1st June - Dakhla

After yesterday’s hedonistic start we set the alarm for 8am. While I filled the truck up with fuel, Nicki went and bought some fresh bread, which she then made into tuna & mayonnaise sandwiches, wrapped in clingfilm and put in the fridge. Forward thinking eh?

From Nouadibhou we set off north to the Western Sahara border, about an hour away. At the first post we came to, Customs, the officers asked if we would take a passenger: a French woman who was hitch-hiking north to Casablanca. I wasn’t sure at first, but started talking to her and agreed to take her. As it happens, this was a good plan, as Rosalyn was great at charming all the police and customs people – she had them eating out of her hand in no time. So leaving Mauritania was totally hassle-free, not that it’s a particularly bad border, and entering Western Sahara was equally jovial. The normally businesslike officials were laughing and joking with us like old friends. Somehow we nearly missed the police stamp-your-passport office when we entered Western Sahara (I think they were on tea break when we first passed it) so nearly left without getting our passports stamped, but it all worked out fine in the end.

As you will have guessed by now, we drove across No Man’s Land without hitting any mines, although again we saw the two little communities of refugees stuck out there. Strangely, although they have no water, no food and nowhere to live, they do seem to have quite nice cars. Driving up the Atlantic road towards Dakhla was quite frustrating, as again, we had a strong headwind, which pretty much capped our top speed at 40mph. As you can imagine, driving several hundred miles through monotonous desert at 40mph does get on your nerves after a while. At least it was relatively cool today, with the wind blowing in off the Atlantic, rather than off the desert. I watched the fuel gauge plummeting with gloom.

Our pre-prepared lunch was delicious, although we somewhat ruefully shared it with Rosalyn. Nicki commented, why couldn’t we have had a passenger on one of the days when we were eating stale bread with dry tuna?!

In the afternoon, it started to get a bit fumey in the cab, and I suspected the exhaust downpipe joint was blowing, which turned out to be correct upon inspection. I’ll slap some more exhaust putty in it, and try to wire it up (I’ll need to buy some wire first) to limit how much it moves around. We’ve picked up various squeaks and rattles en route, including my side of the windscreen developing a tendency to creak as if it’s about to break. I think all that’s happened is that the putty has turned to liquid and leaked away.

The road splits where the Dakhla peninsular branches off to the left and the main road north follows right. We dropped off our passenger here, and each got 4 kisses on two cheeks, so the farewell took quite a while, especially when Rosalyn ran after her empty plastic bag which had blown away, and trotted most of the way back to Mauritania before she caught up with it.
Tony from Gambia had given us the GPS waypoint of a bush camp just outside Dakhla, which we found without any great difficulty. (If anybody wants to find it, it’s at N23° 50’ 6" W15° 51’ 58".) The sandy plain drops off to the sea at the side of the road, and at one point there’s a little cove which is full of green sea-grasses. It’s sheltered from the wind, and has a nice little beach, so it’s a nice place to call home for a night or two. Just back up the road we saw a whole squadron of kite-surfers, which is quite a surprise for the depths of Western Sahara.

As our food has tended to revolve around tuna, baked beans and fried potato for several days now, we have cracked into our Wayfarer rations, resulting in pleasant vegetable curry for dinner, which will shortly be followed by a steamed chocolate sponge pudding.