Our Inspiration and theme song

Damm you Bob Hope and Bing Crosby its all yourt fault we are here! Its just so catchy you forget how cheesy this film is

Mundaka

After the frivolities in San Sebastien we headed up the coast a small way to one of the top surf spots in the whole of Europe at Mundaka, a sleepy little town at the mouth of an enourmous inlet from the sea.

After a short drive we found the campsite, and as much as I like sleeping in a tent next to Bendigo and Iain likes sleeping in the cab (he is not allowed a tent as he snores to loudly) we elected to splash out on cabin and enjoy a real bed for the first time in two weeks. I say a real bed however as we found out three of the beds were in a sort of bunk bed formation and these are not quite as fun as you remember them being when you were eight!

This not to say it was a bad place to stay, as you can see from the picture the view was rather a good one and as an added bonus they had free internet which in hindsight we probably should have used to update the blog but Iain and Nathan were more interested in the football scores.

After setling in Bendigo and Nathan went down to check out the surf, while Iain showed the effects of the previous few days calorie intake and crashed out. While the surf looked good from a distance, it was stronger than it appeared and Bendigo found this out being swept a long way into the inlet before stuggling to get back. Emerging from the water like a weary cross channel swimmer except without being covered in whale fat, Nathan kindly declined the offer to take the board out, citing the wetsuit as being too small, having a cold, not feeling well and generally looking at the floor and kicking imaginary dust out of the way.

Exploring the town afterwards we latched on to two fellow travellers Shaun (Heineken to his mates) and Kate from Tazmania and brought them up to the campsite for a meal (Iain is currently pressuring me into telling all that he was doing the cooking!) and some beers, all was civilised until one of the team made a bold announcement.

Not learning from what happened the last time Bendigo took it upon himself to invite two Irish lads, Dennis and Collum the campsite to share a few jars which as it turned out was just as entertaining as the last time we did it just a few days previously. As you can imagine the pace gradually picked up until we were on the red wine, vodka and possibly several cleaning products!

I might add at this juncture that I blame most of this night on the beers we bought from Lidl (where mum's go when Iceland's too expensive) for 24 cents a tin!

Of course the travelling stories got going along with all the other banter including Shaun telling us how he got the nickname 'Heineken' most of which we have on tape but is a bit on the long side, I'll just say it involves a usual party activity, a bottle top, bread, cordial, an x ray, and a wooden spoon! If you can figure out what happened, answers on a postcard to the usual address and a free taxi ride could be yours!

All in all a seriously good night even if we did end up sprawled on the floor!

Next stop a seriously long drive, the need for a personal soundtrack composer, and Portugal!

San Sebastien

Hello once again we are slowly getting towards our current location, next up San Sebastien, Spain, a place so good even the King goes there on his holidays

After the poor weather in France and with a passenger in tow we headed down the coast toward Spain and San Sebastien a town renowned for its food, party atomosphere, and as we found out a strong desire to not be a part of Spain anymore but more of that later.

It seems however that the curse of Jonah had struck again as we arrived in San Sebastien to overcast skies that looked like rain, and a biting wing worthy of the Big Market on a saturday night for those of you who have ever been to Newcastle! Skies aside we faced a more immediate problem, finding somewhere to stay and a space to park the cab that did not require an expedition of Stanley-esqe proportions to reach. The problem was compounded by the fact that with a population of just over 400,000 it seems that every single one of these people owns at least one car that is parked on the street. We would later discover there was another reason there was no parking, but until then we faced a challange of biblical proportions to find a space. Doing as the locals did and parking in the middle of the road to try and find a spot to stay we found another problem as there was no accomodation to be had anywhere in the old town. However things began to look up when a lady told us about a place over the other side of the river that had room and would be cheap.

This seemed to good to be true, and of course it was. The nice old lady pictured on the left (possibly, you get the idea anyway!) swiftly turned into a negotiator that would have turned the Dragons Den into whimpering children wanting to charge us a small fortune for a very basic room. Just goes to show no matter how nice they appear or how many Werthers originals they offer you, old people will always try to stitch you up (Iain is of course excluded from this general classification as is my Nan). After a quick sandwich in the street we moved on to the campsite at the top of the hill over the town at Ignelo. After setting up camp, we headed to the on site bar for some tapas and a quiet night in, how wrong we were!

Like a scene from a bad disaster movie we should have seen it coming, we should have seen the signs but we missed them all. As an educational service to all if you see these men; be prepared to imbibe your own body weight in booze. Ron (pictured right) and Jamie (yes the one in the monkey hat, see how we missed the signs!), two Irish athletes in training for Oktoberfest, took us and the night onto a different level. What followed was a steady increase in blood alcohol levels, stories, jokes, our Finnish fare getting completley bamboozled by Irish accents not to mention the humour bouncing back and forth. Needless to say we moved from the bar where you can see we were reasonably sober;



via this

ending up somewhere around here

The next day we awoke to larger than average hangovers, apart from Bendigo (or so he claims!) but were determined to make the most to the sunshine which had finally elected to make an appearence. After a short bus ride we found a sight that we did not expect to see in a sleepy holiday distination, riot police in full gear holding a variety of extremely dangerous looking weapons! As you can see from the picture on the right hand side, old people cannot be trusted as these two were the ringleaders of the whole affair! It seems we had arrived right in the middle of a period of instabilty in Basque politics with the supreme court of Spain ruling two of the areas political parties as illegal. This as you can imagine did not go down well, hence the police presence, but in typical Basque fashion ended with one great big party. This also was partly to blame for the lack of parking and accomodation. After getting in a bit of surfing and seeing the Spanish version of S club 7 featuring what looked like Bertie Basset ( I had heard he had gone downhill but this...) we hit the town for poo's and grins and kalimocho (red wine and coke).

Staying in the old town we hopped from bar to bar. Bendigo threw out an assortment of shapes on the dancefloor, agreed to meet a girl in Bristol the following week to teach her English and anything else he felt she needed to know, Iain went limbo dancing, was asked if he was our dad, and lauching forth into a bizzare rendition of singing in the rain with a broken umbrella,

meanwhile Nathan consumed the kalimocho and lept onto an abandoned stage to pretend to be Bono without any of the style or charity work. Chris on the other hand tried to keep up with the pace of our drinking ( apparently they have not heard of binge drinking in Finland yet!) and searched unsuccesfully for "chicas" with dubious morals.

With the night over Iain entertained the taxi rank with more dancing, Bendigo lay down for a nap and Nathan had to live up to English steroetypes and was caught short in the street.

We did however get sight of our glittering prize some 2000 odd miles away, the desert, hopefully we can still get there for real!

Next up Mundaka and a very long drive to Portugal.

(There will also be a few more videos added to this post as soon as we find a decent connection)

Biarritz Update

Hello once again, my apologies again for the slow rate of updates but finding a good internet connection in morocco is a little bit hard, and for some strange reason I would rather be outside in the sun!

As we left you last we were leaving archaron and heading for Biarritz hopefully for some sun, however the curse of Bendigo and his rain making skills struck again and we arrived to grey skies and english like drizzle. This however would not dimish our high spirits as we were now in one of the best surfing and party towns in the south of France.

Finding a campsite was easy, however on arrival Nathan soon realised that it was the same one that he had run away from two years ago without paying for several nights! Thankfully there was no wanted poster in the reception so we quickly set up camp, cleaned ourselves up and headed for town.

Finding the town packed as always we set about doing what the English do best, drinking, followed by increasingly more elaborate means of drinking with a few games, much to the confusion of the straight laced Swiss group next to us! I think Iain may have lost the previous game judging by his expression!

Looking back with rose tinted glasses of hindsight, which of course is a wonderful thing this was to prove to be somewhat of a mistake! Sorry I meant to say the best possible course of action as of course the crew of Sahara Cabs do not make mistakes!

After meeting a variety of English people on a similar mission to us, the majority of whom were a hen party, and many friendly locals who thankfully spoke very good english we encountered our very first celebrity of the tour. See the picture below for details and an exciting competition!

I forgot to mention that the girl on the left hand side of the picture here, left that evening with a special memento to remember us by. Bendigo decided to share the Sahara Cabs love by tattoing our web address on her arm. However he got a bit carried away, and opted to use what would have been about a size 140 font covering her arm. Still she didnt seem too bothered.... Anyway back to the celeb.

If anyone can tell us who this former French international is, a free fare of up to 16 Dirhams will be available as a reward! As you can see from the picture Iain used to play rugby too, after all they practically look like twins, in a kind of Danny Devito and Arnie sort of way!

After the bars drew to a close we hit the alledgedly world famous Playboy club to throw some shapes. To our amazement not only did they allow us in (after rather alot of calories!) but they thought we fitted the club so well they allowed us in free of charge!

This is where the evening went so right and yet so wrong! Nathan managed to bag himself a very attractive lady (just look at the smug bastard!) by the name of Sarah, which he claims as fate given the similarity of her name and the final destination and company name of Sahara! Iain on the other hand was good and fought off the ladies with a large and very dangerous looking stick, instead choosing to improve Anglo French relations by talking to every single person in the club. Bendigo on the other hand found love of a different kind, with the barman taking rather a shine to him and plying him with free shots. Don't worry girls the boy is not for turning, so please continue sending in the fanmail to the usual address.

Taking a break from attempting to undo several hundred years of bad blood between the English and French, Iain showed us and everyone his party piece,( no, not that one Kate!) his amazing pole dancing ability. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but I think this little lot are worth rather more!

All in all it was a rather succesful night!

The morning however was a different affair altogether! Despite this we did manage to acomplish several things. Iain went for his first surf, albeit on a red flagged beach much to the disgust of the lifeguards, who may or may not have looked like this....

We also set about some maintainence to cure a rather wet fuse box caused by a blocked drainage pipe. This was done in typical fashion by poking it with some wire, hitting it, blowing into it and of course swearing at it until it was clear. Iain says it was the poking that did it, but Bendigo and Nathan are convinced it was the swearing, Bendigo especially can be very intimidating when he wants to be!

The final act of the day was to pick up a Finn by the name of Chris, our first official fare! We are not sure but we think that these two may have been seperated at birth.

Chris

Mugatu

As the weather was still a bit rubbish and lots of things were closed including the sun, so we packed up shop and headed for San Sebastien were we were in for an unexpected suprise.

Apologies for the lack of video but the speed here is rubbish, we will put them up probably when we get to Rabat. (yes i know we are a little behind but we are on holiday!)

Comments

Just so you know commenting is active for everyone, no need to register or anything like that. So let us know what you think of our exploits!

Wasp Hunting

Have you ever seen two grown men be so afraid of something so small! Still I think we won this one though!

Greetings from Tangiers and Archaron update

Hello again loyal readers, all 7 of you at least, and greetings from North Africa! Yes we have actually made it this far coming ashore at the port of Tangiers, however like a Dan Brown novel you will have to wait a few pages to find out what the hell is going on.

This is largely because as some of the bright sparks out there may have noticed Tangiers is some 1000 km as the crow flies from where we were last.

As we left it last our intrepid band of explorers, or idiots whichever way you want to look at it were in a fantastic camp site outside of Archaron, that evening we met four english lads who had some interesting information for us. It seems that people were actually paying attention to the, "what interesting thing are you doing today" phone in on Vernon Kaye's show, that is to say other than those people Iain forced into listening to it! The lads informed us that they had heard it and for some strange reason when they saw a black cab with palm trees on the side, in the south of France that it may well be us! It seems that makes us at least partially famous, at least as famous as these guys whom ever they may be....

Im sure I have seen a few of this lot serving in subway on the TCR. Mind you I hear the one on the far left is attempting to carve out a career as a professional Jo Brand impersonator so maybe we wont be as famous as her for very long.

Anywhoo back to us, after the battle of the atlantic you may have witnessed the opening slavo of in the previous post we headed out and of course found the one thing you can always count on finding anywhere in the world, an english pub. While normally our motto is "when in Rome", this was too good to pass up thanks to the magnetic personality of the landlord Paul, and made even harder when he offered to buy us a drink! For those of you who ever make it to Archaron make sure you chek out the Moby Dick.
The next evening we left the streets behind and attempted to answer a question rarely posed before, just how many people can you involve in a party inside a london taxi? The answer is actually 15, included the english guys already mentioned an australian, a welshman several frenchmen plus some additional english that we enticed in with our conversational skills. This part however did not go down well with the camp site who attempted to evict us in the early hours of the morning. This as future updates will show will become a reoccuring them!

The next day despite a very generous offer to race for pink slips as the americans say we set off for warmer pastures as Bendigo's skills as a rainmaker were still in full effect.

Sorry for the slow rate of updates but arabic keyboards are a little hard for me to use! Next up Biarritz, a new member of the team, along with a shocking revalation that would change everything!

See I told you, this is just like a Dan Brown novel it even has a cliffhanger at the end of the chapter.

Control Room

Like the Long Way down, at Sahara Cabs we too have a dedicated and professional support team to aid us on our journey.

Travel in Style

Below you can see what sets us apart from the rest it is our attention to detail shown here by our hand painted exterior




All artwork done by Luke @ Urban Species www.urbanspecies.co.uk

Road Entertainment

Iain really wants to be a popstar, keeping spirits up with a splendid rendition of a true classic

Arrival in France

Plotting a takeover based on historical evidence of cowardice in the face of invaders

Departure from sunny England

Our Fleet

This is the pride and joy of the Sahara Cabs fleet, Hackney Harriet and the video below demonstrates some of the numerous features it boasts. As you can see our sales rep has an extensive knowledge of said features.

Preparation

We at Sahara Cabs like to operate within all health and saftey guidlines at all times, and are very proud of our mechanical know how when it comes to maintainence.

Hello All

Hello one and all, im sure you will all be pleased to know that sahara cabs has made it to Arcachon, a journey of some 1000 miles. The trip began from Brick Lane and we quickly winged our way to dover under the expert guidence of driver Bendigo while Iain and Nathan chose to continue getting into the spirt of things with some continental beer.

On the left our three intrepid explorers and those who came to see us off. (Not pictured envy)


Upon our arrival in Dover we met a splendid chap by the name of Mariuz, a crazy Romanian van driver on his way to Amsterdam allegedly on "business". He was kind enough to introduce us to an unspecified Romanian moonshine made from cherries, while at first taste this was tasty we soon realised it was rather more potent than anticipated. All of this may explain Iains rather liberal use of the ferrys tannoy system! The staff were not amused.


After the ferry, Bendigo drove onwards through northern france towards Normandy and Ohmaha beach, while an unspecified member of the group put in a sterling performance in staying awake to support the driver, Iain slept in the back, a theme that would recur throughout the day.


While Ohmaha beach was interesting unfortunatly we soon found that with the exception of the bar there, Northern France was closed.

This is pretty much what we found everywhere, i think they used an english sign just to make it all the more irritating.

After spending the night in what can only be described as a ghost town we set off again for warmer weather, this was of course after contemplating going to Brest mainly because it had a funny name, apparently we are all still quite childish, who knew.... As a strange coincidence the locals refer to it as "le Mamelon de Francais". For those of you with GSCE French I think you will agree it is quite apt.

Day 2 Video


With us all in agreement that Northern France was essentially rubbish and shut, we hit the the road and headed south towards Bordeaux, settling on probably the worlds best campsite in the outskirts of Arcachon. As far as we were concerned this was a succesful mission as we had hit 28 degree heat a far cry from london, somewhere we were informed was grey and wet.

Tents errected, we set out on our first night out to see what larks could be had. Deciding as we were by the sea that sea food was in order so we selected a restaurant mainly because they were showing the football. What followed can only be described as a battle of biblical proportions as three brave travellers took on what looked like half the Atlantic.



Until next time, we hope all those who are at work have their day brightened by our exploits. Next stop who knows.....

Welcome to Sahara Cabs

Welcome one and all to the greatest taxi service this side of Timbuktu, no fare to big or too small, and a promise of no journey refused!

Currently all of our experienced and professional drivers are occupied on a job of epic proportions, so please be patient, but fear not our fleet of one 1992 fairway fx4 will soon be available for all your travel needs. Until then this page will serve as a testament to the dedication we have to our craft

Yours in service as always

Shaq El Hoorie

CEO Sahara Cabs