Folow the car!

As you all probably guessed, we're back in Europe now, and hard at work!

I know, it sucks (but not as much as sitting on the Guinea-Bissau / Senegal border ;)). I'm hard at work at putting the "book" together - comprising of the posts on this blog, and additional commentary and pictures - shouldn't take me much more than... uhh... I don't know, a while. It will be funny though. I think.
Oh, and I have a great dash-cam video of the rock desert... Just need to edit it :) Watch this space!

The car is still on the way back from Africa. And I think he's having great fun - by now, he has seen such lovely places as Nigeria and Ghana - and it about to visit the Ivory Coast... I'm ever so slightly concerned about what state it will be in when it arrives, how many illegal immigrants will have nested in it, and the kilos of illegal drugs that will be hidden away in it, but, let's see.

If you want to follow his trek, here you go:
http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/shipdetails.aspx?mmsi=247310000

Click on the Latitude/Longitude to see where it currently is :)

Photos, part 1:

This might work for you.

It should, anyway.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151463889641023.534944.678246022&type=1

Dakar.

Aaaah, Dakar. The fabled party-town of West Africa, the home of the Paris-Dakar rally and one of the largest cities in the region.

Surprisingly, not a dump (for values of West Africa).

As we got off the boat, the only thing we could process was a shower. The hotel not being far, it was our first stop.
At this point in time, I need to spend some time on mentioning the hotel situation in the region. They seem to get stars based on the amount of bribes they give to the inspectors (if such a thing exists anyway), and reality seems to bear very little resemblance to the pictures that they post on the Internet. Say, our hotel out here - http://www.hotel-faidherbe.com/ - 3* you say? Sure. One of them is a brown dwarf, the other a late-stage G5 sun on the brink of collapse, and the third one is a little confused and isn't quite sure if it's a star, a planet or perhaps a unicorn.

Unfortunately, this managed to escape the astronomers working reception, because the walk-in rate for a room starts at 75 EUR. :) BUT! It's clean, it has a pool and air-conditioning, and that's really all that we cared about at that point in time.

Oh, and they washed our car! I didn't remember it was actually dark browny in reality, I thought it was "red dust".

Having done what was REALLY needed and feeling quite perky, we bounced off to the shipping agent to get the car processed - only to find out that we needed several wads ("wad" - take 10 of the largest banknotes of the country, put 9 of them together, wrap the 10th one around them and staple them together) of local money as they don't take Euros. Uhhh... Ok, let's do the paperwork today, and pay and do the customs tomorrow - we have plenty of time.

While the LandRover teams went through the process (and got on the plane at the end of the day - there's something to be said for working for an Airline and being able to travel on "stand-by" tickets), we went in search of a cash machine/exchange office. After getting into the most decrepit taxy in town (and that's a competition!), driven by a man who must have failed kindergarten several times and had about as much sense of direction as a drunk chicken, we managed to find a shady guy to convert the rest of our Mauritanian Puffins (Ouiga...something in reality) at a horribly bad rate, and a few hundred EUR (at the normal rate) into several wads of CFA Francs. Thus equipped with funds, the logical next step was to spend some on souvenirs.

Now... You know how you're supposed to bargain? Well, I have no issue with that, and in most cases I do (I like to think so at least) reasonably well for a tourist, but some people our here apparently think that insanity is the order of the day, and start with what I can only assume is their annual income - and THAT pisses me off. 180 EUR for two small glass paintings? Oh Puh-lease brotha, you paid like 5000 CFA for one when you bought them!
We got what we wanted in the end, including a very nice 3-giraffe family, henceforth to be known as "Belinni", "Mimosa" and "Mai Tai". You'll get to see them (we hope) once they arrive with the car into Genoa on the 15th of March, or thereabouts.

Now, to close out this second-to-last live installment, I do need to make a recommendation. If you ever find yourselves in Dakar (which, with the soon-to-open Kempinski and Intercontinental resorts is not an impossible proposition, even for us), you simply MUST go to Chez Loutcha, preferably in a large, very hungry group and several times. It's simply magnificent food.


Now, next steps: One more "live" entry - "Car goes on the boat, we go on a plane", then we start adding the pictures.
And after all that is done... We'll take the stories from the blog, add pictures to them, add some 3rd party content from one of the other teams - and put out a nice .pfd file titled:

"Budapest-Bamako (Destination Bissau) or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Border controls" - an "Idiots guide for Offroading" for and by people that should not be Offroading."

Catchy, right?

The vomit boat

10th February

The border opens at 8am, and we're the first car to reach it.
We get cleared into Senegal in 10 minutes, or, in African physics terms, the Senegalese border controls actually manage to exceed the speed of light.

Even the "Pass Avant" - the Senegalese customs form - gets written up for 10 days, so that we'll definitely have enough time to get the car onto the boat, with only a minimum of prompting. I have the 20 EUR it cost us at Rosso prepared, and would be happy with twice that much, as we got an extended permit.
He asks for 5000 CFA, or about 8 EUR.

Huh. So, the "helpful ladies" that "organized" and "expedited" the entry process by and for the rally when entering Senegal (read: 5h vs 10 minutes) took a... 100+% commission?

Nice. Let's not use them next year.

It's 8.15am, and we're 8km from Ziguinchor where a twice-weekly ferry leaving at 3pm but boarding cars until 1.30 can take us clear around Gambia and the killer roads into Dakar overnight.

We WILL be on it.

Of course, first we need to change some money on a Sunday - when banks are closed, and the ATMs that are inside the branches can't be accessed, and a nice gentleman offers us 39000 CFA for 100 EUR.

Do I look like I'm fresh off the boat? (I can't possibly, I smell bad, my hair is all over the place, and my clothes are a uniform savannah sand color). 65000 is the official rate, I'd have taken 60000, but your opening bid is an insult.

A nice dockworker (more flashlights given away) gets us the normal exchange rate in a different shop, we pay the ferry fees and get on the boat. Of course, they find tear gas on Mojca, which doesn't make them very happy (CS spray requiring a license in Senegal - who knew?), and then... Then they find my tear gas, the dagger around my neck and my swiss army knife. They promptly get confiscated until Dakar (I thought I'd never see them again, but I got them back!), and two flashlights solve the "fine for tear gas" problem - but they do take it away from us.

Having said that, the SECOND cans of tear gas in the backpacks get through the same checkpoint untouched, and the Swiss knife Mojca has goes past them unnoticed. Magnificent security you have going on here guys.

At this time (call it noon), the Slovenian Land Rovers call they also managed to reach the border, that the border cop is rather upset we got away from him, and that he's giving them the exact same spiel. Fortunately...

They make the ferry 2 hours later, with minutes to spare. They had no idea why they were suddenly let through, but I call the foreign ministry anyway, and let them know we're all out! Yay!

MEANWHILE IN BISSAU

By this point in time, all the cars - even the ones with no intention of selling - in Bissau have gotten impounded by the military on orders from the government for failure to pay a tax invented on the 3rd of February. Which is also the reason why we probably had issues with getting out of the country. The fact that we had our "Q1 temporary import duty permit" stamped, sealed and approved was, of course, beside the point.


Back in Ziguinchor, as the ferry departs, we notice a large number of black bags tied all over the place. After about 4 hours (call it 7pm), their utility becomes clear. By 10pm, 95% of the africans on the boat are projectile vomiting all over the place. (We really should have recorded it.)
There are people trying to do their evening prayers with a plastic bag in front of them. The doctor keeps getting paged, and motion sickness pills are being handed out like candy. The lady in the row in front of us has her head in a garbage can.

Then we hit some rough seas.

The 6 of us have a beer, some dinner and try to go to sleep, with the sounds of retching around us to calm us while the boat rocks us to sleep. Funnily enough, none of the whiteys (including a gaggle of actual Hippies we share the boat with) seem to be sick.

We hit Dakar two hours late at 8am, and depart the boat (by this time smelling - and looking - like a kindergarden on stomach flu week) for the fresh, or at least non-stomach-acid scented air of Dakar, and go in search of the hotel, before finding the shipping company.

Deliverance

(To the background music of a guy playing a banjo)



It's 7.30pm on the 9th of February. The border is closed (which doesn't stop half the population crossing it anyway on foot, bikes and scooters), I haven't showered in 3 days, and 3ply toilet paper is nice, but I'm not a bear. In short, I'm a slightly annoyed individual at this point in time.

But, wait!

The boss cop leaves, but not before casting a killer look at us. Then two cops we haven't seen before appear out of the darkness and demand our passports.

Okay, that's it. We're going to jail.

They reappear in 10 minutes, passports stamped and open the barrier.

Uhhh... Wait, what?

"Just go, fast, so no one see you."

They didn't have to tell us twice.

The Gendarmerie checkpoint is already closed, but they stamp us and let us through anyway, and tell us to just explain to the Senegalese that we were delayed.

Which would be OK, if there was still anyone there, except a very, VERY armed bunch of folks that tell us to go back, it's not safe, and why are we driving through a mine field at night.

Right, new problem. We can't go into Senegal, we are NOT NOT NOT EVER going back into Guinea Bissau, and we can't camp because being reunited with our ancestors courtesy of a land mine is not particularly high on the to-do list for the evening.

But we can't stay on the Senegalese side because we're not even allowed to keep the lights of the car on.

We go back to the Bissauian Gendarmerie checkpoint (fortunately out of sight of the cops) and ask them in broke french-spanish-portugese if we might possibly be allowed to spend the night next to the post.

Oh, no, no! Here, drive in to the back yard, it's safer and off the road! (This all being explained with waving arms as we didn't have any overlaps in our language knowledge).
Wait, what? You're... Nice?

About 15 minutes after we park in the yard between the border post and the house the 3 gendarmes live in, and just as we're contemplating dinner, they come and ask us to join THEM for dinner.

Uhhh... Did we cross the twilight zone boundary as well? Who are these people!?

Dinner consists of the main course (fish stew with Baguettes) provided by the Gendarmes and Coke and cookies provided by us. They share their baguettes (they had 3) and their spoons (likewise, exactly 3) with us - and we're overwhelmed. They're the nicest bunch of people we met so far. We give them a few of the good flashlights, so they don't need to always share the one they have - and we crawl into the car to spend the night. You can hear the carnival in the distance, and people (and god knows what else) crossing the border in the background.

It is now 11pm. We've been at the border for 11 hours.

Diplomatic affairs

9th February:

By default, any African border, even on a good day, is an exercise in random checks, useless paperwork and uncontrolled chaos - and Petit Cadeaux.

First, we passed Customs, where they took down the details of our car. All nice and well. Then, the Police - at this point in time, it's just before noon. Where everything was going OK until they saw the rally stickers.

"Not allowed to pass, have to go back to Bissau." Says the cop.

Uhhh.... Why?

"Call from big boss in immigration, all cars must go to Bissau."

But we don't want to go to Bissau, we need to get to Dakar within 36 hours and there is 600km on a bad road ahead of us. And 2 more borders if we take the trans-Gambian route.

"No, go to Bissau, immigration call, no cars can go."

Right. Okay. This is odd.

So we phone up the organizer, who has no idea what we're on about. But he says he'll check. The Capo comes out of the station, and tells us we need to leave. A loud discussion ensues where I explain to him that I am an EU citizen with all the proper documentation wanting to leave the country, and that we will camp out in front of the station until we are let across. "No, no camp, go back to Bissau!"

Yeah, of course. That's not happening.

This, or variations of this goes on for 2 hours. I call our organizer, he calls the government, they say there's no problem, cop at border says that Immigration called and we're not allowed to go, won't speak to the - I kid you not - the Secretary of State of Guinea Bissau who was at the opening of Carnival with the rest of the cars - and won't give me the name and number of the person that called them.

It wasn 't a border crossing, it was a Dali painting from his batshit-crazy years (true, that's most of them...)

And then, just as I thought that the 100 EUR bribe offer was maybe too low (what if Daddy needed a new wife!?), the other Slovenian teams call, and say they weren't allowed to cross either at the same border crossing we entered through yesterday, because immigration called that no one is allowed to leave.

Oh, now we're fucked. Andrew (our organizer), help! Bigger problem. Fix it. Please. We just want to leave. Everyone in Bissau is still saying there's no issue, border cop-man is still casting evil eyes at us as we sit on camp chairs outside car and I drink a beer.

Time to start calling the embassies.
The Portuguese embassy which is supposed to be responsible for EU citizens in G-B does not pick up the phone (it being Saturday, there's no way there could be a diplomatic problem in a 3rd world banana republic, right?).
The French embassy only speaks French (who would've thought that our highschool French would come so handy during this trip?), and gives us the number of the Honorary Consul of G-B in Slovenia. Which we already called, but because it's Saturday, he's not picking up. And neither are the Spanish.

Well, okay, now what?

The Dutch embassy in Senegal does pick up, and the nicest lady ever calls up their guy in G-B, and tries to check of there's a problem.

Then, I call our foreign ministry.

"Are you trying to tell me that they won't let an EU citizen leave - leave! - the country?" was the repeating question from both the Dutch and ours. With only a slight nudge - aka., call a friend of a friend who is the head of the diplomatic service - it sometimes pays to live in a small country - the Slovenians started trying to see what was going on.

"Move car, go to Bissau!" guy comes around again.

Nope. Not on your life. 200km over medium- bad roads (but gorgeous country and scenery!) to someplace where I won't be able to leave for a few days? Gee, thanks. We have MREs, pate, wine, cookies, processed cheese, energy bars and the emergency stash of scotch. We're ok for a week or so.

Meanwhile, the other Slovenians make it to Bissau, and we agree to meet at the border in the morning.

It is now almost 7pm. We're still at the border, I'm out of beer, we have no idea what is going on, the phone bill will be the size of the GDP of the country we're stuck in, we need to get to Dakar to get the car on the boat for Europe, the road to Dakar is a giant pothole with some asphalt around it, there's two more borders and a country for which we need to blag a visa and, joy of joys, the border is closing.

What else can go wrong?

Border of Infinity.

The river road from Canjufa eventually deposited us on what would be a not-too-well maintained country road (A motorway for local interpretations) which lead to Bissau. One of the teams in front of us had some donations left, but after the experiences of the night before, their way of donating them was:

1) Park on opposite side of road from village.
2) Run to the back of the car, get donation bag.
3) Run across road to deposit bag.
4) Run back to car before the fight starts.
5) Drive away as quickly as possible.

It was both incredibly sad and horrifyingly fascinating. There might be a video of it somewhere, we'll see.

From there on, we had spectacular scenery, friendly people (a total opposite of the day before), and a reasonable traveling speed that got us to the point about 30km from Bissau where the convoy to enter the city was forming.

Only, see, we didn't want to go into Bissau - it's carnival season, and we were told that the city shuts down for the carnival at 3pm - until next Wednesday. With us having to be in Dakar by 11th in the am, we didn't much fancy being stuck there, as we had 600km and the Bissau-Senegal, Senegal-Gambia and Gambia-Senegal borders before us. But, we weren't allowed to turn around.
Huh. Okay.

With me not taking "have to go to Bissau" for an answer, I got escorted to the local Chief of Police, with whom I had a lovely conversation in... Czech. He studied in Prague back in the bad old days.

"You have to go that way, but turn around at the next roundabout and come back" was the final outcome of the chat, and having done that, we reached the Guinea-Bissau/Senegal border in about two hours. (About 12.30 local time).

It all went downhill from there. We shall pick up from this point in time in the next post.

The wrong turn

Friday, 8th Feb


I realized I'm actually further along than I thought - we covered the "Highway to hell" and the nature park stops from Tamba, which means it's now time to address the crossing into Banana Republic, excuse me, Guinea Bissau - and the local rendition of the Hunger Games (if you didn't read the books, go see the movie).

Leaving Tambacounda on a reasonable road to start with (and a "not too bad a road by African standards" road just before the border), we came to the Senegal Guinea Bissau border, where the little verm... damn it, adorable little darlings, whose only words of French are "Petit Cadeau" (*Little Gift, normally a pen or small flashlight/box of cigarettes, but can go up to your watch/shoes/car), were out in force. The one, and only one Gendarme manning the exit point spoke magnificent American (as we're moving to the UK, I am no longer allowed to call it English), and we got past his Cadeaux requirements - though he was nice enough he'd get one anyway - with a flashlight.

(Movie note: Cue fast, terror inducing music, like the one just before the zombies attack)

Guinea Bissau.

We first started thinking that it might be an issue when the biggest "Maman" I have seen so far was sitting in the "Police" shack with an "El Paso, Texas PD" hat was shouting at the top of her lungs "Cadeau, cadeau, cadeau" every 30 seconds. She took down the car details, one of her cronies copied the information from the passports into a book, and crony 3 checked the passport - and did't return it until he got a gift. One of the guys had to give him the sun glasses he was wearing, because, that seems to be the going tax rate for entering Guinea Bissau this week. A quick stop at the other shack, and 5000 CFA later you had an import permit for Q1 2013 done (this will be relevant later).

So, in about 2h on average, we were on the way to the village of Canjufa over what can be best described as a dry riverbed that someone decided to call a road, because that's just the kind of twisted person he is. The feral children lining bits of the "road" next to their villages tried to jump under the car to make you stop, swarmed at every opportunity, threw rocks if you didn't stop, and pounded on the windows. It was wonderful, and if I ever meet the whitey who first started giving out gifts for no apparent reason in Africa, he's not going to have a good time.

So, Canjufa. Where we offloaded the donations we brought onto the waiting pick-up truck, guarded by boys with sticks in orange shirts. And a goodly pile of donations it was. The fact that it had to be guarded should have gotten my alarm bells ringing.

Apparently, the pile was found lacking. Things started disappearing from camp. Then a scuffle broke out when one of the bags fell off of a pickup truck. A few folks started demanding that we share dinner (uhhh, David doesn't share his food), give them more gifts / our watches / shoes, etc. - in short, it wasn't pleasant. We locked up the car and crawled into the tent with Hungarian pop music as the lullaby - for the Hungarians: Hungo techno pop, accompanied on the drums live by Pako Fekete.

Yeah. ;)

And that was just the evening. As we were packing up the next morning, more things vanished (none of our stuff), and the Hunger Games-like fights over the empty plastic bottles started. They only got worse as some of the teams that came in late tried to give out their donations on their own, and one of the Slovenian teams that was leaving among the last had to stand guard over their camping kit with a machete while they were packing up.

In short, the rally should give Canjufa a wide berth next year. Like about a country away.

Hello again!

Quick update - with day-by-day ones to come later:

1) We, Landy 2 and Landy 1 are out of Guinea Bissau and in Dakar, arranging to get the cars shipped,

2) As of this morning, about 50 cars are still impounded and under military guard in Bissau for failure to pay some half-invented quasi-tax no one ever even heard of until the 9th of February - and we have no idea if the convoy back was allowed to leave,

3) We spent a day on an empty border (where we caused a medium-sized international incident), spent the night in some Gendarmes back yard at the same border after going through a mine field, spent another night in "The Vomit boat", aka the Ziguinchor to Dakar ferry, and were spectators in what can only be the West African version of the "Hunger games", which is, let me tell you, no fun at all.


So, watch this space for the next chapter in the exciting saga of "The Budapest Bamako rally by two people who should really stick to 5* hotels that are NOT in West Africa", to be titled "The Road to Hell", which shall then be followed by "Rhinos, Monkeys and Cocks", then by "Did I take a wrong turn by the Baobab and entered the Hunger Games", and also "Border of infinity, or how I spent 1000 EUR on calling my government", "Deliverance and the Boat that Rocked" and finally, "OH-MY-GOD-WE'RE-IN-DAKAR-THANK-YOU-JESUS-BUDDHA-AND-ALLAH".

At least one of those should be up later today. I think. If I manage to repack the car fast enough. ;)

Internet again!

Dear reader.

As you left the protagonists of this story, we had just entered Senegal over what I can only hope is the worst border crossing in the world. First, you wait for hours to do the Mauritanian paperwork, then you wait for the ferry (FERRY! What's wrong with bridges!!!), and then... then you get caught in the space with no time (especially if you're the guy sorting the car import papers) - but that appears to be most of Senegal.

Having gotten out (we left Nouakchott at 8am, and arrived at Richard Toll at 9pm, having hit the border at 12.30 :S) of Richard Toll yesterday, we entered Senegal. Which is - amazing. It's pretty, it's friendly and it's a generaly nice place to be in.
If they would only spend ever so slightly less money on Mosques, and put some of that into roads, THEN it would be incredible. I refer specifically to the "N1" Motorway (if you're looking at a map, that's the one from the Mauritanian border down to Mali) - and I use motorway in the broadest possible sense, meaning: road on which motor vehicles may travel.

Of course, goats, cows, locals on top of trucks, donkey carts and assorted other modes of transport may use it as well, at any time, without any indication. But that's OK, we're in Africa. The only slight problem is that... well, the first 30cm deep and 2m wide pothole you see, you go "meh, so what". The second one gets you worried, and by the 192nd, you just don't care anymore. Average movnig speed according to the GPS? 45.2kph. It gave us plenty of time to see the country, and enjoy a night on the savannah though - we didn't dare drive after 7pm anymore. If we'd have missed a cavern, sorry, hole... ouch. So, we spent a night surrounded by cows and goats, in the car. We weren't... happy with the defensibility of the tent, just in case a wild stampede suddenly occurred! ;)

After a reasonable (for Economy class airplane levels of reasonable) nap, we started off at 7.30 in the direction of Tambacunda, and about 50km on from our overnight camp... The Heavens opened up and a proper tarmac road with only the occasional deviation and pothole appeared. It was... magnificent. Baobab trees everywhere, the savannah as far as the eye could see... It's a pretty place.

Having decided not to go to the official camp tonight (along with about 50% of the other teams), what we did instead is go to the national park and took a little ride on the river Gambia - and let me tell you, Hippos are huge scary ba*tards.

Tonight, Tambacunda. Tomorrow, the last village for donations (though we plan to find a random place on the road and give them some of our stuff as well), the evening party - and then, Bissau, where we stay for one night before turning around and going up to Dakar.

You see, I just can't take 9000 more kilometers, so the car is going for a cruise on the 15th (arriving in Genoa, 10th March or so), and we are flying home!

More to come.



P.S.: If I don't manage to do it here - anyone know if there's anywhere in Budapest where I could exchange Moroccan Dhirams and Mauritanian Puffins (real name unpronounceable) for a more generally accepted currency?

P.P.S.: This is what the Senegalese roads do to you - TeamMalta had a major "sudden cessation of forward movement" - they're mostly OK, scrapes, bruises and a broken arm, but... Well, see for yourself:

Senegal time!

Senegaaaaal!

Oh. My. God.

Can I go BACK to the Morocco-Mauritanian border? I knew Rosso crossing between Mauritania and Senegal was a problem, but, 8 hours? Really?

On the bright side, we did get a return visa to Mauritania for 60 EUR (Andrew G. Szabo, I expect a refund, BTW), took 4 hours to get to the Senegal side, and then... Then confusion broke out. The car wasn't on the list, the Vermin were out in force, and the customs officers last gave a damn around the time Mohammad (PBUH) walked the earth. It was, if that's possible, even more surreal that the No Mans Land.

So, we're now in Richard Toll, Senegal, just had a nice dinner and are about to enjoy a bed in a mosquito-infested hotel - but at least there are showers :) More to come. Be nice.

And they have beer. Finally.

Monday

So, while I ranted about the city yesterday, that didn't stop us from taking our driver/bodyguard out today for a trip around town to try an buy some souvenirs. Needless to say, we found a painting we liked in the 2nd shop, and then promptly requested an extraction from the location, due to the fact that the entire street picked up on the fact that some tourists were in town.
Then, we went off in search of the Mos Eisley Cantine, and I am happy to say we found it, and are going there for dinner. We shall of course provide photos once we're out of the country.

Tomorrow, the whole caravan has only one mission - get into Senegal. We (and a few others) have an extra set of hiccups though - we need a return visa to Mauritania (the one that is "taken care of"), and to figure a way around Senegalese customs that will allow us to "temporarily import" a car older than 5 years.

Having seen some of the death traps that drive around here, I kind of understand where that requirement came from. I hope that the whole "Oh, it's a white man" thing that served us well this far will continue to work :)

Ah well, nap time. It's great having a day where you can just sit (well, lie) back and do nothing.

Shabbath + Day of the Lord:

Disclaimer: This post contains strong language, radical political opinions and some socially unacceptable comments. It is to be considered PG-MA and not read if you're a bleeding heart tree-hugging liberal that thinks everyone is equal, a nice person and that we should have more trees, and war is always a bad thing.

And now... OH MY GOD WHAT A FUCKING DUMP.

Let me start with the border crossing. We arrived at the Moroccan side where we had our passports stamped, our car sent through customs - whose only interest was "You have cigarette and pen for me?" (this took two hours by the way), had our insurance checked, and then...

Then we entered a gated part of the border, where we had to go stand in another line where a Gendarme put our names into a big leather-covered book, along with the car details. It all looked very final.

(In the movie version of this: CUE OMNIOUS MUSIC)

The gates of hell opened, and we drove into the 7km stretch of "UN Supervised" (for values where supervised means "not give a fuck") No Mans Land buffer zone between Morocco and Mauritnia. There is no law here, just hordes of people (stuck, or there on purpose), more cars in various states of repair than I have ever seen, dead donkeys and looted car chassis, landmines and no road.
There are tire tracks over rock and sand that one really should follow, as the whole place is mined to hell. We - fortunately - got across without a problem, but Team RoadHogg got stuck in the sand and had to be pulled out by the residents of this place for the small sum of 40 EUR.

No matter, that's a fair price to pay to get out of there.

It's... Bad. As Obi-Wan put it in Star Wars 4, it is a "wretched hive of scum and villainy." What it needs is a nice low-altitude airburst from a fuel-air bomb. Preferably two, followed by some Chlorine gas just to be sure.


The Mauritanian border was rather easy (the Rally had an official "expediter", so we only needed 2 more hours to get in. A swift 100km drive through nothing at all, and we were at the camp, where 8 Mauiritanian army jeeps with 50.cal machineguns and about 50 troops were already waiting.
It wa actually rather good - everyone was having fun and certain liquid substances which are technically not allowed in Mauritania were mysteriously found to have been stowed away in most of the cars by some unknown force (right next to the plastic bags, which are also illegal). Well, at least we had a reasonable nap until 4am, when the wind decided that it would be nifty to see if he can blow away the camp.

Fortunately, his plan was foiled by us waking up and packing the parachutes, excuse me, tents, and learning at the morning briefing that "return visa solved, will be at next border, but have to pay extra" - to the sound of general complaint and some sighs of resignation.


And then, we dropped off the face of the planet and entered the African rendition of the post-apocalyptic world of Mad Max.

There is NOTHING in the country of Mauritania. Nothing. As in totally, utterly fucking nothing. There's sand, there are a few donkeys and camels, and the odd checkpoint or dozen, but nothing else that would enable me to understand how people would even manage sustenance farming, much less what else they could do, except export sand and... um, no, that's it. So, here we are, 5th poorest country in the world.

And once you get into the city, you decide that the desert is actually a lovely place to be in, full of opportunity and joy, and that you need to get back to it as quickly as humany possible.

Imagine a herd (flock? tribe? gaggle?) of nomadic arab-black-peoples decided that they're going to put up permanent brick-tents in a random spot in the middle of  the desert and then proceeded to invite their closest million relatives to join them and just randomly put up tents, buildings, junkyards, garbage dumps, cemeteries and a few dozen mosques.
What they missed were a few little details, for instance, a power grid or a sewer system, and any form of public utilities that don't involve a shady guy in the street. Or that the desert might actually not like this idea all that much and will do her best to drown everyone in sand (if the garbage doesn't get them first).


It's surreal. Surreal to the point where my boots now smell like rotting fish, we had 6 people in a Mitsubishi Carisma and we drove around the random collection of shacks while people tried to kill us with their cars. Hotel 1 was... well, a shithole, Hotel 2 was occupied by some Hungarians that got there before us, so now we're in Hotel 3, which is *cough* a 4* hotel (read: 1.75 on a good day)... It does have bright points - it's within a swift dash to the embassy compound and a short drive to the French Embassy fort, it has hot running water and sheets that were washed this side of the birth of Jesus, and, most importantly, it smells like bleach! That would normally be suboptimal, but out here, it is the sweet smell of disinfection. (I also have a spare bottle of bleach with me, just in case they run out BTW.)

In short (stretching the Star Wars analogy), it's a super sized Mos Eisley, to the point where all it's missing is the Mos Eisley Cantina. I have high hopes of finding it tomorrow, and by god, I will shoot first too. The city is basically an extension of the No Mans Land... Or at least that's my impression. I can't make any sense of how things work here, and laws and regulations seem to be "do what ever the f*ck you want".

So, tomorrow, we go with the the taxi driver/policeman around to see of there are any souvenirs worth looking at, and then we will go back and barricade ourselves in the room until it's time to leave this shi*ho...sorry, magnificent country that would probably do best if it asks France (if needed, on their knees) if they pretty please with sand on top would accept them back as an overseas Protectorate, and assign the Foreign Legion to just shoot the hell out of a large chunk of the population.

Following the current bright example of Mali, that might not be a bad idea, to be honest. It can't be worse. If France says no, ask Italy. hell, beg Greece. Turkey. Kosovo.

ANYONE.


Wait until you see the pictures.

Friday...

Leaving Morocco.

Tomorrow, we depart to lands unknown - the Islamic Republic of Mauritania. We are currently camping in what we affectionately call "The Circus Tent" at a hot spring about 40km out of Dakhla. It was a truly non-memorable day, spent on tarmac roads trying to catch up with the rest. Best part of the day was when we started seeing Bamako cars on the road again :) Oh, and driving 120kp/h through the completely empty road in the Sahara. Yeah, that was cool.

Oh, and I hit something ("something" - a local motorcycle/pickup thing which parked waaaay too close in the two minutes I went to the ATM in) with the back of the car. Another thing to add to the list of things that need fixing when we get back - which now comprises of a new set of bumpers, front windscreen, a new exhaust and some bodywork courtesy of the rock desert ;)

Catch you when we can!

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Bamako
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