18 August 2017 / leggypeggy

Heading to Africa—with supplies and money

Algeciras, diesel, ferry, Gibraltar, shopping, truck

A last look at the small fishing boats in Gibraltar

After several days of camping in southern Spain (see my previous post) it was time to collect the last of our fellow travellers—they were arriving on a flight from London to Gibraltar. Suddenly we were a group of 28 strangers on the road to Algeciras, Spain, which is where the ferry would depart for Africa.

We had a good chance to explore Algeciras. It’s a picturesque town with a fabulous and colourful market, a beautiful town square and some amusing advertising signs—Mona Lisa in curlers. We didn’t make big purchases in Algeciras (really just lunch).

Colourful bounty in the Algeciras market

Flowers

Vegetables

Advertising

Main square

Our main shopping spree was going to be a three-hour ferry ride away in Ceuta, on the other side of the Strait of Gibraltar. Interestingly enough, even though Ceuta is on the African continent, it is considered to be part of Spain. Go figure.

The Ceuta shopping was incredible because a warehouse there was geared up for bulk buyers. It may be a shopper’s paradise, but it must have its thieving side. I’d never before seen a vehicle chained to a building.

Most of us headed in to the warehouse. As would become the norm, as least two people stayed behind to guard the truck. Then we proceeded to buy mega quantities of milk, cereal, oil, flour, sugar, spices, peanut butter, jam, pasta, tinned sausages. tinned tuna (geez we got sick of tuna), tinned tomato paste, tinned corn, pulses, oats and so much more that I can’t even remember.

I love chickpeas and figured they’d be a great way to ensure at least a bit of protein on our days to cook. So I convinced Chris, the driver, to let me buy something like 20 kilos of dried chickpeas. I used them often over the next months, but only later discovered that Chris hated them. Got to give him credit—he ate them anyway.

Heather considers what to buy in the huge warehouse in Ceuta

That shopping extravaganza cost about 3000 euros (if I remember rightly) and proved to be ten times more valuable as we travelled down the west side of Africa. Much of that part of the continent doesn’t (at least didn’t then) have supermarkets. Sometimes even the local markets had only limited supplies. I remember a small town in northern Angola that had no shops and only a small market that sold mostly popcorn, peanuts, oranges, soft drinks and beer.

It took multiple trolleys to get everything to the truck

More food

Food storage

Paying

Chained truck

In Ceuta, once the trolleys were wheeled to the truck and everything was packed away, we headed to a petrol station to load up on diesel. It was a picturesque stop, but it took a very, very long time to pump 1500 litres. In the pic at the bottom, you can see the cost for the first 990 litres.

Then it was off to the border with Morocco and the city of Tétouan where my cook group would have its first foray into the local markets in Africa.

My next instalment will be a general introduction to the truck itself. I intended to do that today, but the pics of Algeciras and shopping won out.

Also there won’t be a continuous stream of African posts. I’ll need to mix in posts on Europe, India, Asia and the Americas.

But first a bit about the money.

Chris, our driver, with one of many trolleys of supplies

Trip costs and managing the money
Our trip took 43 weeks to go from Gibraltar to Istanbul. We actually arrived in Istanbul on time, even though along the way that seemed most unlikely.

This was eight years ago, and I no longer remember exactly how much the main trip cost. I think it was around $13,000–$14,000 (perhaps more) Australian dollars for both of us. Then there was the local payment of US$3600 for the both of us. The main payment was sent to the company office in the UK and the local payment was given to Chris, our driver.

So what was covered? The ride (43,000 kilometres), the driver (who had done it before and knew his stuff), two meals a day (usually breakfast and dinner) cooked by the passengers, fuel and camping gear such as tents (I loved my tent).

So what wasn’t covered? Visas, airfares, hotels or hostels (there were a few exceptions), insurance, drinks, lunches and other meals out, tips, guides and excursions (some were as cheap as $2 and one was $500).

Euros and dollars

Banking is less straightforward in Africa. So the local payment was used for the everyday expenses such as that big shop in Ceuta, the fuel, campground fees, daily shops in markets, tyres (wait until you hear about the tyres), truck maintenance (remember my mention of George the radiator), bribes (yep, there were bribes) and much more.

For the year, Poor John and I took a credit card, about US$10,000 in cash and some euros. About a third of our cash was carried in a nifty belt I bought that was a mix of fabric and leather. A zipper ran down the middle of the inside of the belt and we folded $100 bills lengthwise and slipped them inside.

No one, and I mean no one, would have ever realised this belt was a gold mine. It worked really well until I lost 10 kilos and ran out of space to punch new holes in the belt. That didn’t matter too much because by the time I had lost most of the weight, we had spent quite a bit of the money and I could retire the belt. 🙂

The truck also had a hidden safe (called Trevor) and everyone stored money and valuables in the safe. Trevor had multiple keys and we took turns being responsible for them—couples couldn’t hold keys at the same time. No one ever had money or valuables go missing.

Our first camp in Africa

And some last comments about credit cards and the money.

First off, we didn’t run out of money. We hardly ever used the credit card until late in the trip. For some reason, the west side of Africa preferred Visa over MasterCard. We had only MasterCard. We applied for Visa before departure, but the bank mistakenly sent us another set of MasterCards. Ugh!

About the time we were travelling in 2009, we saw an article that said 1/3 of the US dollars in circulation outside the USA were counterfeit. Not surprisingly, we were told to bring only unmarked, crisp bills (no folds or tears) with dates of 2006 or later. I suspect these rules have been updated to specify much newer bills only.

Overall, we found that it was cheaper to travel than to stay at home. It helped that our daughters and one of their friends moved home to look after the house, garden and dogs.