Dakhla, Western Sahara to Nouadhibou, Mauritania
200 miles / 320 km
Wx: Clear skies, mild.
Ahhhh, waking up in a bed, with clean sheets, followed by a real no kidding hot shower. How awesome is that after camping and days and days on the road? However, the ride is starting to take a bit of a toll. My right wrist is swollen and I have lost the feeling in the first two fingers on my right hand. Anyway, downstairs for a proper restaurant breakfast and a bit of a briefing on the day ahead.
We are not planning on doing a lot of kilometres today, because today we will be crossing the border between Moroccan controlled Western Sahara and Mauritania, which supposedly takes a reeeeeally long time. During the fighting for Western Sahara, Morocco used to occupy only the northern two thirds with Mauritania controlling the southern third. However, fighting between the factions ensued and Mauritania was eventually forced to withdraw. Consequently, we have been warned to stick carefully to the planned tracks as this part of Western Sahara is still littered with live minefields. Woohoo!
We all kit up and head back out of Dakhla, our destination is the border with Mauritania then onto the town of Nouadhibou. We go back through all the police checkpoints we came through yesterday, aaaaagain. We gas up on the outskirts and then head south. It is some stark desert riding through these parts. Long straight roads just surrounded by sand and the odd sign or two warning you about the landmines.
The Long Road
Mind Your Step
We ride all morning for hours through the featureless desert terrain with only the odd military checkpoint. At one point, just to break up the tedium Rick and I venture off the tarmac in to the ‘minefield’ to play a little tag in the loose sand hoping that is all there is.
We all meet up about 20-30 kilometers before the border station so that we can all proceed through together as a group. It makes things much easier. So, we have been told to expect it to take up to 5 hours to get across the border and that is with a fixer on the other side helping us into Mauritania.
Well 5 hours turns out to be pretty accurate. There are three processing points on the Moroccan side alone. We stop at the first one, hand in our paperwork then break out lunch from the truck and eat some sandwiches while we are waiting. I think half the time it is a waiting game. The guards want to make you wait in hope that you will get the shits and just give them a bribe to get things moving along. We decide to wait them out, this time anyway.
We finally move past the first point to the second, wait, wait, wait. It is at least a little bit interesting to see and meet all the other people trying to get through the border and listen to where they have been and where they are going. On to the third processing point, wait, wait, wait. We are finally done about three and half hours later and that is just to get out Western Sahara/Morocco. We are not even into Mauritania yet. Oh no. that fun is still yet to come.
As we leave the last military boom gate departing Western Saraha / Morocco we move into what is called ‘No Man’s Land’. No Man’s Land is a stretch of sandy desert between the borders of Western Sahara and Mauritania and it is chock full of live landmines (you see they don’t like each other much).
As we move into No Man’s Land our guides are adamant that we stick to the planned path so that nobody accidentally blows up. Since there are hulks of abandoned cars in every direction this seems like a pretty good idea. The only problem is that the path has lots of patches of fairly deep soft sand. A couple guys have some problems especially Dave, whose bigger, heavier bike bogs down and is prone to going over, which he does.
We stop to help Dave get his bike out of the soft sand and then crawl our way over to Mauritania where we meet our ‘fixer’ who is there to grease the wheels at the border and take us into town. Only two processing points on this side so it take about an hour or so and a bribe or two to get through.
After all the fun at the borders it is getting to be late afternoon and we are keen to get onto Nouadhibou before it gets dark. We follow the fixer’s car towards town, passing an absolutely enormous train pulling car after car of iron ore stretching towards the horizon. We later find out (from everyone) that it is the longest train in the world.
We finally approach town and enter one end of what is the main drag. As we pull into the main drag, with the aim of getting across town, everyone’s eyes go as big as saucers. Oh my God, it is just complete and utter mayhem on this road. The road is two lanes either direction separated by a small median strip. But holy shit there is just everything going in every direction; people, bicycles, goats, dogs, sheep, donkeys, scooters, cars, carts. All going at max speed in every direction. It looks like one of Dante’s circles of hell. Traffic hell maybe.
Everyone’s head is on a swivel trying to pick their way through the traffic while not getting blindsided by something coming in another direction. After exchanging glances and ‘holy shit’s with a few other riders I look up ahead to see Mihir almost get wiped out by a goat sprinting across the road.
No sooner, do I take my eyes off of that when I see a black Mercedes coming the wrong way down our side of the road, right at us. The driver has this totally nonchalant ‘yeah, so’ look on his face. As I am weaving around him I look over to avoid something else that I catch out of the corner of my eye. As I look up I am momentarily stunned by the surrealness of it. There in front of me is a donkey with a satellite dish on its back. What the? It takes me a second to process what I am looking at before I shake my head and I’m back to the task at hand of avoiding anything and everything.
A Calmer Stretch Of Nouadhibou Street
We finally, wend our way to our accommodation, which resembles a prison block more than anything else. A walled in courtyard with cells/rooms along two of the walls. We unpack and file into our cells and set up to cook dinner off the truck. Magic Rick vanishes into town to find beer in a country where it is totally illegal. So he does the clever boy, in a Chinese restaurant, in the middle of the Sahara desert in a very strictly Muslim country. Go figure.
Cell Block N
We sit up shooting the shit with another traveler and each other until the cold and the infernal sound of wailing from the minarets drives us into our ‘beds’ for the night. Interesting day, dying to see what happens tomorrow.
Shooting The Shit
