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04.04.04

Overland Trip To Senagal 2004, Day 5: Road to Mauritania

Thomas Morgan
2006-04-26 11:37:47

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Day 4 ends at 7.30 in a cheap campsite on the outskirts of Dakhla, 30Dh for a room. We arrived in Dakhla at 5, a 31 hour coach journey ending and a 6 mile walk beginning. We walked from where the coach dropped us off in town to the campsite we passed on the way in. The walk is epic, straight the whole way into the howling wind and under the burning sun. We made it, had a bit of trouble communicating our desire for a room, but a nice bloke showed up and we talked for a bit. Really, I should be writing this in yesterday’s entry, but oh well. We thought there would be someone, or a group of people traveling south to Mauritania, but there is no-one. There is no-one at the campsite, no buses or trains, maybe a boat, but we’ll have to ask. Hitchhiking is a last, desperate resort. I’m running out of money. 170Dh and £100 left, flies all around me as I write this in our rustic room.

We depart the campsite in the direction of town in the hope of finding something for breakfast and, before we get there, are flagged down by a small pickup. A guy gets out and introduces himself and tells us that he’s heard that we are on our way to Nouâdhibou and that he is going that way, and can take us with him for 600Dh, which we accept. We go back to the camping to pick up our bags and settle the bill, and wait. We’ve been sitting for about half an hour when Ross goes out to look down the road and tells me that he doesn’t see the pickup any more and is starting to have a bad feeling about the whole thing as the driver took our passports to clear us at the police checkpoint. Despite my trust for Moroccans especially now that we are away from the tourist areas, I go down to have a look. The driver is now sitting in a Mauritanian minivan, which reassures me as a guy in the camping had told us that Moroccans going south were a rarity and that the original pickup had Moroccan plates on. No worries, he tells me, he’s waiting for a woman with a satellite ...