This is
an update from Nouakchott Mauritania. The expedition will be leaving today for
the Senegal border on our trip southward.
We arrived here in the capitol of Mauritania yesterday afternoon. The last several days have been brutal,
and unfortunately not without some damage.
After
making our way from Agadir into the Western Sahara and finally down to Dahkla we
joined the military convoy which would bring us to the Mauritanian border. Other
than frequent military checkpoints and endless barren desert that part of the
trip was fairly uneventful. The
roadway was surprisingly good and paved all the way to the border. We camped in
what appeared to be more of a trash dump than anything else and anxiously
awaited to leave.
Morning
came and we headed out to the Mauritanian border. Expecting some kind of
instructions or at least a sign we found nothing except a horribly ruined
Spanish road and a lot of sand. The
convoy quickly separated and it was a free for all dash to the border through
one of the most heavily mined areas in the world. There were areas that the
going became fairly difficult and some of the less equipped cars were getting
stuck. We reached the border and
found that we had really crossed into real Africa now. We were greeted by Mauritanian military
and filled out all of the necessary paperwork to of course “ease our passage”.
This is another term to describe separating you from your money and slowly your
progress down as much as possible.
The checkpoints were just little stone huts and one was just an old
ruined tent. We really felt like we
were in the middle of nowhere.
After 5 hours we had cleared the border and left losing just a few
cartons of cigarettes (which we had brought for this purpose) and a couple of t
shirts- and of course the “entrance fee payable in francs.
The road
to Noadibou was, well- not really a road.
In fact there were no signs, no people and no clear-cut way to get to the
city. We followed our GPS
coordinates and plotted a course with a compass.
Unfortunately
we finally arrived in Noadibou- and I say unfortunately because it really isn’t
a place that you need to go. It was
little more than a frontier kind of town.
Nothing was on the up and up. Black market money, underground alcohol
bars and a very unsafe parking situation.
We finally decided to take shifts guarding the trucks overnight. We all got very little sleep. At one point around 1am I wondered what
the hell we were doing here. I was sitting with Pat in the back parking lot of
the hotel. We had a lantern going. I had a machete in one hand and a switchblade
in the other. Pat was hanging on to a shovel handle. Possibly it beat being in
the hotel room, although the hotel itself was adequate the beds felt like they
had rocks in the mattress.
In the
end nothing happened and we all left Noadibou anxiously the next morning. I had
a Birthday granola bar on the way out of town and we headed for the
Sahara.
The
drive from Noadibou to Nouakchott was nothing short of diabolical. We traveled more than 500KM off road and
the majority of the time was spent in 4-wheel drive. It is hard to believe that this is the
MAIN route between the two cities. We all got stuck on several occasions. The temperature climbed well into the
90-degree range and the dust and sand was unbelievable.
The
scenery was nothing short of spectacular. Some of the sand dunes stretched for
miles. We camped in the desert
after driving from 8am until after 8pm.
We still found ourselves behind schedule. Damage was par for the course. We had
bits snap off the truck at an alarmingly fast rate. Al nearly lost is entire windscreen
after the bolts unscrewed themselves from the constant pounding and
vibration. I lost both limb risers
to the vibration. One of my lamp guards sheered off, my roof rack un fastened
itself from the windshield and I have lost all electrical power to the rear of
the truck. My laptop also sustained
a heavy impact- heavy enough to get a cracked screen inside of the aluminum
case. Typing is a bit difficult
now.
After
setting out for day two in the desert we found the going even tougher. At one point we had to race the tide along the Atlantic and drive down the beach for nearly 50 miles- the only way
around a large section of dunes. After getting stuck a few more times we hobbled
into Nouakchott late in the afternoon.
We completed over 500KM in some of the most brutal conditions I have ever
seen. We ran out of water and bread
and were on our last quarter tank of fuel.
Luckily
we found an upscale hotel in Nouakchott and are just now recovering and
assessing the damage. Later today
we leave toward Dakar on our first road in several days.
We have
covered more than 3200KM since Spain. Average speed now is 51KM per hour.
-Michael
Ladden