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West Africa, Malta and the Balkans in 1999
MAURITANIA
Bec2004-09-18 19:25:59
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yet it can tell you exactly where you are on the surface of the earth with a precision of 10 meters. It can give you the compass bearing and distance to the next point you wish to reach but unfortunately it cannot tell you if the sand is firm or soft nor weather the way is clear or blocked by a string of dunes.
The trip from Nouâdhibou to Nouakchott can be done easily in a day a half with a good guide who knows the latest shifting of the sands and the best route through the desert. We got through all right with the GPS but it took us five days and four bivouacs to do it.
The photo shows our first bivouac at Baie du Lévrier at only 55 km from Nouâdhibou. The Germans were ferrying three trucks, a bus, a Peugeot station wagon and a four-wheel-drive Mercedes. You can glimpse the green top of our truck behind them.
Speeding cross-country in the desert its great when the sand is firmly packed but in many places, more recent accumulations are still soft and almost impassable. The multi-geared four-wheel-drive Bedford had power to spare but its weight made it bog down frequently.
The four-wheel-drive Mercedes had the least difficulty of the 7 vehicles in our convoy, as a matter of fact it never got stuck. The next best was the Peugeot followed by the three trucks. The bus and the Bedford really had a hard time.
Sand dunes like this one are constantly shifting from one place to another so it is difficult to tell where the sand is hard and where it is not.
This trip was rewarding for me not only because I love the desert but also because it gave me the opportunity to observe how role playing can become stereotyped between members of a small group isolated from external influences.
A sand storm.
In this case, the group had been travelling for several weeks in France, Spain and Morocco before getting here. It was self-sufficient, it had tents to camp out and cooked its own food. It was organized
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See photographs from:
Mauritania Gallery
