Day 60 of our journey through Europe.

It was now almost the end of January and we had already been in Andalusia. Slowly our Entry to Morocco closer and closer. We had planned the crossing for the next few days, but as is usually the case with plans, you either throw them overboard yourself, or the plans are cancelled out by problems or your own stupidity. But more on that in a moment.

As you may remember from the last report, we spent the night in Grazalema and wanted to spend the next day exploring the beautiful town. So we got up in the morning and wondered why our 230V on-board power supply was on strike and the display panel of the inverter was flashing wildly. So the day began with some extensive troubleshooting. Various restarts of the inverter, cable checks and reading instructions did not help. We have the most expensive model from the manufacturer Votronic installed, the SMI 1700 ST-NVS and the flagship from this series. So we contacted the manufacturer's customer support. The company normally offers good support, even by phone. However, there was a bit of a problem that day. The right contact person was not available, so we had to wait.

Dogs in Morocco? There was something...

So we spent the time we had spontaneously available researching Morocco in advance. So we read travel guides and did a bit of googling. We came across a few facts about Morocco that also concerned dogs, and suddenly the scales fell from our eyes. Dogs and Morocco, wasn't there something else important? Yes, there was indeed something, namely the Check of the rabies titer and the Health certificate for our dogs. These checks are not mandatory for entry into Morocco, but absolutely necessary for re-entry into the EU. Morocco is considered a rabies country and therefore the regulation states that an animal must have sufficient protection against rabies upon re-entry. The so-called titre, i.e. the level of antibodies against rabies, must be tested and verified by a certified laboratory beforehand. The whole procedure takes around two weeks. We actually already knew that this check had to be done when we left in November, but apparently the topic was far away and we simply forgot about it. Quite apart from the fact that we could have had the checks done during the various visits to the vet in Spain.

Votronic SMI 1700 ST-NVS inverter

So we shared the organisation. Marion researched the vet and Carsten took care of the inverter. After a long wait, we finally got a call back from Votronic. Carsten spent a good twenty minutes on the phone with the employee and tried to explain the fault. However, the success was rather modest. The support team gave us some outrageous reasons as to why the inverter was not working. Incidentally, the error display on the device was completely unknown to the support team and we got the feeling that they wanted to dismiss the whole thing as a user error. In the end, the support team was unable to give us any helpful tips on how to get the device working again. They suspected an electronic fault when charging via shore power the day before. So we agreed with Votronic that we would send the device in from Spain for repair. But will we ever find out the real reason for the fault? We'll have to wait and see. If there's any news, we'll post a short update here.

So we now had two construction sites. Finding a vet for our dogs so that they could enter Morocco and buying a new inverter to restore our power supply. However, we were in the middle of the mountains of Sierra de Grazalema. Seville and Malaga were both around 120 kilometres away and were both worth considering for the purchase of a new inverter. We decided in favour of Seville. For the check of our dogs we found a trustworthy veterinary clinic in Tarifawhich specialises in the procedure. We were helped quickly and competently by phone in English and we were given an appointment at short notice. So we set off for Seville in the early afternoon. Not to go sightseeing, but just to buy a new inverter and then head straight back south. Incidentally, the prices for inverters are much cheaper here in Spain, even in specialised shops.

Votronic SMI 1700 ST-NVS inverter
The Votronic inverter with pure sine wave is the flagship product from Votronic, a German manufacturer from Lauterbach. It delivers a constant 1700 watts of continuous power, with 2100W short power and 3000W peak power. The special feature of the NVS series is the integrated mains priority circuit. It ensures that the mains sockets in the vehicle are automatically supplied with shore power when shore power is available. The inverter switches off completely and no more power is drawn from the on-board battery. If the vehicle is disconnected from the shore power, the inverter automatically resumes supplying the 230V consumers. The switchover is not noticeable and the connected devices simply continue to run. The scope of delivery includes a control panel that can be used to read the device status and switch off the device if required. It has an automatic power-saving mode that puts the inverter into standby as soon as there are no consumers. When power is required, it simply switches itself on again. However, our experience shows that this does not work with every consumer. To the article: https://www.votronic.de/index.php/de/produkte2/sinus-wechselrichter/standard-ausfuehrung/smi-1700-st-nvs

Laguna de Medina

As it was now late in the evening, we spent the night in a small car park by the Laguna de Medina. We quickly installed the new inverter before dinner and our power supply was back on track. The new inverter only has a third of the power of the old one, but it did its job without a hitch. The Laguna de Medina is a small lake on which numerous Migratory birds rest, among other things Flamingos. The lake is a protected area and is generously fenced in, but a path leads around the lake, partly over footbridges. The birds can be observed very well from four of them. So it's best to take binoculars with you, or a camera with a telephoto lens. If you are travelling south from Seville, we can recommend the car park for a rest or overnight stay, as it is also very close to the motorway.

Embalse de Barbate

The next day we headed for our actual destination, the reservoir Embalse de Barbatewhere we spent the next few days until our vet appointment. The reservoir is not far from the motorway from Seville to Algeciras. The landscape had already gradually changed after Ronda. The mountains there were already quite green, but the area around Seville is flat again and characterised by agriculture. But the Embalse de Barbate took us completely by surprise. Gentle hills, a lush green landscape and the banks lined with green meadows where goats and cows graze. Of course, we don't know all the areas in Andalusia yet, but we would spontaneously call the area around the lake the Scotland of Andalusia and we spontaneously fell in love with it. We found another great place to spend the night. Free standing near the dam wall with a great distant view over the lake. Here the Kites over the embankments, which Wild geese chattering by the lake and at the edge of the forest a herd can be seen. Deer look.

Vet in Tarifa

After two lovely and relaxing days, our journey continued to Tarifa to the vet. Our destination was the Clínica Veterinaria Tarifa Europe. The appointment went very quickly, the blood sample was taken and now we had to wait two weeks until we had the results of the rabies test. That meant rescheduling. We wanted to bridge the time by exploring southern Portugal, which we had originally planned to do after Morocco. The distance is not far with a day trip. The rough plans are in place, but even these plans will be smoke and mirrors as you will read in the next post.

Our driving route in this article

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