This is an authorized translation in English of a post in French by @terresco: A la poursuite de l'aventure 2

^{As my primary language is not English, there are probably some mistakes in my translation.}

Remember that the person who speaks here is NOT me, Vincent Celier (@vcelier), but @terresco, a French guy.

We were, Pascal and I, looking for an old Mercedes in order to repair and resale it in Africa to finance our trip. I told in the first episode how we decided on this project and spent almost a year to raise the funds necessary for its realization. It was now a matter of speed, we were nearing the end of the year and the start was scheduled for spring. It was still necessary to buy the car, to repair it, to get the first passports of our young life, to inquire about the possible routes ... In this rainy autumn, it was better not to think about it and to take the problems one by one.

* * * * *

Our first car

It is in Germany that we found our happiness. The car was old but in working order, which allowed us to bring it back to Montpellier to make it a beauty and do a little maintenance. To reduce travel costs only one of us would see the vehicle, decide whether or not to purchase it and bring it back. Pascal was the most qualified of us both and he had his license when I had just enrolled in driving school, a month before my 18 years. Pascal hitchhiked from Montpellier to Munich. The hitchhiking was a bit like the BlaBlaCar of the time, but free. People stopped to give service knowing that young people often had limited means. In a week that seemed to me a month and a few misadventures of little interest, he was back with the coveted object.

We must quickly return to the week of waiting that seemed so long. Long because I did not know if the project was progressing, if Pascal had arrived, chose to buy or not. Hard to imagine today that I remained all this time without any news of my friend. Mobile phones did not exist. I do not even talk about the Internet that only the military might know. The fixed telephone was expensive, especially internationally, and our policy excluded the superfluous, every Franc saved was a step towards Africa. An endless week.

The challenge of preparation

It was going to have to cheat a little with the papers, Pascal had negotiated with the former owner to keep the German papers some time. It was not very square but we still enjoyed a certain freedom at that time. Society still tolerated the notion of human adventure, which far from the spectacular, gave meaning to a life course. Resourcefulness, to compensate for the lack of financial means, was seen as a quality not a fraud, especially when it came from young people, logically with small means.

For our parents it was a little different, they saw neither the trainer side of the operation nor the benefits of the meeting of our dream and reality. I must confess on my side, a huge piece of lies, bringing the adventure to a simple walk of health. This lie for the good cause have surely been forgiven, otherwise there is prescription.

We worked like crazy, nights after nights, to make our Mercedes presentable, able to face the road and the desert. If the nights of the previous year had been festive (See 1st episode), those of the mechanical preparation were black from sludge. The technical control did not exist, it would have ended our dream, prohibiting young resourceful to have a means of transport and to dream further. Believe me, we were careful, we did not want to break our dream. Freedom generates a responsibility that will never be replaced by sanction systems.

Our trip had aroused much sympathy and many were small spontaneous helps. Such a man knew how to repair such a part, another's father could get us tires at an unbeatable price, a third would provide us with food samples that would fill our trunk. It is at the bottom of a junkyard that we finally found two sand plates. In pure old iron, rusted to perfection. It was with the eyes of the child discovering his Christmas toys that we extracted them from the chaos where they rested in peace, to offer them a new career. The price was going down as we told our story. We had made the owner dream or perhaps it was also an old dream of his own?

On the car side we were not bad, the condition was OK, we had a lot of spare parts and a toolbox, oil and water stocks for the engine, the equipment needed to ride in sand, to repair the tires.

The route

In February I passed my driving license successfully. Pascal had prepared me directly on the Mercedes. After two hours of class, the driving school had introduced me to the exam. Not very talented for parallel parking, the only successful one was during the exam, but in the Sahara it would not fail me. The passports were outstanding, everything was going well.

For a year that we dreamed of it, we had evoked, of course, the different possible routes. Each choice was a tear. If we were to visit Senegal we would not see Algeria, if we chose Algeria we would lose Mauritania. The easy way was certainly that of the coast, that's probably why we choose the other. We were going to cross Algeria and lead to Mali. Then we would advise according to how much money we would still have. It was said that the more we went south, the more expensive the car was selling, but even in Gao we should find a buyer.

Spring was fast approaching. At school level the year had not been, to say the least, brilliant. Every day we thought of thousands of things that we had forgotten. I realized later that it's the same before each expedition. We always have the impression that we are not ready yet, we would like to foresee all the cases, improve all the points. In the end, if we let ourselves be guided by this feeling we never leave.

* * * * *

We did not let ourselves fall asleep, in the first days of May, the journey began, as it should, at dawn. The crossing of Spain left me only the memory of a permanent sleep. We took turns driving and we were driving full time. In the south we spent the rest of the night in the car waiting for the opening of wickets offering ferries to Algiers. This is where the adventure would really begin, a bit like Paris Dakar, Europe had just been a junction step.

Continue to Part 3

-- @terresco

Part 1