Sunday, February 21
We awoke with the sunrise over the lagoon of Dakhla is wonderful, it feels even see dolphins off!
Small swimming in clear water and road to Dakhla City to pick up the phone, send emails (not easy with the connection and the keyboard does not work ....) And departure Moroccan-Mauritanian border! ! We arrived around 19h
too late to leave Morocco so we set up our tents near the truck that is already in a first queue
... The next morning, stop, we're all ready for the opening of the border but instead of opening at 9am, the first vehicle passed 10:30
that promises ... I pass on details of the organization, the scanning of all vehicles passing through customs and the police ... all that to finally have the famous white paper at 16.30! All under a dodger of madness! We've got a headache just to think again! We think we have
finally allowed to leave us when the police made her last surprise ... we supposedly missed a pseudo stop that ... So nobody saw threat of lawsuits, fines still with this look very bad ... ah, the Moroccan police us ... they said we have no money (the girls that work much better in this case!) and then we understand that it would help if offered coffee to the head ... we say we have nothing and they let us go. It only remains to pass the military, even the paperwork!! and here we are in no man's land for 4km5 track. We follow a Malian who knows the way, if you can call it a road ... and here we are at the border without too much stress ...
different atmosphere, different setting ... Mauritania has much less money than Morocco, it shows nothing but their job boundaries which prove to be huts.
Passage of the police: we want everything we make, we managed to negotiate a rinadvil box, and then the passage of the police, there is nothing special and the passage of the Customs charge 10 euros and that does not delve behind ... after such a day, we do not negotiate on 10 euros!
We leave all these vicissitudes completely punctured but without much damage. Here we are now
Nouadhibou where we found a great little campground where we can ask.
later arrives Hassan, a Mauritanian national basketball player in Dax, we had crossed during our long wait at the border Moroccan. He explains that his country will not let him pass in transit to Senegal, where his parents now live. He is escorted by customs. Because he knows a few people, he hopes that everything will work out the next day ... On Tuesday, February 23
We find Hassan breakfast awaits impatiently the customs. He looks forward to seeing his family he has not seen for 5 years: first her brothers and sisters and his parents in Nouakchott to Dakar.
He suggested that we sleep in his family this evening in the Mauritanian capital, we accept with great joy that we all join there.
The road from Nouadhibou to Nouakchott is very long and very hot, we reach 43 degrees ... but it is also beautiful with shades of sand, its camels .... And finally it is very well paved.
controls policemen or gendarmes are scheduled to track the path a bit each, if at first they think it's awesome, finally getting used to, it even has a little reassuring.
We meet at a police station, our friend Hassan at the entrance of Nouakchott. We follow him in Yoh, his sister who holds the bar near the private clinic, then at another sister Fatou and finally at the third working with UNICEF.
We were received like royalty. We eat on the terrace roof of the house fish sauce: delicious!
We even have a room for us 4 with shower and toilet. No toilet paper but the small stream of water, more hygienic and more reassuring when one runs out of toilet paper ...
Hassan's family is very welcoming and invites us to stay one more day ... The night brings The council ...
Wednesday, February 24, 2010 After a good nights sleep, we decide to hit the road even if we would have stayed a little more ... but we still have a way ...
On the road to the border between Mauritania and Mali we find French crusaders during our wait at the exit of Morocco. We will have two days of very bad road sometimes but always wonderful to meet all together Gogui. There, the Mauritanian customs try to charge us 10 euros each to leave the country. We fight is finally coming out without paying. A few meters further, we arrive at the border with Mali. Change of scene: here is the cool. It is night, we received about a campfire to make the visa and the first customs post. As later we all sleep here. The
Saturday, February 27, 2010
We decide to follow up all Bamako.
must first pay the vehicle's insurance and then spend another customs post. All this is very expensive ... we are fighting with the Head of Customs not to pay 5000 CFA he asks us ... we only pay 1,000 CFA.
The road is beautiful, we passed villages still very traditional and people smiling. We arrived in Bamako
punctured with a day still very hot (above 40 degrees). It is late for find a home but a friend of the people we met we take in a girl who sublets the rooms.
After 3 long days, we may finally to shower!
Objective: Bamako to repair the truck that suffers from a big oil leak that has worried us to Bamako: Will we get to a mechanic, to rebuild a small health before resuming the road because we're on the ball, enjoy the Malian capital a bit. It is done!
We would like to hit the road Monday morning! So we leave tomorrow morning and I Ysel to cool all both for the rest of the adventure, Greta and Yvonne took a liking to life in Mali.
