Arrival in Senegal

We knew today was going to be a busy one, so we made another early start, leaving Nouakchott at 8am. We had to drive across the town centre, but of course there were no signs. As the Lonely Planet maps are so dismal, we committed the hand-drawn map on the wall of the Auberge to memory before leaving. As it happened, we only had to stop once to ask directions. We have the laptop, of course, but the maps are 1:200,000 scale, and are about 25 years old, so the towns tend to have changed a bit.

In contrast with the road between Nouadibhou and Nouakchott, the road south to Rosso doesn’t go more than a mile without a set of huts, somebody herding goats, or people sitting around at the roadside. The shrubbery got more noticeable as we headed south, and after a while we even started to see trees of a reasonable size. I stopped for a break, pulling over to the side of the road, and rather embarrassingly, got stuck for a moment in the deep sand. I had to engage 6wd, diff lock and low ratio before I could drive out again. Had we really got stuck, we could have lowered the tyre pressures, and if that didn’t work we have sand ladders, and for really sticky situations there’s the hand winch.

We already knew to avoid Rosso, which is the easiest border to get to, but has the reputation as being the worst in Africa, and according to some people, in the world. Instead we were aiming west to Diama. Our Auberge owner had given us directions, as follows: go to Tiguent, on the Rosso road (somewhere just after the bend on the road at N17 9’ 37” W16 2’ 19”, although it’s shown on the Michelin 741 map); just after the taxi rank there’s a piste off to the right; follow that south where it joins another piste, which heads south west to Diama. As we arrived in Tiguent, we stopped at a police check, and when we said we were going to Diama, the officer told us to go to Rosso and turn right. He was quite insistent, and we wondered whether he’d radio ahead or something, so as we totally failed to spot the piste after the taxi rank, we stayed on the Rosso road, for plan B.

On the way into Rosso we stopped at a police checkpoint, which in Mauritania are fairly straightforward, but the police tend to want a “cadeau”. We normally give them a pen. We also generally turn the engine off to show we’re not in a hurry. At this one, we were waved on, minus a bar of chocolate, but as I turned the key, the engine wouldn’t start. No life at all, but there was a voltage drop, as the fan slowed down. I checked the connections behind the ignition key, as the policeman started to show renewed interest in us, and then got under the truck to check the starter motor. The exciter wire, which engages the starter solenoid, is only a crappy spade terminal, and had fallen off. First time I reconnected it, it still didn’t work (I think it was too dusty), but I got it on the second go. Thank goodness. I was beginning to curse the truck again. The truck and I are a bit like ET and Elliott; if the truck is having difficulty, it precipitates me into a bad mood.

Andy Thompson of Plymouth-Dakar fame had texted me to say: go to the petrol stations in Rosso just before the port gate, turn round, and the piste to Diama is just on the left, and it looks like somebody’s front drive. In fact, it’s between two walls, and there’s a banked area to the left and the main piste goes to the right of that, but thanks to Andy we found it first time. We couldn’t get a grid reference, because we turned the laptop off in dodgy Rosso. When we stopped for fuel at the petrol stations there, we were immediately surrounded by hustlers trying to find out what we were doing. One tried to persuade us that we needed special insurance to go to Diama – rubbish of course. So we paid up and left as quickly as we could.

The piste is a bit confusing to start with, as it does branch around a bit, but we tried to take what looked like the main branches. After a short while we came to a police checkpoint, where the policeman told us he wanted us to take two soldiers to the military checkpoint! We feigned lack of comprehension, and in the end just said no, we only have two seats, and they let us go with a shrug.

The piste was rather varied; it’s basically a sandy track which more or less follows a dyke which marks the northern edge of the river. In some places it’s heavily washboarded, but you have to be careful because there are numerous washouts and potholes to catch you out if you try to get above the resonant speed of the washboarding. So you have to concentrate pretty hard when you drive it! Andy drove it in the dark, and I don’t envy him. The northernmost branches of the track (it forks and regroups frequently) seem to be about the best to drive. We passed a P38 Range Rover coming the other way, but didn’t see much else in the way of people or animals until we got into the more lush nature reserve as we headed west, where there were a lot of birds in evidence, including storks and herons. We saw a brightly painted Renault van parked up under some trees next to a hammock, did a quick loop to check it out, and met three young French guys who were heading back north. We stopped and chatted to them for a while, in both English and French, and we took photos of their truck while they took photos of ours.

A little further we stopped next to a lake (it’s a wetlands area, but no less dusty for that) for lunch. There were a lot of fish, judging by the ripples, but we didn’t see any apart from a couple of skeletal ones on the bank. Lunch most days is bread and cheese, with fresh bread, and cheese we’ve bought at various points along the way. My blue cheese from the Moroccan French hypermarket is maturing nicely now. We run the fridge when the engine’s on, so it doesn’t get too rank, but it’s still got to the stage where Abby refuses to handle it and I have to spread it myself.

Along the whole length of the piste, which took a good couple of hours to drive, we only saw 4 or 5 other vehicles, but we were quite excited when three wild boar ran out in front of us. They were off to quickly to photograph. Shortly after lunch, we hit a pair of huge potholes, one after the other, and they’re always difficult to spot because the sun’s high, so you don’t see the shadows. At one point I think the whole truck was airborne; I hit my head on something, which is odd as the roof’s about 16 inches away from my head, and various things showered down onto us from the cubby holes in the cab. Abby shrieked a bit for good measure. We pulled up, to pick up all the loose stuff, and make sure we weren’t injured. The truck seems intact at least. I think it’s the front end which gets a bit bouncy, whereas the twin axles at the back mean the back end is quite smooth. Unfortunately I can’t sit in the back when driving.¬

Finally we reached the border crossing at Diama Barrage, but there’s no town there on the Mauritanian side. First stop was Customs, who checked our paperwork and asked us to pay €10 for the car. We paid up, because we’d paid on the way in too, and they did give us a receipt. Then we stopped at the Police building, where we woke up the policeman on duty, who was asleep on the floor, and after processing our passports he asked for… €10. How annoying. He didn’t seem to want to take no for an answer, and again, he gave a receipt, so we paid, grudgingly. With all the formalities completed, we went to leave, but the man controlling the barrier wanted 500 Ouguiya from us (just over ₤1), as a “regional tax”! There didn’t seem to be any option but to pay.

We were now logged out of Mauritania, so now to Senegal. You drive across the top of the dam, whereupon you reach a barrier. And – you guessed it – the guy wanted €20 to open the bloody barrier! By this time we were getting slightly irritated, so we sat there, in front of the barrier, and wouldn’t pay. His reasoning with us was that we were a truck, so that’s the rate for trucks. (Of course, this is all rubbish anyway.) We argued, in good humour, that we were a camping-car, so we weren’t going to pay. We sat there for a while, looking at the view, and he dropped the price to €10, which we paid, and he gave us a receipt. By this time we weren’t really sure the receipts counted for much.

So then to the Senegalese police office, again waking the policeman, who stamped our passports and asked for €20! This time I was getting quite annoyed, and he refused to give us a receipt, so we just said no. He then dropped to €10, but I wasn’t having any of it, so we stood there watching his TV. After a few minutes he told us to take our passports and leave. We were getting better!

On to Senegalese customs, who stamped the vehicle’s Carnet de Passage, which is very useful to have. If you don’t have one, they charge you a tax at their discretion; the French guys in the coloured van had waited 8 hours at the border for the price to come down to a satisfactory amount. You’ll no doubt not be surprised to know he wanted €10 for stamping the Carnet. We didn’t pay, we stood around in silence, and in the end he let us go. So we were feeling a little redeemed now.

Before leaving the border you need to buy insurance, from a lady in the café. I’d say she pretty much has a monopoly there, as she’s the only person selling insurance, and you can’t drive in Senegal without it. The border is open 24 hours, but the woman goes home at 6pm, so you have to go to her house if you arrive after then. We were quoted €51 for 1 month’s insurance for Senegal, and €76 for 3 months covering all the ECOWAS countries in West Africa, which is all the ones we’re going to. Now, here you’re taking a bit of a chance; what happens if you get to Sierra Leone and they say the insurance isn’t accepted there? But after studying the paperwork, it looked OK, so we tried to negotiate the price down. But the woman wasn’t budging at all on the price, not surprising as I’m sure she knows she has you in a no-win situation. We paid up and got the documentation.

As there was nowhere in Mauritanian Diama to refuel, we had enough Mauritanian cash to pay for a fill-up, ie quite a bit. The woman pointed out that Mauritanian currency is a law unto itself, and we wouldn’t be able to change it anywhere else, apart from on the border or the black market. This could have been a scam, but actually I think she was probably right. So we changed our money with her, which wasn’t ideal as I’m sure we got a lousy rate, but what choice did we have? If we’d known there was no fuel past Rosso, we’d have got less Ouguiya changed yesterday.

This time we managed to get through the bloody barrier without having to pay anybody, so welcome to Senegal! Straight away we were on a large, newly tarmaced road. The Senegalese were wearing a higher proportion of Western dress than the Mauritanians, and of course they’re nearly all Black Africans, not Moors. In addition, the country is straightaway much greener and more lush than even the southern border of Mauritania. We started getting waves from whole groups of children, not just individuals, and even some adults. I think the Senegalese like our colour scheme.

Before we had got more than 10km, we were stopped by a policeman, who wanted to see our vehicle registration; our Carnet de Passage; our insurance; check we had hazard warning triangles (we do); check our brake lights and indicators (they worked); check our fire extinguisher (we have one). I’d heard that the police around St Louis are desperately keen to find something amiss to fine you for, and the fines they aim to levy are quite high. Andy had been done for €100 for either driving the wrong way down a one-way street, or having a faulty light, or perhaps it was both. We got away, but about 2 minutes later went through the same rigmarole, except this guy even wanted to know if I had the right inoculations! He was obviously quite disappointed not to catch us out. By the time we got to the third guy, about 3km down the road, we knew the drill. He wanted to see inside our lockers, but after a while got bored and let us go. I hope it’s not like this through the whole country.

St Louis is not far from the border, only about 30km, and is apparently quite interesting, so we headed there to camp. The city is built on an island in an inlet, so you drive from the mainland to the island, which is only a couple of hundred yards wide, then straight back onto the mainland again. We managed this without getting stopped by the police, which was a result. We then found ourselves driving down a dirt track through a bustling town area, trying to miss the goats, children, taxis, donkey carts and potholes. Just south of there we arrived at the Ocean Camping, and from where we are parked, I could throw a tennis ball into the Atlantic or the inlet of St Louis on opposite sides of us, at least I could if I wasn’t a lousy thrower.

The truck is absolutely full of dust, seemingly almost inch-thick in places, which Abby’s been trying to clear out. We’ve just found out the truck is the backdrop to the evening’s entertainment, which is a Senegalese drum band, who are on the loud side! We could sit on the roof if it weren’t so dusty.