Gateway to the Sahara

In Guelmin, the "Gateway to the Sahara", we suffered our first (and hopefully last) scam. We had committed the first sin of seasoned travelers - being lost and showing it. A man on a motorbike stopped and asked if he could help us, we told him we were looking for southern highway, he said 'no problem follow me'. He was true to his word and he got us onto the right road. Coincidently, his garage was just there so he invited us in to take tea. He said that was actually Mauritanian and travelled there regularly so he had lots of tips to offer us. After telling us where all the petrol and water stops were, he said the most important thing to know about mauritania was that you couldn't buy tea and that inorder to bride police and border guards, tea was better than money. OK, since when has anything been better than money but hey, we're gullible. So we asked how much tea would we need, 'Oh about 6 kgs should be enough' 'How much is it a kg' I ask. He thinks its about 20 euros which I say seems expensive. I say that we will pick some up in the next town but he advises against it because 'everyone is buying tea there so the price is really high' Ha ha. Anyway he had a cousin who sold tea so we could go there and get a good price. So obligingly off we went, me crammed in the back between the kids, pillows, teddies etc. Off Mick went to the shop, coming back with carrybags full of tea, 120 euros poorer. You all know how small the Pinky Ponk is so now we had to find room for all this. We knew we'd been ripped off as soon as we drove away - we asked each other we hadn't we checked the price in another shop - because we were stupid.

The coast of Western Sahara consists of a few towns spaced at least a couple hundred kms apart intersperses by 'fishing villages' - don't be thinking Mevagissy and thached cottages - just scout style tents in groups of about 5-30 all men and nothing else. They spend their time fishing from the huge undercut cliffs to catch fish that get collected about once a week. These are transported in tankers taking them to the fish processing factories in the towns where they're turned into fishmeal etc. The result of this rather bleak industry is that all the towns stink of fish and between them, you come across laybys swimming in the most fowl black slime exuding the most obnoxious smell imaginable where they load and transfer the fish. Layounne, a surprisingly swish garrison town full of UN 4x4's was covered in signs saying 'Jus de Poisson Interdite'.

We saw first proper sand dunes at Chebika wadi between Tan Tan and Layounne. It was a beautiful spot where we could camp right on the estuary with the crashing waves of the Atlantic behind a spit of sand. Standing motionless on the edge of the water were huge blue herons fishing. Come night fall the sky was luminous with so many more stars than we see even at Le Coty. The scene of perfection was only marred by one thing - the beautiful powder-soft sand we thought we were camping on turned out to be pure clay - a fact we discovered the minute the sun went down followed immediately by the heavy evening dew. Within minutes we were all walking around in platform sandals, anything we put on the ground instantly acquired a thick clay bottom. The only solution was to sit tight around the fire and look at the stars. In the morning we were woken by the sound of birds flying over, they sounded like seaguls at first. I poked my head out and saw that they were a huge flock of flamingoes just landing on the spit in front of us. It couldn't have been more perfect .

From here on we were in desert mode - every container we owned full of water or fuel, waffle boards (part of a disintegrating carpark surface in Lisbon) at the ready, stockings on the air inlet even the GPS loaded with waymarkers- everything!!! But somehow, the desert always remained at arms length and fuel and water stops always appeared before we were desparate. Apart from a few noteworthy incidences, usually involving 'the authorities', driving across the Sahara by the coast road is as easy as driving through France. Our map was a bit misleading as the size of towns, some like Boujdour appeared to be small but was a thriving town full of restaurants, banks and even a proper campsite whereas the next town south, Echtoucan, marked as the same size didn't exist at all. Dahkla, built at the end of a 30 km spit of land, was itself uninteresting but the area was amazing, white sand dunes rolling down to shallow sea almost too warm to be comfortable. We camped in between a contingent of long-stay campervans, mainly French, with satelite dishes and garden furniture, and also huge monster trucks, mainly Dutch. It was here that the children had their first (and last so far) bout of sickness and diarrhea. It started at about 3 am and within an hour every item of bedding we owned was awash. We had to delay our trip and spend the next day washing. The kids spent the day on the beach and were fine by lunch time. That was the advantage of following the coast, we could nip off to the beach most days.