Car trip to Senegal, logbook ideas anyone?

In order to help the next group of people that wants to go down the same or similar route (France to Senegal) and to calculate the effective costs of the trip, I wanted to create something like a logbook. This logbook should contain :

1) the day-etappes inclusive the pro and cons of the departure and arrival points (in terms of parking/ sleeping safety and comfort, stocking and sanitaire infrastructure, managable distance to aimed deadlines of arrival, e.g. ferry or border closure)

2) place names/ marker of stops listed according to petrol, repair and food consumption

3) prices of consumed goods; e.g. petrol, diesel and bottled water the litre

4) diary of the things seen, experienced

I started creating an excel file (how do you upload these in a blog??), listing in the horizontal the countries with towns in the subheadings. Vertical are listed the genres like: documents and papers, petrol and road, equipment, personal consumption and communication with sub-themes like, eg; food, souvenirs, hotel, phonecard.. this shall allow to categorise and calculate the costs

But if you had any good suggestions on how to organise this sort of information in a managable and sensible way in a small car full of stuff... your suggestions are as usual more than welcome.

And all in 5 days !?!

So the framework for the tour is given. Departure in Clermont-Ferrand, France, August 1^st, and airplane ticket from Dakar, Senegal to Frankfurt the night of August 7^th! As the car trip takes an anticipated 5 days that shall leave me nearly two days to relax in Dakar. To fit this tight time frame the day etappes are planned to be the following:

Day 1:

Clermont-Ferrand, France → Spain, as close to Algeciras as possible.

Leaving around 3am

Day 2:

Spain → Casablanca, Morocco

Crossing over by ferry from Algeciras to Tanger, an alternative would be to cross to Ceuta.

Day 3:

Casablanca → Agadir, Morocco

Always staying on the N1, passing by El-Jadida, Sidi-Smail (forking to the N7 towards Marrakech), Ounara..

Day 4:

Agadir → Dakhla, Western-Sahara

Quite some long route, but worthwhile aiming for. First, Dakhla would be an agreeable place to sleep over and second, we want to reach the Border to Mauritania at Guerguarat before mid-day, as they close 12-14 o’clock.

Day 5:

Dakhla → Dakar, Senegal

If we managed to cross borders into Mauritania in the morning,

we can make it on time to arrive in the border town Rosso from Mauretania to Senegal. After 5 pm they will ask for some extra “service” charge, and the last ferry is said to leave at 6pm.

I therefore shall glue my feet to the accelerator and play the mind game with crossing camels... You move first, you move first! Once in Senegal things shall be more straightforward, passing St. Louis to Dakar.

Bon Voyage!!! and fingers crossed.

Car trip from France to Senegal

The early morning of August1st, 2008 a small group of cars is planning to start the anticipated 5-day trip to Dakar. And unlike the Dakar rallye, we unfortunately do not own fancy 4x4 cars, but rusty old "null-acht-fünfzehn" vehicles! Ah well, just adds to the fun I guess.

As there is quite some planning involved, we thought of sharing some of our experiences and travel preperations.

In French there are two sites (http://papyetmamyenvoyage.oldiblog.com and http://membres.lycos.fr/janinejirou/) I drew most of my information from, plus the experiences of people who did the tour already.

Here the map we are constantly adding to.
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