Western Sahara (1)

One of the exciting parts of desert travel is actually the wildlife, if you see anything it’s quite a treat. We managed to see lizards, ground squirrels, rodents, and birds.

	On the way to meet the other goons at Assa we stopped off at a small un-described crag and, totally ignoring doctor’s orders, went for a little climb. After our little excursion we were having lunch by the side of the road when Campbell and Linnea turned the corner, we followed them to a campground and were soon after joined by Leon and Claire (we texted them the GPS coordinates of the campsite).

		The piste that took us into Western Sahara was not on any map, but was used as a section on the Paris-Dakar rally, and for navigation there were two huge cairns obviously built by a dozer every 500m, so no getting lost. On route we picked up a little firewood. There was the occasional tree stump, where other travellers had obviously taken as much as possible (trimmed with an axe), so we ran the odd stump over with the Pinzgauer, and strapped them to the bonnet.

	The piste was mostly rocky but with a few short sandy sections, at one point we descended towards what looked like a massive sand expanse, but it turned out to be a dry lake bed, 10kms of flat smooth fast driving. It was a real thrill, one of those childhood dreams of complete freedom. We took it in turns to sit on the roof filming as the tears streamed from our eyes at 80kph. It was such a contrast to get back onto rough rocky slow terrain again afterwards.

One afternoon I suggested to Campbell “it would be exciting to see a snake in the dessert, one of those side-winder fellas”. So when round the campfire that evening Claire said, “Keith there’s a snake under your chair” I took it to be in jest. Next time someone says that, I’ll probably move a little quicker. Considering it was such a tiny snake (about 6” long) everyone agreed it was probably deadly and lots of talk ensued about sucking and tourniquets, should anyone get bitten.

It was decided that it would be preferable if the wee fella was a little further away, so the zoologist set about organising a translocation program.

	After the piste, we travelled in convoy down the coast to Dakhla, stopping on the beach for a night, and that’s when the problems with the truck started. We spent three days of desperation trying to fix the truck and at times were so down we had thoughts of just packing the whole job in and turning home defeated. The other guys helped all they could but needed to move on, and as we watched them leave, tears in our eyes, we felt that our dream of travelling was falling apart.

	Eventually with loads of help from Dale and Pete on the phone and some Dutch Mechanics on route from the Amsterdam-Dakar challenge we cracked the problem, and the truck breathed to life once more.

	We left Dakhla at 12 o’clock in the afternoon and drove down to the border with Mauritania. It’s perfect tarmac all the way to the border of Western Sahara, and the same from the border to Nouakchott (the capital of Mauritania). However in-between the two countries there was a 1km stretch of deep sandy track of no-mans-land, most adventurous driving, considering you couldn’t verge off the vehicle tracks due to land-mines!