Day 13 and 14 - Planes Trains and Automobiles (and Ferrys and Buses)

Well it had to happen, the volcanic ash has now closed Madrid and Barcelona airports, thowing our travel plans and that of most of europe into disarray.It's incredibly chaotic, the shutdown of all flights into and out of Europe just doesn't happen and everyone has somewhere they need to get to. The airport provided little information beyond the fact that there are no flights. So, we've had to make very hasty alternative arrangements. Unfortunately, it seems everyone else is having to do the same, so hotels, trains, car rentals etc.. are all under massive strain. It would have been fine if there was no time pressure, however in just 36hours I was due to drive the Formula 1 car, so our own real life episode of Race Around the World was on.

Look at all the cancelled flights!

So what was supposed to be a nice 2hr flight to Barcelona became;

• 3hrs waiting for a train in Marrakech
• 9 hours on the train to Tangier
• A 1am arrival at a dive of a hotel in Tangier that would do Fawlty Towers proud. Thanks to Alan for arranging the only hotel with availability in Tangier at 3:30am Melbourne time while we were stuck on the train. Fortunately this hotel had wifi, so sitting in bed at 2am, we discovered that Barcelona airport had just been reopened, and we managed to quickly secure a flight fromthe south of Spain to Barcelona. Now we had to catch our flight...
• A mad scramble at 5:30 am to a Ferry from Tangier to Tenerife, which incidentally involved throwing money at helpful locals to magically skip the long customs queues, the only thing that got us on the Ferry in time.
• 2hrs on a Ferry across to the Europe mainland,
• A 1hr bus ride to Algecerias
• A further 1.5hr bus ride to Malaga
• And finally, a 1.5hr flight to Barcelona.

We finally made it to Barcelona at 7pm, with just enough time for rest prior to the F1 experience,whew!