erel, about 30 km down the road, where we got a protective bumper welded onto the car, and a protection shield under the cooler and the motor. that took two days work and cost with all the material 50 euro. noah, who was looking after us during our stay in bab erel (and the first moroccan who did not try to sell us anything), gave us as a farewell present a pair of arabic number plates for the car. they are still hanging in alexander�s apartment today! when we left, it was dark already, and in ketema a car was desperately trying to stop us, showing us through the window that he wanted to sell us hashish. when i then drove up behind him with a distance of half a meter, trusting our new steel bumpers, he speeded up again, then trying to stop us once more. this time we nearly pushed him off the road, and then he finally gave up and drove on. we drove on to the next village and slept in the car. december 24th: alexander and me had to vaccinate each other (choler II and hepatitis b). i think i was more gentle than my brother with the injections, but funny enough he claims the direct opposite! we arrived that day in al hoccima, changed some money and tried to get through on the telephone to austria for four hours before it worked for half a minute. spend the night on the campground, only the two of us and a bottle of whiskey. we did our laundry there, too, and since it hasn�t dried by the following morning, we stayed another day.
the next day we drove straight to the algerian border in oujda. it took us about 5 hours of formalities, and i think we were quick by that! we had some moroccan beer for the officers, and we left the border sooner than some of the tourists that have arrived before us. once in algeria, we had a quick supper and went to sleep. in the middle of the night we were woken by 5-10 policemen who said we couldn�t sleep there, we had to drive one kilometer further to sleep. the next day we drove all day long, stopped only to buy some food, and at night we slept in some gravel field besides a waste deposit. it was a nice, grotesc sunset!
it took us two more days driving to get to algier. on the way we noticed that we used very, very much fuel: a closer check showed that the air-screw under the fuel filter was broken. in some suburb of algier, with no sign of a garage. so we marched off, trusting our luck, and after only a kilometer we found a little garage, the only tools he had was a wrench and a hammer, but he had exactly the screw we needed! he just gave it to us for free, with a happy smile. and the car was fit again after 10 minutes. we tried to drive into algier, but there was a lot of trouble in the streets, the fundamentalist party (fis) has just won the elections and all the people were out in the streets, some to protest, some to triumph. we were a bit displaced in the middle of all this, and a certain alarming feeling told us to turn around and drive straight south out of algier. that has proven to be the right decision, many people have lost their lives these days in algeria, both opposition and foreigners. the civil war that started that day cost over 100.000 lives.
we drove south as far as blida where we spent some days in the hostel, being guided around by two friendly algerians. we drove up in the mountains and filled 120 liter of freshest clear water right from the spring before we left for the desert. 31st of december: after a days drive we stopped for the night, and some arabs invited us to stay with them. we looked around and saw no house, but behind some hill a few little huts ducked hidden away, and they insisted that we had to stay with them for the night. when we told them that we wanted to see a scorpion (a typical subject of conversation with somebody you have no language in common with) the whole family spread out and turned all the stones upside down and within a few minutes they presented us with four scorpions. we put them with some sand into a tupperware box. that night we shared a very moderate meal with the family, but they had cooked already, and there was no polite way to tell them now that we had the car full of food. since we didn�t want to eat too much of the little they had, we had to go to bed that new years eve hungry, on a pile of carpets, packed together with their children. the first day of the new year we arrived in the dessert. there was still a road, but we wanted to drive off into the dessert to sleep there, and the back wheels sank down in the sand. we stayed firmly put there, made some dinner on the campfire and didn�t dig out the car until the next morning. we continued down to ghardaia and sat in a cafe there, waiting for the hammam to open. it was a filthy one, but we enjoyed it anyway. we spent the following night just outside ghardaia, drove then to el golea (which is called el meniaa now), had a coffee there and drove on until 100 km before ein sahla. the landscape becomes more and more beautiful! In ein sahla we stopped only for lunch and filling diesel, at night we slept in the stone dessert. on the next day, on the way to tamarasset, we met a convoy of german mercedes gelaendewagen, a film crew from munich. we had lunch with them, and the producer was nice enough to change large austrian-shilling-bills to smaller german-mark-bills, because it was difficult to use austrian money, esp. in bills of 5000! we arrived in tamarasset that day, stayed for two days on the campground, washing cloths, showering hot, and we obtained the visa for nigeria there in the nigerian embassy. we also met some austrians who took the films we shot so long with them, back to vienna, to give them to our brother.
the campground of tamarasset is a bit of a collection of strange people, car dealers from europe and africa, off-road tourists with their expensive 4-wheeldrives, dreamers and people who hope to find them selves in the dessert. one afternoon we needed a frying pan, and comradeship is very good amongst those who have come that far. so alexander went over to a large german army truck with 8-10 germans on board, and asked one of them if he could borrow a frying pan. the guy was a bit nervous, didn�t know whether or not he could do that and disappeared in the truck to ask somebody else. then he came back, obviously stressed, said he was terribly sorry, but his therapist thought it would be better for this guy to learn to say �no�, and therefore we couldn�t borrow that frying pan. we had to borrow a frying pan from somebody less troubled.
from tamarasset we traveled in a convoy with a dutch couple and a german, each driving an old peugeot to sell in niger, and a german, sasha, on an off-road motorcycle. sasha fell in the soft sand, and hurt his shoulder, so we took him in our van and i drove his bike. driving in soft sand is not easy, you are in a constant danger of falling before you reach about 50-70 km/h, but as soon you gain speed its like water skiing: nice, soft and smooth, and the faster you drive the lighter it becomes. if you hit no rock in the sand. the way from tamarasset to assekrem was a terrible torture for the car, and for us, our bus dug itself into the sand frequently and deep, we were just too heavy and the engine was by far not strong enough to go surfing over the soft sand, which starts with about 120 km/h. so the dutch pressed on, they had no time to wait, and the german car, too, left us. we put the luggage of the motorbike into the bus, and with the light bike i drove around as a scout, finding the best (or least destructive) route for the van, following the compass south and trying to avoid fields of very soft sand. sometimes it was difficult to find the van again, we had no radio, and this was the time before gps was affordable! we had naval emergency rockets in case we lost each other.
once the van got stuck in such soft sand that we had to empty the whole van, carry everything (all the water- and diesel cans!) by hand out and 300 m ahead, deflate all 4 tires, drive out to harder ground, pump up the tires again and reload it all. in the sun in the sahara it can get quite warm in the winter, too! Sometimes i really wandered why we do this. we were now crossing the area where touaregs from algeria, niger and maly fight for independence, and they take fast four-wheel-drives from tourists, because they need them for their war. so when our little convoy had a break somewhere, making a little fire and food, suddenly several pickup-trucks with touaregs, machine guns around their neck and a heavy machineguns mounted on the back of the trucks came with high speed towards us. there was not even a thought of trying to drive from them, with our opel bedford blitz that made about 60 km/h in the sand! they slowed down, their veils blowing in the wind. we stood all firm, and i raised my hand to greet them. you could see that they looked at our vehicles, figured that there was not much of their interest here, raised their hand silent to answer my greeting and drove on. this was the only time on the whole sahara crossing i did not envy the tourists with their 4-by-4! at night we made a camp in the mountains, and nearby there was a touareg family with some goats. alexander and me paid them a visit in their tent, attending the famous tea ceremony of the touaregs. we bought a little goat from the nomads, after half an hour of hard negotiations we got the price from ridiculous down to expensive, and for the innards he slaughtered the animal for us: dinner.
we were worried to find assekrem, a little fort, which is the border crossing. navigation was difficult, we were 400 km south of tamarasset, and car tracks which are a indication of the way are spread to a widh of 50 km, and the only landmarks were oil barrels set out every 5 km. if we would miss the border post, we were illegal in niger, such things are taken serious there. but then finally the little fort with the algerian flag appeared on the horizon! now we faced the monster of bureaucracy again: we had declared all the cameras, spare tires, fuel quantities carried, cash... but we had changed austrian money to german, with the film crew. so we couldn�t produce the requested rest of the valuta, apart from that we had only changed money on the black market and had no receit for the rest of the algerian money. the custom officer came out into the yard, he wanted to inspect the vehicle. but because of the rough ride we could not open any doors in the car, except the passenger door. he opened it, and the first thing he inspects is a tupperware box on the floor. he looked close at the dusty lid, and when he realized that it contained 4 scorpions, he dropped the box shocked and stepped back: �what the hell are you doing with these poisonous scorpions?� he asked. i answered: �we are just interested in the creatures of the dessert." and i added a little lie: "we have a snake somewhere in the car, too, but we cannot find her at the moment!� the custom officer rushed from the car, pushing our passport from him, and asked us to leave- now. no more problems with papers here! we camped some km further south, between assekrem and assamaka, the niger side of the border. in the evening alexander and me got sick, stomach ache, diarrhea, throwing up, worse than an irritated stomach from italian drinking water. we had typhus. the next two days we spent in the filthy fort of assamaka getting all the papers, requested by the government of niger, done. we bought a fake carnet de passage from a german printer from east berlin, which was not cheap, but would also work for nigeria and the following countries.
we had a camping toilet in the van, but only one: we were taking turns on it, spending about 12 hours a day on it each. after everything was ready, we had to wait there for some days, because of the up rise of the touaregs in the area it was compulsory to travel escorted by an armed army truck to arlit, the next town. but our condition got worse, and on the third day alexander did not wake up any more. i weight about 25% more than alexander, and now that extra layer paid off: i strapped him onto the seat and drove at 5 in the morning from the camp, convinced that i would be chased by some army jeeps any moment, but they were all asleep and when they got up in the morning we were gone. i remember little of the trip, it was wild driving, alexander unconscious and me not far from delirium. at some point, when i stopped to refill the tank from the jerry cans, i simply couldn�t lift the jerry can onto the roof of the car any more. i just sat there in the sun. a italian jeep came by and stopped, filled the tank for me and now i had gathered enough power again to press on. several times i got stuck in the sand, and dug out the tires, deflated them, drove over the sand boards on to harder ground, pumped up the tires with a foot pump again, walked back to get the boards, not really feeling anything any more, just continue, get alexander to a doctor. and at some point we were in arlit.
when we arrived there, i parked the car outside the hotel, we carried all the stuff we needed into our room (incl. the camping toilet!) and alex woke up in the process, went into the room and we both crashed out. the hotel had set off one boy to watch our car. but the next day in the morning, when i looked out, the roof window of the car was broken, and the car was empty. all the food, jerry cans, cameras, tents, sleeping bags, water cans etc was gone. we too weak to be bothered much. but in the afternoon i saw the boy who was set to watch our car on the market on the other side of the hotel. i ran up to him from the back, picked him up and made my way across the street to the hotel with him. he screamed like a dying pig, and a mob collected around me, screaming, too, someone pulled me on the shirt, someone pushed me from behind, one was holding my ponytail, and i thought this was not good. i picked, with the power of desperation, an old man in front of me, who was the leader of the mob, up on his neck and screamed my soul out into his face. for a little moment all slipped me in terror, and this was enough time to throw the old man into the crowd in front of me, rushing after in the same direction and make my way into the door of the hotel, shouting to alexander to have the door open and some weapon ready. while running through the hotel, i did not look back, but the people had not followed me. after an hour or so, with the boy not telling us where our belongings were, alexander sneaked out. everything was calm now, he made the car ready and i ran out with the boy on my shoulders and we drove off to the police, which i soon regretted. the boy was beaten hard there, it looked like as they were executing him. when i was trying to stop that, the policeman pointed the gun he was just beating the boy with at me and told me not interfere in police work, and to get the fuck out of there.
in the afternoon of the same day a �detective� came to us, and for money he told us where our belongings were. we had no choice but to pay, and found the things lying in the excrements in a school toilet. we had all our things washed and stayed one more night in the hotel. we were getting a bit better, but we wanted to see a doctor the next day. the hospital was fenced with steel, there was a long que of people waiting, many mothers with their children. when we came (europeans), they staff would let us pass the cue, but we didn�t have the heart to do that, and were definitely not interested to wait for 10 hours to get in, so we left without seeing a doctor. alexander was soon getting better, and i was soon to have the malaria.
we left for agadez, now there were roads again, we had finally passed the part of the dessert where you have to travel by compass.
but there were new dangers ahead: the driver of an oncoming car on the road to agadez threw a stone the size of a fist through our windshield, right between alexander and me. we were left with a few cuts and a broken windshield. luckily we had our sunglasses on, which had protected the eyes from the glass! in agadez the next police road block did not want to let us pass without windshield. but from our last trip to yugoslavia we had still many 1000-dinar-bills (worth nothing): beautiful, new printed blue notes with a 1000 on it. these paid our way around most problems with police in africa! so, we could pass without windshield. on the next roadblock they wanted to confiscate our spare tire, because it was not declared in the last costume papers. this time we paid our way out by giving a custom officer a ride to birni n�konne. that paid well off for us, because he made it easier for us to pass all the following road blocks (and there are many of them!) he even invited us to lunch on the way! arriving on the campground in konni i had just the power to get myself into a sleeping bag before i passed out and left the rest to alexander. sleeping in a car without windshield and without roof window in the poorest country of the world does not contribute to a relaxed sleep, but i just couldn�t care less. the next day we gave a lift to two solders all the way from birni n�konne to niame, the capital. that worked out excellent, when we came to a road-block, the solders just shouted through the non-existing windshield to open the block and we drove through it without stopping, so we had our own army-escort all the way. all the 400 km to the capital did we not stop at one single road-block!
in niamey we applied for the nigerian visa in the nigerian embassy. while we waited for the visa, we drove to the office of the ded (deutscher entwicklungsdienst), the only place in the whole capital that had a typewriter, and while alexander watched the car i used their typewriter to fill out all the pages of the fake carnet de passage (costume papers for the car) that we bought on the border algeria � niger. i had to fill out 20 pages with chasse number, engine number etc, so i was busy for some hours. our stomachs were still not quite well, and while i used the toilet in the ded, alexander had to use the toilet in the car, and while he sat there with a blanket over his knees, in the middle of the city, back in the van without a windshield, a pretty young european girl walked by, saw the austrian number-plate and started talking to alexander through the non existing windshield. she was german, worked in the german embassy and it was so seldom she met europeans here in niger, and how very exciting that this car has come overland through the sahara, and blablabla. probably she wondered why this nice young austrian would not come out of the car, and the longer they talked the harder alexander found it to say �sorry, i just have to wipe my bottom, then i can come out�, so after an hour of talking the german girl left, probably thinking he was nice, but a bit strange that he wouldn�t come out of the back of this van. alexander had thought she was very nice, too, but unfortunately he couldn'e get off the toilet seat.
that evening a medicine man came to us on the campground. at the campfire he made us an amulet each, and blessed it, and if ever we would run into any kind of trouble, we just had to bite onto the amulet, and it would make all the troubles go away, regardless how severe. and if ever we saw a girl we wanted to have, no worries: just bite the amulet, say her name and she would come begging for love.
the next day we got the visa without any problem, and drove the same day to gaya to transfer the car from the real carnet de route (which is only valid for niger, but not nigeria) to the (fake) carnet de passage, which is valid in all countries of the world. the same night we left niger and slept in the no-mans land between niger and nigeria, entering nigeria in the morning, we went through the border formalities, filling out forms about what union we are member in, religion, political orientation, what tribe we belong to (to that we answered austrian), diseases, showed vaccination papers, presented our newly faked carnet de passage, travel insurance, car papers, drivers license, passport, visa, currency declaration form and a couple of other forms. and best of all: we had no more cigarettes, and when we asked where we could buy a packet, after all the corruption we were through lately, the custom-officer went and bought a packet for us, with his money! nice change! later that day we came to a roundabout, nothing really unusually with it, but when i was half way around, a policeman that had hidden behind it, jumped out and stopped us in the middle of the roundabout. well, another roadblock, we thought, we were used to them by now. but no, we were pulled over for having driven the wrong way around! 100 m before the roundabout there was a peace of cardboard on the ground, with an arrow to the left, drawn by the policeman. because in a weeks time they will start working on the roundabout and then the traffic has to be rerouted to the left side, he is starting to get the traffic used to drive around the left side, and everybody who drives around the right side from that day on has to pay a fine. we had learned to keep a straight face to policemen, no laughing even if it is hard, because after all they carry a gun! he proposed 180.000.- usd as a fine, and in the end we agreed on a ball-pen. on another occasion we were should have paid a fine for not having an fire extinguisher on board. oh yes, i said, we have one, and i showed him our 60-liter barrel for drinking water, a beautiful new white plastic barrel with a red lock. "no", he said, "this is water". "no", i said, "this is special liquid from europe. i�ll show you how potent it is:" then i opened the red lid, and carefully i dipped a cigarette into it, all the way, it was soaking wet. i said: "it is impossible to light the cigarett after it was in contact with the fire extinguishing liquid!" and each of the policemen tried to light the soaking cigarette, and agreed that this was an excellent firefighting tool.
anyway, we travelled through sokoto to zaria in two days. when we arrived in zaria, a moslem in his beautiful traditional cloths came to us and asked politely if we would like to change money. sure, we needed money, but we had no idea what the course was for the nigerian naira, we only knew that the black market rate was considerable more then what the bank would pay. so, i took a chance, and named a course, and he said: "fine, i�ll come with the money in 15 minutes.". after 15 minutes he came with a plastic bag full of money, and for that he got a 1000-shilling bill from austria. when we booked into a nice hotel we found out that, by the rate we exchanged, all this here costs ridiculously little. i had a feeling the rate i named (out of the blue) might have been to our favor: it was. after an hour on the hotel bar, we saw our money changer appearing, with six more that looked like him, and he came to on the bar and said: �sir, we have a problem�. we gave back about 2/3 of the plastic bag.
next day we continued to bauchi, where steyr (an austrian company) has a factory. we rented one of their guest houses, that was the first warm shower since austria! the steyr people made us a free service on the car and fixed what could be fixed, but they found no solution for our windshield. when i stood up the next morning, my head felt as if a caterpillar would go bananas in it. i froze, had fever and body ache: the doctor in the factory had a suspicion, took a blood sample and told me soon: malaria. so we stayed for some days, to cure this disease, mostly with lariam, fansidar and alcohol. the medicine is quite strong, and the alcohol is, too. i drank all day and hallucinated all night, it was a nightmare, but it worked: i never got a relapse!
we started to run out of money, i started to run out of weight (from the typhus to the malaria i lost 11 kg in 10 days!) and alexander started being generally pissed off with this trip, so we decided to sell the car, and alexander would return to europe, and i might find my way to south africa somehow. we left for kano, a known market place, and started the negotiations for the bus. after some days we got usd 2.800.- alexander returned to europe, i flew to lagos, and back to kano where i met miriam, a dutch girl that took me back to holland with her.