30th May - Nouadibhou

Whilst we were driving yesterday, Nicki felt something come through the window and hit her hair, quite large. She wondered if it was a small bird, and looked around for where it had gone. As she looked across to me, I pointed out she had a very large bug tangled up in her hair. The reaction was quite interesting; she jumped up and down a lot, waved her hands around and shrieked a bit. She knocked it onto the floor, and then borrowed my shoe (I’d pulled over by then) to bat it to death. It took several stamps to dispatch it. Then she kicked it out the door.

At 5pm last night we learned that the banks all close at 5pm, and you can’t change Travellers’ Cheques unless the banks are open. So we had to change some of our dwindling cash instead. I then managed to guide a taxi across the city to the internet café we used last time, which was quite gratifying – it’s nice when you feel you know your way around a place like that!

This morning we were geared up to leave for Atar, having discussed it in great detail; we were going to go to Atar, then on to Chinguetti, and Ouadane, an area of old Saharan caravans (the type with camels, not big white sheds on wheels) and ruined desert towns. It sounded nice, and Tony’s photos of it looked great. However, we thought about it again this morning, whilst waiting outside the bank to change our travellers’ cheques, and sussed out that it was going to be at least a 1500km detour, would take several days of driving through the desert, and would cost us at least £250 in fuel, only to end up back in Nouakchott and still have to drive back across the desert to Nouadibhou. Was it worth going? Well, actually, we decided that it probably wasn’t.

So instead we hit the road to Nouadibhou, and ultimately the Moroccan border. The road is a real desert drive, albeit now tarmaced, and you see all the various different types of sand-related terrain. It’s pretty remote out there and after a while you see nothing living, not even camels or goats. Bits of it, however, have scrubby bushes clinging on to life. Given that this is only the very end bit of an absolutely huge desert, it does give an insight into what a place the Sahara actually is. I can understand why it’s not good to be lost in the middle of it, and given the heat, I can also understand why people die pretty quickly if they have to walk across it without the right preparation.

The wind was hot, so much so that we couldn’t decide whether to have it blowing through the cab, or whether it was better to shut the windows and take our chances with the heat off the engine. The cab-o-meter showed a maximum temperature of 48° inside, the highest yet, but as it was dry heat, it still didn’t feel as bad as Bassé. We both make quite amusing sweat patterns in our clothing though; it’s my back which gets hottest, whereas Nicki tends to ruin her trousers first.

Nicki didn’t have a great day. She started by spilling bissap juice all down her t-shirt and trousers, dying them a mixture of blue and red. Then she put a water bottle down and it leaked over some travellers’ cheques. Then we drove off with Nicki in the back and her cab door not shut…

I also wondered whether the truck was having a bad day. It wasn’t really going much over 45kph, which is about 10kph down on its usual top speed. I spent most of the day wondering what mechanical issue would impact the engine performance like that. But at the end of the day, we swung back south to head back down the peninsular to Nouadibhou and immediately the performance was back to its old self! Amazingly, the strong desert headwind had not only knocked 10kph off our top speed, but it bit an alarming 30% off our fuel economy too! This meant that we used nearly two tanks of fuel to go 460km, which is dismal. I hope we don’t have to contend with this wind all the way up the desert, or we’ll have to sell the truck to pay for the fuel.

Somewhere in the middle we got a bit bored of the road and drove off into the desert for a while. The sand was flat and hard so it was easy going. But within a hundred yards or so of the road, we lost sight of it, and could have been miles from anywhere. It made an interesting change, but I’m not kidding myself I’m a card-carrying desert driver yet. The desert is definitely quite visually appealing, or it is if you’re from Bucks.

In the middle of nowhere we saw a nomad ahead of us trotting across the road on a camel and disappearing off again into the middle of the desert. You have to wonder where they are coming from, and where they are going. There was also a lonely goat herder way out of civilisation. Where does he get his water? As we met the train track near the Western Sahara border, we saw once more the world’s longest train, which was quite exciting for Nicki. We also saw a lot of camels, which I suppose is to be expected.

In Nouadibhou we pulled into the Camping Baie du Lévrier, which isn’t the place we stayed last time, but seems quite pleasant and was recommended in the guide book. We went for a walk, bought an ice cream each, and tracked down some cold drinks. However, now we’re back in the desert, and not far from the sea, about an hour before the sun goes down the wind goes from very hot to quite cool, so the evening’s pretty pleasant, all things considered. We enjoyed a dinner of sautéed potatoes (from the French supermarket in Nouakchott, heaven only knows where they get spuds in the desert), tinned sausages and baked beans.

Nicki says: “To those enquiring people – you know who you are – I have now gone a lot more brown than in the photos we posted a few days ago!”