My "Saharagelber" 300TD

Sorry, I am still translating the West Africa story of 2006. It’s so much work…
From now on I’ll start photo-blogging: Posting images and tell short stories.

Meanwhile I’ll continue translating the whole story, I will transfer the longer stories to the ‘Pages’.

If you’re able to read in dutch, check out the West Africa story here:
West Afrika 2006
(still working on it).

Or check out the image stream @ Flickr here: West Africa 2006 image stream

After only 6 hours sleep, we got up to depart again. Ramon and Alamata were very tired and did hardly sleep because of the mosquitos. We all had heard the hyenas at around 2am.

We drove back to the hotel from where Ramon and me took a boat trip to spot birds and reptiles like a dragon and crocodiles. We did spot a fishing eagle too. Then after some more driving that day we drove back to the entrance. On our way we saw a small crocodile in one of the big pools we had to cross. At the entrance we took the toys we did bring with us and started to hand them out to the sweet children who were playing. A man who saw us with all the children around helped us to divide the toys equally.
We said goodbye to the friendly fellows at the ticket counter and gave Alamata a ride to his village. Some other guide wanted to get in the car because he wanted to go in our direction. No problem of course!

Ploughing through the pool

Senegalese children

He told us about the lions which live here, but are usually hard to spot. I asked him about the food the people here were eating, as we did not see much else then fish and rice. Usually they indeed eat rice and couscous, and sardines on french bread.
So the small ’boutiques’ is more or less all there is, with all the small things they sell. The shop owners only sell something once in a while, so they can eat themselves. Life is pretty hard, around here. Then, unfortunately, we ran out of fuel.
I just waited too long, too bad. Now there’s air in the fuel lines. I throw in the last 20 liters I’ve got in the fuel cans . The car drives, but very bad, the crap from Mauritania clogged up the fuel filter probably. I got out and changed the fuel filter in about 5 minutes, let out the air from the fuel system with the handpump. It’s all so easy with a W123.

Rainy season in Niokolo Koba NP, Senegal

Changing the fuel filter, easy as W 1,2,3

We continued on to Kedougou, the uttermost south-eastern point of Senegal, already close to Mali and Guinea. Somehow the cars still drives terribly and up the hills we sometimes slow down to 20km/h. I decided to add the last 4 liters fuels from the Webasto fueltank. But that shouldn’t be the problem concerning the distance. I find out I didn’t put back the fuel cap, so that was a bit of a problem. We couldn’t drive back because then we would be sure we could walk further. We finally made it to Kedougou and there was a small gas station situated on a sandy surface, on a sort of village square. I manoeuvred through the people and the goats. All the people were staring at us, to which we are already accustomed now. I made a friendly chat with the service station attendant and asked him if he had a universal fueltank cap. He talked to a boy who started to run and came back with an old crappy rusty cap (it was an original Mercedes one though). 2000CFA was his price. I was tired of playing the game but started it anyway. I needed this thing. I told him I offered 200CFA so the game to end up somewhere in between could begin. I told him 2000CFA was waaaaay to much and he told me 200CFA was waaaaay to less. This guy thought I was in desperate need as he saw I was in urgent need of a cap. He didn’t lower the price and a bit irritated I told him we didn’t have a deal. ‘Well then, then don’t sell it!’ I murmered. He wasn’t amused either, he now ended up with nothing. We decided to take a nice resting campsite here in Kedougou, of course with a swimming pool for Ramon as he was often not able to swim in lakes because of the bilharzia risk.

Green as Kermit

We’ve got a nice cottage close to the swimming pool. We’ll stay here for some days and then travel to Gambia where Ramon and Melissa will take the plane. This whole idea of being here alone and travel to Mali let me feel excited. It’s odd to be alone soon, but I like the idea to go on adventure on my own!

Gas station between the goats

That night we had dinner in the restaurant of the campsite. The televison over there was turned on and played west-african music clips very loud. The locals in the restaurant gaped at the clips showing west africans doing silly dances in their simple houses or driving in their 10 year old Mercedes cars. These music clips seem to be taken with a video 8 camera and assembled with some tricks which are default in a movie maker software package. Clips like this were shown the whole evening, the participants showing of their posessions, with the same sort of tunes and a little different twist. It’s in fact the same as the rappers do in the USA, except that these people aren’t using sex and violence to keep the people watching. I did say simple houses, but it’s a real specialty here, to see they’ve taken the film in small houses sometimes even with a garden. For the west africans though, it must be strange to see that, but that’s probably what they want to see. They dream of a small house for themselves.
We met a couple in the restaurant from Spain, we chatted about Senegal and the things we did so far. The guide from our friends joined us too. We chatted about the Bassari country and that we wanted to explore it too. As the guide heard we weren’t travelling by 4×4 he started to explain this aread was impossible to to with a regular car. Yeah right, we heard that before. He kept on telling us that lots of stones, holes and water made the tracks impossible to pass. He made us a bit more unsure, but of course we decided to try for ourselves first, as our Mercedes is quite capable, and is not to be underestimated .

That night Melissa and me took a swim in the swimming pool under the sky full of stars. Very romantic.

This morning we went for the viewpoint once more to spot some animals and then we had to pack to leave for the campsite in this park. While walking in between the room and the car one of the boxes fell lost its bottom and everything fell on the ground, all the cans and utensils were spread out on the ground.
A bit later, when I was back in the room I heard Ramon scream ‘A monkey is sitting in our car!’ I ran outside and saw the monkey sitting on the passenger’s seat. I ran to the Benz and when it saw me coming it ran away with our bread.
Luckily it was this dirty bread we would give away anyways. We were very relieved it didn’t take the photo camera which was next to the bread on the chair.
A moment later the monkey sat high up in the tree, enjoying its lunch for today, while his friends and family watched him eat all by itself.

Then when Alamata arrived we left for the safari and we spotted loads of animals, like warthogs, bucks, many bird species and monkeys and so on. The tracks were sometimes difficult because of the heavy rains that fall every night.
We passed nice tracks and with the very long and deep pools and swampy terrains. This way we came across the best places in the park. The swampy parts were sometimes very exciting, as the Benz is of course loosing traction in swampy parts. Sometimes Alamata walked through the big pools, to see how deep they were and if there were no big obstacles. Up until now, there were no limitations during this trip because of the rear while drive, The Mercedes just all goes through it, as if it is a tank. We did see some hippo and crocodile tracks, but we didn’t see them in real life here yet. We did see lots of beautiful vegetation.

Nice kind of dragonfly

Finding our way through the park

Niokolo Koba National Park, Senegal

That night, after a whole day of driving we stayed at Camp de Lion, where we slept in our own tent, on this cosy little place where african workers sat there for research. They were very fond of Ramon and we sat together for some time. Ramon was instructed how to get water from a well, their only water supply. It was a nice night with millions of stars, and fireflies flying around. When we were in our tent, we heard the hyenas howl. We adore Afrika, especially at moments like this.

Careful, you don’t want to be a hippo’s meal.

The W123 driving through the tracks

Very friendly staff worker at Camp de Lion

Fun driving in Niokolo Koba National Park, Senegal

Plouging through the pool

Weaver birds inhabit the big palm trees. Hundreds of weaver birds make so much noise, If you’re standing under the tree, you can’t talk to each other.

Impala

Impala

Arrived at Camp de Lion

Today we take a day off. We hang around a bit and read and sleep, all quite relaxed. It’s rainy today, and once in a while a monkey passes the window. Sometimes we see their heads passing the window and try to get a glimpse of these strange animals in this hotelroom.
As this hotel complex of buildings is deserted, the monkeys take a stroll around. Ramon tries to give the monkeys some bread, and after a while they just take it from his hands!

Feeding a vervet monkey

The green river bank, close to the only hotel in Niokolo, hotel Simenti

At six in the evening we decide that we want to leave the hotel, we ask for the bill and then we were stunned. As expected this canned meal had the price of a luxury dinner and they counted 2 nights. We had to leave the room before 12 they said. ‘Does it matter in an empty hotel’ I asked.
It did somehow, so we decided to stay, as it is quite expensive. I complained that they had noone else who would rent this room, but that is probably the whole problem. We decided to check out the great animal viewpoint for some time and that night we cooked our own dinner, which was way, WAY better then our cool 3 course meal from yesterday.

We got ourselves some more groceries before entering the park. We arranged to meet Alamata at the entrance of the park. He’s a very friendly guide, who spoke a little bit of english besides french. Before we took off I asked where I could throw away my garbage, an empty 5 liter can of sunflower oil. Alamata took it and gave it to a boy who brought it to the friendly woman who worked there. A bit later she came towards us and thanked us all the time, for giving her this can! She could probably use it for here household. She kept on smiling and telling us how happy she was with the can. We were impressed. Something we just threw away was of great value for her. We we’re happy for here too of course!

We had to get us some food before entering the park and the little village over here did not have anything (useful). So we went back in the direction of Tambacounda to see what we could find. Finding food in the South of Senegal is sometimes quite difficult, except if you only want to eat dry staple food. 10km away we found a village with a small shop. This means, a small cottage with some shelves with cans on it. Most of the things you find there are pretty useless, at least for us. We were lucky if we could find some canned vegetables of some kind. When we walk out of the shop again a boatload of kids are hanging around the car asking for “kado’s”. We decided not to do this, but it’s difficult sometimes. It’s way better to give it to a neutral place like a school or something, or maybe a church. You spoil the people over here if you decide to hand out stuff, even adults start begging for things or money. We continue on finding food and finally give up, we stopped at another small village and try to get what they have on offer. A odd old guy at least had some soap for us, so we could wash ourselves. Bread he didn’t have but apparently some child understood us and ran away to get some bread from a shop a bit further away. After this old man got something out of his nose he took the bread from the girl and packed it in an old newspaper. Yuk! That bread will be food for a donkey or a stray dog. Finding deodorant is surely something we can forget. We go back and before entering the park we arranged the flight for Melissa and Ramon by phone. Funny how one can arrange a flight from Banjul to Amsterdam, but is not able to get some daily stuff like deodorant or vegetables

When we’re in the park with our friend Alamata we drive to an old hotel here in the centre of the Niokolo Koba National Park. On our way to the hotel we already see lots of animals like baboons, various bucks, warthongs, guinea fowls and lots of birds.

Guinea fowl, Niokolo Koba National Park

Baboons

The beautiful Niokolo Koba NP.

When we arrive at hotel Simenti, we seem to pay a lot of money for a room including cold shower and no lights. There is no current at this time, at least not in our room. Low season thing, it seems, as they need to operate a generator for only a couple of guests. We won’t complain, it’s already okay We’re able to get 5000 CFA of the expensive 20000CFA we have to pay. I take the jumpstarter with the TL light light out of the car, so we’ve got some light in here, as the candles they’ve put in the room aren’t very suitable to lighten up the room. Then they promised us a nice menu with a three course menu, especially made for us. Now that would be a nice! It would cost a bit, but a nice meal is very welcome. After a while they came to the room to ask us to come to the restaurant, as the feast is going to start. They start to cook with a torch in the kitchen, so they didn’t have electricity either. He asks me to come to the kitchen. In a completely empty kitchen 2 men were standing with a bit of food. He shows me a can of sardines and asks if that is okay, there were some other cans too. He asks me if this was okay. Apart from the sardines, because we’re vegetarians, the rest was okay.
I was interested in how they could make a meal from this and I assumed they had more food somewhere else. The first course contained canned beans, an olive and peaces of onion and an egg, with some very old bread. This actually was not something to enjoy eating. The main course was eggs with french beans, somewhat better, it was in fact eatable
With a banana as desert this luxurious meal was complete. Well, they did their best. Then we understood why they tried this three course dinner thing… They charged us 5500CFA per person! That’s 8,5 Euro, which is way, way too much compared with the standards. After this tremendous dinner, Alamata joins and and we chatted together about the things to do over here.

The only campsite in M’Backe

From M’Backe we drove the whole distance to Dar Salam. There were pretty good roads via Colobane, Kaffrin to Dar Salam.
We saw a couple of vultures circling around high up in the air above a carcass. They are really huge! Today we spotted, thanks to Melissa, also lots of other kind of birds, like yellow bill kites, necked storks and cape vultures for example.
Spotting birds is very easy this time in Senegal, there loads of them you just have to stop sometimes and get your binoculars so you can see them perfectly. So many species are to be found over here. Via a small back road which came out at Kaffrine the road got really bad, the shockers and coil springs had lots of work to do here, so to speak.

Vultures on the road

Nice scene with Baobab tree

Typical senegalese Cab. The Peugeot 505 and the 504 break are very common here. This old 505 was finding its way around the potholes. In fact their called ‘sept-place’ over here, which means 7 places in the car.

On the side of this road many cars had broken down. A man with an old Mercedes C class was busy to remove a shocker, which apparently had gave up life. The trustworthy W123 did his job splendidly, of course we tried to avoid most of the bit potholes. Some potholes were like 20 to 30 cm deep! Because of this big delay we arrived at around 7pm in the area of Tambacounda

Termite cathedrals. They sometimes reach heights of 4 meters!

Tambacounda

Shops in the main street of Tambacounda

Doing some groceries in Tambacounda, Senegal

When driving the last couple of mile a very mad police officer tries to stop us by waving as a mad cow. Indeed, some meters back I could see a stop sign close to a small building. With the friendliest smile I had at that moment I told him I was terribly sorry I hadn’t seen his stop sign on time. The mad officer stays angry and shouts at me, about the use of stop signs, that they are the same as in Europe and more crap like that. He kept telling us that we didn’t stop at his silly sign on the side of the road and that we had to stop and so on and so forth. After a while it stopped. We had to get out and he had to fill in our passport numbers, license plate number, names and stuff like that in that big book, they all seem to have at these small offices where you run into, every now and then. They keep track of all people who are passing. Next time I’ll bring photocopies of the passports and car papers, you they can keep that there and we can continue. When they’ve written it all down, as they did in numerous other customs office books it was already dark and finished our last kilometers to the park entrance. We checked in at a campsite which is situated in the front of the Niokolo National Park so we could get in the park early tomorrow morning. When we setup the tent we see that the part that flips open is completely loose. After all these bumps today the screws went astray, apparently they weren’t screwed to tight when this tent was created.
I did bring some screws and nuts but didn’t carry everyhing I needed now. I used some nuts and screws from the ladder to fix it right now, and some fellow from the camping who joined us for a litle chat, managed to find some nuts and screws we could use.
After this quick hotfix, the tent was fixed again.
After this quick I was sweating and all and I decided to take a shower. When I was ready to shower it appeared that there was no water coming out of the shower. So they brought us some buckets with water so we could take a shower. When I was taking a shower, they turned off the generator somewhere on the campsite, so there wasn’t any electricity anymore and I stood in the dark. I couldn’t see anything anymore, so I washed off the soap remnants and by touching the walls I could get out of the showers. Real fun
This is SO Africa.

Today we planned to continue traveling through Senegal. When I walked to the showers I was amazed to see a big red fire fighting truck, together with this VW bus, I had seen these on the overlanders camping in Essaouira! We chatted a bit about our trip and of course, asked each other about our vehicles, as overlanders always seem to do.
We admired each other vehicles, he especially liked this old Benz, and of course, being a German, he respected the old W123 knowing these cars were built to last. He himself had this interesting old fire fighter truck, complete with shower and fridge.
We talked about the ideal overlanders vehicle, which is always a nice topic to talk about, it’s a science in itself it seems.
Of course, another hot subject was the border crossing from Mauritania to Senegal, Rosso or the alternative border further west.
The german women also brought a dog with them, they had found this dog somewhere in the Western Sahara. It was only 5 or 6 weeks old and they had to take it, otherwise it would die.
We talked about their problem about how to take this dog back to the Netherlands. Melissa knows quite a bit about this topic because she helped many people transporting dogs from Greece to the Netherlands.
Also, Melissa came in contact with 2 american girls who just arrived at the Zebrabar, they were stationed for two years in Togo and did development work for US Peace.
What a bummer all these nice people arrive at the Zebrabar on the day we planned to continue traveling.

Yawn!

The firetruck we saw on the overlanders camping in Essaouira

At 17:00hrs we left the camping and still drove for quite some hours, we arrived at 20:30 in M’Backe, 230km further south.
The last half hour we’d spent searching for a camping which had to be somewhere in M’Backe. As they do not use any
signs we had to use the people as signs, by calling the name of the place and them pointing in the right direction (hopefully).

The huge big horn skull we found today

The watch tower @ the Zebra bar

Today we went swimming again and in the afternoon I fixed the waterfilter.
We talked about staying longer in Senegal and Melissa and Ramon flying back, so they could spent more time in Africa an I could stay longer. I planned to visit Mali too. It was weird to think about being alone though, as we never did this before. We talked with a dutch guy who worked at the campsite building a cottage. He gave us a number so we could easily arrange a flight back to Amsterdam from Banjul, The Gambia.
This way we could spent 10 more days in Senegal and Gambia.

We rented a small cottage at the Zebra bar.

Reorganizing the Mercedes

Dog?

The campsite area

Today was a rest day again. I did some car checkup things and read alot. Melissa was reading and watching birds again today. For Ramon this area was very cool too. He could play with lots of dogs and cat which seemed to live here at the Zebra bar. He also couldn’t believe his eyes when all the land krabs were coming after the sun has set. He also watched the birds a lot and had a great time playing with his toys. We had put the big horn on the roof of the Benz, so it could dry out the last small parts of flesh still on the skull.

Big horn drying in the sun for a couple of days

Today Ramon and I went for a swim in the ocean. Ramon was longing for this for a long time. With a waterbike we got to a small island close to the coast and there we swam the whole day. Melissa went birdwatching today. Sometimes, some birds were a bit irritating. They made very strange loud noises and they think its cool to make all these sounds already at 5:30am. During the evening ver big krabs walk around the campsite, like 10cm to 15cm wide. They look dangerous but they prefer to walk away (like most animals by the way). But you need a torch to cross the camping at night, as you’re likely to walk over them, the whole area is full of these land krabs. The food is nice over here too. In total, it’s a real great place to be. Being able to swim, walk around with your binoculars to spot too many different bird species, a great place to have stroll and enjoy the beautiful natural oasis. The zebrabar is the place to be when you’re in the neighbourhood. There is a cool watchtower too so you can have good view of the area.
A short walk from the campsite there is a river where we saw ‘walking fish’. These strange fellas walk on the riverbeds. At the shore close to the zebra bar you’ll find funny small krabs waving at each other. Apparently they’re very keen on seeing each other and letting them know

And again another friend. And it didn’t want to get famous

And this special guest (among the other hundreds of these fellas)

Huge flowers

Sunset at the Zebra Bar

7:30. Someone’s banging at the door. WTH? I told him (I assume it was the guide) we would visit HIM, exactly to prevent these kind of situations! I yelled at him to go away by shouting “no, non, nee!”, that should do it.
Isn’t it just possible te be left alone over here?? We fell asleep again to be woken up again just 15 minutes later. We yelled at him to go away (again) and were able to get an hour of sleep before we actually had to get out.
As we heard a couple of times now we understood the piste was indeed flooded so we took it for granted. We ended up with our guide a bit later at the gate. Ready for the “Rosso Hell”.
First I had to arrange some money from an ATM and then the gate openened. hundreds of people first had to get out and then hundreds had to be back in again. As if everyone seems to think it goes faster to get in all at once it was a bit nerve-racking to get our Mercedes in without hitting someone or another car bumping against ours. Our guide showed his usefulness already, he arranged us to get in soon and he asked me for all the necessary documents like the passport, driving license, transport documents and so on. He could spoil our complete journey now just to walk away
But we had to do this, so we observed him running to all kinds of people distributing our papers. After 20 minutes he was back and had arranged everything, but the ferry did not seem to go anymore, as it was lunch time already so we had to wait for three hours to get on it. That was to be expected, that was the price we had to pay for not getting up at 7am to catch the first boat
We had to get out of the car because it was way too hot. The guide let us to a place where some senegaleze people were sitting and we drank some tea over there. Sitting on the ground we observed all the rural activities.

Waiting three hours for the ferry @Rosso

Women doing their laundry in river Senegal

Crossing the border in Rosso. The ferry which took us to Senegal from Mauritania

Typical lush green environment, after we just passed the border in Rosso. After crossing the Senegal river, it’s bizarre how the landscape changed instantly.

This place is full of bustle and it’s easy to sit here for a long time watching all the people doing their things. We were sitting close to the river bank and saw the women doing their laundry, and kids where washed by their mothers, while a bit furher away lots of dropped litter was scattered all over the place. When the soft wind blew a bit in on-shore, we could easily conclude that they drop their human waste somewhere around here too.
Some man proved this was true by taking a leak close by. And then they wonder how they get so sick sometimes.. The women were singing while doing the laundry. I imagined how grummy the people for Europe would be if they had to do their laundry in some river, let alone in the dirt and in this hot temperature. We could take these marvellous women as an example, being so cheerful and singing together!
Once in a while a dragon came along, watching the scene (and trying to catch some fish). Melissa made our lunch and the guide got us some nice cold water. We had lunch together and the guide told us about all the people crossing the river in small boats. Most of them tried their luch by getting to Europe and were catched in their attempt to leave Africa for a better future. Lots of them were told that they could easily go to Europe and build up a better life. But reality is different. Without proper paperwork you can’t get in Lots of them will try it again by small boats or get on freighters illegally. Some try until they die because of the small boats they use to cross the sea from Morocco to Spain. They dry out or are just smashed over. The people see their dreams falling apart when they hear they can’t go in and then they have to walk and hitchhike back again.

At about 3pm we entered the ferry and were finally able to cross the river. At the other side, the guide started to arrange all the needed paperwork again. This side of the river is a complete culture shock, it’s the complete buzzing colourful Africa. Entering from the quiet sandy Mauritania to Senegal is quite a experience. All the typical African features are there, the african red sand, the green trees and bushes, the colourful clothes, noisy people and activity everywhere. This culture shock is very welcome
After everything is done we pay the guide 80 Euros and he earned 20 Euros for this. After leaving the small place we were stopped by an official. Self assured I handed over my papers and was stunned to hear he missed some sort of document. The vehicle registration document was missing, and he did not talk about the Carnet de Passage. He told me I should have received this document, otherwise it wasn’t possible to pass the border.
Well dude, there we are! I explained him we had arranged a guide and paid him to do all the necessary stuff. This guy wasn’t after our money, it wasn’t a trick to scare us, it wasn’t a stupid ‘You don’t have all the paper work , but you can pay me some money and I will let you through” thing. He told us we could get this document in St Louis and let us through.
A bit further we found a huge skull of an african cow. It was from the cows you see here a lot with the big horns. We talked about if we could take it with us, and how we could deal with all the borders we were about to cross in the future. We decided to give it a shot.

The weather was much better to cope with over here and while on the road we saw a massive amount of different bird species. We stopped a lot to check out the bird species and determine which birds they were.
A bit later when we entered a village we were stopped by an police officer. Melissa just had defastened her seatbelt to get something from the back of the car. This odd guy started to complain about this and wrote out a fine.
I explained to him we alsway drive with our seatbelts fastened and this was just a coincidence. He didn’t even listen and kept on writing while everyone was passing by without seatbelts on, most of the time the belts aren’t even there anymore. Let alone the fact that one can better count the things that DO work on these cars, instead of the other way around.
We started to get angry about this, because this was just because we were ‘rich’ tourists and he wants to get the money of of our pockets. He didn’t want to do anything about it, after he was finished writing he had the following offer for us: Pay half, and then he wouldn’t give us the fine and the money was (obviously) for him. Instead of 40 Euro we would pay 20 Euro.
“Great deal, but NO!” I yelled. I was still angry because we felt it was just because he wanted to get money from us stupid tourists. Not a very warm welcome. I got angry and I told I did not pay anything. The police officer did not want to give my drivers license back. I wanted him to give me the fine, because I did not want to deal with this kind of corruption, this way the guy would earn 20 Euros and we definitely preferred to pay 40 Euros so he wouldn’t get anything. We told him we would go to the police station, and tell them there about his practices. We continued, this police guy having my driving license. At the station we told our story, while someone was sitting there behind bars. Ramon was probably impressed, to see someone sitting in jail. These guys at the police station were very friendly but confirmed we indeed had to pay 2,5 Euro.
What The Heck? 2,5 Euro? We paid the fine and let them confirm the payment on this piece of paper and went back. This damn !#$&!@&$ guy want to fool us heavily. This fellow was not on his place anymore.
Now what? I let some dirty words out of my mouth. This was serious, if this guy disappeared to nowhere. It was a very small village and not too many places to search in this sandy old place. I asked in a little shop if they saw this copper somewhere around. We didn’t have his name on our piece of paper. Then he appeared from behind a tree and walked towards us. He looked very, very angry. We do understand now, instead of 20 Euros he now has nothing and has to give us our license back, us knowing he was fooling us. I smiled at him and told him to gives us back the driver’s license as we paid the fine of 2,5 Euros! We let this guy have his moment, he yelled some nasty words at us while we took off. This whole situation cost us one and a half hour, but a least we did not have our share in the corruption of the officers, that will spoil the situation for other tourists.
One of our philosophy for this trip was not to give presents or pay unnecessary things to officers. They should just do their jobs without bribes. We probably will have a hard time in Africa
That night we stood at the gates of the Zebrabar. Sometimes you enter terrifice place to lay back and relaxed and come together again, after all those stressing periods sometimes. There was nearly noone here, we practically had the place for ourselves. The swiss owner was there and cook us a great dinner after this exhausting day. We would stay here for some days, that’s for sure.

And the diesel beat goes on.

Finally, we entered the Zebra bar. After this heavy day, where we were all put to the test. Couple of hours sleep, woke up way too early with someone banging at the hotel door. Of course hell called Rosso, the stuff with the missing papers right after the border, the corrupt officer later on the day.

When I woke up this morning I already felt a bit better. I took a long shower, although cold, it made me feel better. We exchanged some Ougiya’s, arranged an insurance and took of.
It was about 12:30 and with 103109km on the clock we left the campsite. We drove through the mainstreet where this camping was situated. The cars in Nouadhibou were really something, we had never seen cars in a shape like this. The cars were in such a bad shape, a car demolition center in Europe would not even pick these up. The metal was rotten so much and the cars were full of dents. Bumpers were fitted to the car with ropes, huge holes in the body work, taillights missing, people holding the doors in place, otherwise they would fall out, all kind of doorhandles and strips were missing, broken headlights, wheels who all tried to roll to a different direction.. You would only believe it when you see it. It was not the case for every car, there some pretty nice W201 (190) and W124 series Mercedes cars. The W123′s, the old Peugeot and Renault buses and cars were the worst ones. Maybe the cars which aren’t of any use for the moroccans anymore were exported to Mauritania.

Mercedes W123 in Mauritania. But hey! Still rollin’! (if you look closely, you see there’s a chrome strip missing).

Mercedes W123 in Nouadhibou, Mauritania.

Nouadhibou: Sand, one story houses and electiricity cables. That’s all there’s to it. And of course Mercedes

Nouadhibou, Mauritania

Imagine you take a picture of a car and then print it on paper and then crumple it up completely and then unfold it again, this is more ore less how some cars look like.

Nouadhibou feels like Nowheretown. It’s in fact nothing more then some houses popped up in the desert, with no nice building or monument at all, no nice atmosphere or cosiness. These wrecks which are driving here transport the people, huge bags of rice and furniture from one place to another. With a couple of miles an hour they crawl through the streets. When a car moves to Nouadhibous it is definitely its last station.
The people around here are very strict muslims and it often shows they have a hard time living up here.
This place, full of small houses built from sand having corrugated iron roofs with satellite antennas on it, dirt lying everywhere and sandy dusty streets looks pretty sad to us. Huge piles of sand here and there and the old telephone poles make the story complete.

I found myself some oil in a small shop in a little bystreet. I had the default chat with some guys hanging around the shop. Soon a some people gathered around the car and we had the default talk again, about how good the car is, if we wanted to sell it, where we’re going to and again, how good these cars are. It’s always nice, to have these conversations and talk a bit about the W123 and travelling through their country. After I got my oil we said goodbye and started with our long trip to Senegal, we planned to do reach Senegal today.

At around 8 pm we arrive in Nouakchott. It looks already much better then Nouadhibou, but again, Nothingness plays the leading role here. A city devided in a nice raster of roads in the middle of this great desert. The now so very recognizable one story sand buldings. In the centre there were some bigger buildings to see. We manage to find an ATM and continue on.

The part between Nouakchott and Senegal is really beautiful, much more interesting in our opinion then most parts of the desert so far. Many big sand dunes to spot and now and then we stopped to experience the area. Ramon climbed one of the bigger dunes and rolled off from top to bottom.
The temperature was unhuman, I guessed it was about 50+ degrees. Sometimes the even hotter wind came from the inland, it then felt as if we stood in a hot-air oven.
Being here, in the middle of sand and stones was awesome. Noone to be seen and pure silence. Sometimes you see big dunes on the horzion, and sometimes the surface seems to integrate with the air on the horizon. While driving we had to keep the windows closed most of the time, the hot wind was even hotter then it was in the car.

Soft sand, Mauritania

Sahara, Mauritania (Transatlantic route)

Sahara, Mauritania (Transatlantic route)

Sahara, such a vast endless wilderness.

+50 degrees in the sahara in the summer and no airco, that’s just great . Having the windows opened just helped even hotter air coming in.

Some do survive with practically no water.

The Saharagelber in the Sahara.

Dunes everywhere

While on the road we had the luck to spot one of our favorite animals (we got lots of them at home). The gerbil. To see these funny little creatures in the wild was complete new for us. I saw some of these crossing the road before but then Melissa and Ramon were asleep. I thought I recognized them as gerbils because of their way of running, it’s different then a mouse or rat. This time we stopped to check out if we could see it. And there it was, sitting somewhere on the side of the road. We approached very slowly and kept sitting over there. We opened the door to have a clear view of him, as it was very close to the car. We gave him a dried peace of fruit, which is what they adore. The gerbil sat there and tried the peace of fruit. It was so funny that it just did not run away and stayed with us, just walking around and washing itself, as if it was quite normal we stood there. After a while we said goodbye and went on.

Rolling of the dunes!

and Roll!

What you see in front, you see in the back

Various colours of the dunes.

Such a cute gerbil we found in the desert.

We continued on to Rosso, a milestone of the Africa trip. From this point you more or less trade the sand and emptyness of the Sahara for the greenery and colourful Africa. But first, you have to pass Rosso. The place -not- to be, so to speak. It’s dangerous, tedious and the only way to cross except from a smaller border downstream the Senegal river. We had to find out if we could drive along this river. As we were tremendously tired. We drove through the whole of Mauritania in one day. As it was the middle of the night. The streets are deserted. We tried to figure out where the border crossing is. While driving through the streets which were covered with litter and goats we found out there is nothing here. Some fellow hung around the streets and overall it was very dark. The only thing we saw was a big gate and when we stood there someone was approaching us. We didn’t feel to comfortable about it, though I opened the window to hear what he had to say. He starts a story about the border which is closed and that he had a place to sleep for us. I thanked him and continued on. He starts trying to stop me but I kept on moving.
I left for the streets again, manouvering between the big potholes. The darkness, all the litter and the strange sounds all made the atmosphere not too cosy, to say the least. Nobody seems to be here and the small houses look like they’re deserted. On top of this, a car appears in my mirror and keeps following us. We kept on driving, and find out the situation here and think about what to do, if we would stay in a hotel somewhere. Trying not to hit the potholes or the goats we drove around, with that car behind us. We seem to drive on a dead-end road and have to go back.
We passed the car which was following us and saw to men sitting in it, one opened the window to start talking but I kept on driving. They probably want to stop us for some place to stay for the night, but we prefer to find something ourselves. We decided to stop at a place where some military guys guarded some building. They didn’t seem comfortable about me getting out of the car and asking about a place to stay. Then the car which was following us came towards us and the man got out of the car and started taking over my chat with the guard. He appeared to be very kind and offered us (indeed) a place to sleep. He told me there was no hotel of some sort over here, so there were no options to stay here. ‘That’s of course because nobody WANTS to stay here’ I thought. So there we are. I thanked the man for his offer and got in the car again. The man explains the border is closed now and we can cross it tomorrow morning. I asked him about the alternative route, the one to drive along the Senegal river to Bge de Diama. They told us the road was flooded because of the heavy rains and it would probably not be possible to drive this road, the piste would be tricky because of this. They still decided to bring us there and guide us to that border. To my information that is quite a distance! Before we knew we drove behind them out of Rosso.
I talked about it with Melissa and we decided it was not too smart to follow some fellows out of Rosso in the middle of the night. I flashed with my lights to stop them. I told them we were too tired to do drive it now and now we knew which way to go we would try it the next morning.
By the way, we had travelled for 12 hours already so it was wise to have a good night rest anyway, before continuing. After all, I was still sick this very morning.
We tried to drive out of Rosso, as there was a building that looked like a hotel. We entered the place and found out noone was there anymore. We to the entrance passing lots of cockroaches buzzing around on the porch. There was a bell so we rang it. After a while someone came and offered us a room, quite expensive but we now knew why: there was no alternative. While unpacking the car some guys from the hotel started to chat.
As I was awefully tired I was not able to follow their french too good, but it was important to get some info from them, like the ferry departure times, the way it worked at the border in Rosso and the possible flooded road on the alternative road. Then, apart from that, I had to think about every sentence to check if it would be in his advantage to say that. Was the road really flooded, as they wouldn’t make any money if we were taking that road? I was too tired and after I heared about the departure times of the ferry I said goodbye to them and I clearly stated that we did NOT have an appointment for this guy to guide us in Rosso, we would see tomorrow. I’d like to arrange it this way, otherwise this guy will probably keep bugging us all the time, so I preferred to find him if we needed him tomorrow.
I got up to the room which was too darn hot to sleep in. Also, it was quite dirty and the beds weren’t clean, so we slept in our sleeping bags.
Melissa and I discussed what to do, taking the guide tomorrow to spare us all the hassle of the border we heard so much about, or try to get the piste to the west. We could hardly thinkg straight and all this stress and being exhausted made us quite irritated. We decided to postpone this decision till tomorrow. Luckily we were able to fall asleep very quickly, 3am, great.. We were put to the test today, you could say.

Last night I got sick. It was horrible, when I was in bed I woke up and had to throw up immediately, I did not have to the time to get out completely, but was able to keep it outside the tent
I was sick, feeling really horrible. Melissa took care of me all day, very sweet. But that’s one of the reasons we’re together of course.
Melissa spend her day reading and Ramon found a mauritanian friend, the sun of the owner of the place, they were able to play together today. I was too sick to do something, so this day sucked big time for me.
I spend the day in the tent and on the toilet and sometimes somewhere in between. The camping owner sometimes asked Melissa if I was okay and offered some suggestions (rice, and cola for my stomach).

The Camping “Baie du Levrier” in Nouadhibou, the place I got sick.

Ramon played with this boy today and we told him his new friend was looking very happy, while he was playing with the beach tennis rackets we bought in Morocco. We told him it would be very nice if he would give it to this boy at the end of the day, but only if he wanted to do that, of course.
We gave it to Ramon just some days ago and he was very glad we finally had something to play with during the holiday, because we forgot to buy something like that. He thought about it for a while and then broke our hearts, as he indeed gave it to the boy, knowing that this boy hardly had any toys and was very glad to play with these rackets.

In the beginning of the evening a dutch woman came by, she was a woman of a mauritanian man and saw this dutch old Mercedes and so started talking to Melissa. They chatted for a while and a bit later they invited us to a dinner in their house here in Nouadhibou.
I was too sick to join but wanted Melissa and Ramon to go, this was a cool experience they really had to do.

After freshing up and a breakfast this old man made for us, we started to pack the car again. Meanwhile Ramon’s friend paid us a visit again, he slept with us in the tent but apparently had left the tent somewhere early in the morning.

A real saharatent! We decided to stay in this tent to experience this.

But the Saharagelber was nearby

And another camping friend

It was a very sweet friend too, look at me, I’m cute!

Ramon was playing with the dog and we rearranged the stuff in the Benz. Then the old man was standing nearby. I offered this man 75 dirham, which is around 8 euro’s, which would seem reasonable in comparison what we’ve paid for places like this.
The man got another look, he wasn’t the silly old man anymore and said we need to pay 250DH without blushing. WHAT?!!? I told Melissa what was happening, and that we are INDEED tricked again. ‘NO FREAKING WAY!’ This man is crazy.
I threw everything in the car and told him that HE did not want to tell us a pice, that they made it all obscure by continuously saying that they did not want any money. I gave him the 75DH and told him this was it. He started to protest heavily and told us we had to wait for the owner, we had to call the owner again and tell HIM that we would not want to pay 250DH. One can sleep in a big hotel for that amount of money. I told him I am NOT calling this owner again, and that we do not care if it’s enough or not and we sure won’t wait for this owner to drop by.
So much for the nice and romantic atmosphere, this fellow knew how to ruin it. I told Ramon to get in the car and we literally threw the rest of the stuff in the car and I started it, the man god mad and screamed ‘Fuck you!’ to us.
I had enough of this guy and did not react. Melissa explained to him we would inform all travel guides about his practices. His face changed a bit, he probably understood her english.
We left the place and thought it was very disturbing, the way it often goes with the people over here. Ramon was shocked, and did see how thing sometimes work around here.

The cool combination of Sand and water, on the peninsula of Dahkla.

At the beginning of the evening we entered Mauritania. At the border we had some trouble finding out where we had to be, Three counters and it wasn’t clear where we needed to be first. This costed us some time but in the end we did all the paperwork and the car check was easy.
Now we would find out how they were in Mauritania, taking alcohol into Mauritania is forbidden and we brought sime wine with us. But at first, there was another issue, we had to drive over a very bad road to get to the border of Mauritania, in fact it’s not a road but sand and stones and it was not easy to see which track we needed to have. I paid 50 euro’s for some guy to guide us, I read in the Sahara overland that this part could be tricky because of landmines. After we arranged this with these guys who made us this offer we only drove 500 meters and there we saw the border post! No kidding! This was 50 euro’s just flushed into the toilet! How stupid could we be? A bit more investigation would have helped us enough. We approached a ilttle hut built of mud and canee, where a man was sitting inside, accompanied by his co-worker. This had to be the border post.
Inside a man was writing in a big book, wich constisted of lots of names and the registration of plates.
At this border post there was a not too cosy atmosphere, the guy inside sat there and seemed to be very arrogant, and waved us away when we did one step into his office. We did, and stood there for some time, nog knowing if he would help us or not. Melissa got grummy about his attitude but it’s best to act as if you’re not too interested either, and don’t look hurried! This always is gonna cost you money. After they were done we were called inside and then it went fast, he wrote down our names, asked about our car and if we were planning to sell it.
‘No way, I’ll never sell it’ I told them. We’re not golddiggers and we drive the car back. We could go on to the next post. There we had to pay 20 Euro’s each, I asked a receipt for that, but it indeed seemed to be right. Some friendly guys hanging around there
I brought my book with me because I expected to wait here for quite some time. It was a dutch book ‘Mijn Mercedes is niet te koop’ from Jeroen Bergeijk, they asked about the book and asked (again) if I was planning to sell it. I think from now on, I will be asked all the time

We had to arrange a vehicle insurance for Mauritanie but in fact wanted to continue to Nouackchott. We decided to take the risk and go on. Then at a control post they asked about our insurance for the vehicle, I showed him my default green insurance card where all kind of countries are listed but only with the first character. I showed it to him but he said it’s not what he meant. I played stupid and pointed at the M character, and told him ‘Mauritania’. He let us through, probably thinking ‘never mind’ and so we could go on. It was completely dark.
Sometimes the dunes around us extended on the road, and this was not too easy to see on time when you drive 100km/h on the tarred road. We discussed the fact that we were uninsured now and decided to go back, this wasn’t a real smart thing to. Also, at another checkpoint they would probably not let us through and give us a fine. So we drove back to Nouadhibou, 150kms back Well, we ended up at a nice camping which had exactly one place left. It was completely full with Renaults from people who were participating in a rally or something.
The friendly owner of Camping Baie du Levrier welcomed us and we had a pretty good place over here.

On to Mauritania

Another road image.

The rough road between Morocco and Mauritania.

A big group of Camels, just after passing the border of Mauritania

Very sandy in Mauritania too

Camels in the beginning of the evening

In the morning while having breakfast there was a Landcruiser approaching us. A real desertman stepped out of the car and warned us, there could be landmines out there he told us in french. He told us it would be better to leave.I understood those mines were only lying in the border areas. I promised Melissa it was safe, so now it turned into a tense situation. We had to go back to the road and follow our own tracks as good as possible. We did not wander around anymore and I was rethinking about where I read what and how I could have make this mistake, and was this indeed true? The thing is, this man left after he told us it would be better to leave, so there were obviously no other (bad) intentions or wanting-to-sell-carpet stuff. After we calmed down we left the place.

Our romantic place under the stars (and between the landmines).

All alone

A heavily armoured woodlouse, probably for the landmines

Rough coastline.

Transatlantic route

We only drove to Dahkla today, about 130kms. We swam in the sea, saw a big ship wreck which you sometimes see when you drive via the transatlantic coastal route. Entering Dahkla is beautiful, a very nice and strange scenery, a combination of sand dunes and sea water.
We had dinner in Dahkla, which was quite good. The personnel wasn’t to happy, but we could understand, living here pretty much sucks I guess.

I can see for miles and miles.. (The Byrds)

Another anonymous place in the Western Sahara. Well, as Morocco want people to live over here, you don’t pay any tax over here, hoping that they this way attract some people to settle over here.

There is nothing to do, a place in the middle of nowhere. After dinner we found a camping and asked if we could stay for the night.
An old man was there with a cute dog, he told us we could stay for free. I know that trick, no way! We had to know. To cut this long story short, He did not know and he wanted me to call the owner, who was not there. I called this man and asked what they would charge for us and sleepling in the nomad thent, including breakfast in the morning. After asking many times, the owner continued to say it was up to me, if I wanted to pay. I got tired of it and we hung up, all right, we pay something tomorrow and it should be all right I told Melissa.
May be it actually IS true this time, I don’t know. Meanwhile the old friendly man made us some tea, we sat in a big in a real saharan atmosphere. We decided to sleep in a real sahara tent. There was no other person around here, it’s a camping before you enter Dahkla on your right.

Colourful seaplants

Cooling off in the sahara

Afther breakfast we filled the Benz up with SVO (straight vegetable oil) and filled the car up at the gas station for 4,42 dirham per liter, something like 60 eurocents! In the evening we turned from the road and drove over the sand and through the bushes and found ourselves a nice spot in the Sahara, some 1000 meters from the road about 130km north of Dahkla. It felt great to park just somewhere in the western sahara and set up the rooftent. It was peaceful and quiet and the wind made it feel relaxed.

Camping Le Bedouin. In the middle of nowhere, and it feels just that way. One stand just on the sand and can use the shower and the toilet.

Look out for the sign in the middle of all the other signs around!

An odd road sign we don’t have in Europe

Lots of boring parts…

…and sometimes a boring place, but atmosphere it has! It feels like we’re on our own road movie.

Today we departed for the sahara, we saw some wild mules and an amount of nice birds. It was a long trip today we had already seen the big dunes. Furthermore the area consisted of great plains with stones. I found out the car was leaking motor oil today, which was strange and I hoped this would hold for the rest of the trip, I have to keep an eye of this. During the trip we did not see a lot of cars, and the cars we saw were mainly Mercedeses. Lots of W123 taxi’s but also loads of W201′s and W124′s.
That night we arrived at the camping ‘Le Bedouin’. After you see the sign ‘Le Bedouin’ you drive for about 5kms over a piste and then you arrive at the camping, there is practically nothing but sand and stones over there. It is windy and small place but very clean.
You just park on the sand and during the day you can stroll around.

The Cactus, a real die-hard able to survive in the dry sahara

Melissa being excited. Fort Bou-Jerif

Endless roads

Are we there Yet?

Bird watching

Some nice part with a small lake and greenery

The dunes, Sahara

Our favorite time of the day: cappucino with a bit of Amaretto while driving and enjoying the surrounding views.

The official beginning of the Western-Sahara

The camels

A camel with the sea in the background

Spooky..