It took a couple of days until I was feeling better again. Malaria definitely knocks you out, but luckily, if you get the right treatment and medication, it also goes away rather quickly again. Until I fully recovered,we spent a few days in the Airbnb apartment in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania. While I barely moved out of bed druing these days, Tom was very diligent and did a service on our Defender. Unfortunately, he couldn’t find a mechanic who had time, but he was allowed to return to the campsite where we were already helped the first day we arrived in Nouakchott, and they let him do an oil change and some work on the car in their backyard. Luckily, we had all the spare parts we needed with us. The Mauritanian people truly were very welcoming and helpful! At the campsite, Tom also met Ben and Moritz, two Overlanders from Germany who were on their way back home after traveling for six months to Ghana and back. When I finally started to feel better after three days of fever and staying in bed, we decided to go out for dinner all together before Tom and I left the city to drive into the desert the next morning.
Initially, we had planned to drive a longer route through Mauritania, but we shortened the route a little bit. Our first destination, therefore, was the Terjit Oasis, where we spent the night at “Chez Jemal”, a beautiful small auberge where you can camp as well. It was insanely hot, close to 50 degrees Celsius. After driving through the desert on the perfect tar road for a few hours, the car and everything inside of it (including us) was boiling! I had never in my life experienced such a heat. Luckily, Jemal had a small pool where we could cool down. There, we met Gabriel, a backpacker from Italy who was staying at the auberge as well and painted some very cool graffiti on the walls (of course, with the approval of Jemal). We had dinner together and Jemal’s wife cooked a very delicious couscous for us. We enjoyed the evening hours a lot. Once the sun went down, it was still well above 30 degrees, but at least there was no sun burning down on us. We sat on mats with Jemal and his family and friends and drank some Mauritanian tea, a green tea with fresh mint that is brewed three times. It is very sweet and delicious.
The next morning, Tom and I wanted to visit the actual oasis. Jemal explained where we had to walk to find it, it was only a stone’s throw away. When we arrived in the early morning, we were almost alone, but soon, it started to get busier. We spoke to some locals who explained to us that it was a special holiday and a lot of locals would come to the Oasis today to spend the day here with their families. They brought food and drinks and it was so interesting and nice to sit with them and watch what they were doing.
Next to us was a group of men, who were also staying at Jemal’s auberge. They arrived very late the night before. When they saw myself and Tom at the oasis, they invited us to join them for lunch. They had ordered a full traditional meal and wanted us to taste it as well. It was a very tasty goat stew with rice and a lot of dates and goat milk to drink and of course plenty of the Mauritanian tea. We were spoiled and spent a lovely day there.
After the big lunch, we decided to leave because we wanted to drive a bit further south to a point where the dunes “eat” the tar road. We read about this spot and found it interesting to visit. On our way out of the oasis, we met another backpacker who asked us for a lift to the next town Atar. This was also our end destination and where we wanted to sleep, but we told him that we first were driving south to see the dunes, and he happily joined us. So we went on a short trip into the desert and then back north to Atar. We spent the night again at a local auberge with lovely owners. The hospitality in Mauritania is truly amazing.
The following day in Atar, we filled up our Defender with Diesel and stocked up on some food and especially water, in order to be ready to drive along the famous train tracks through the Sahara for a few days. In Mauritania, there is an Iron Ore train, which is the longest train in the world, running on a 704-kilometer single track from the desert to the coast. There are no roads, but you can follow the track driving in the sand, an extraordinary offroad experience, so of course, this was something we didn’t want to miss. It was an amazing experience, driving through the Sahara with nothing in sight except a train track. We spent the night close to Ben Amera, the biggest monolith in Africa. It’s a beautiful huge rock, and not far from it, you can find a smaller version called Aishe, where international artists have carved objects into the rocks. We were all by ourselves; luckily, this place of the world is not yet swamped by tourists. We spent a unique night in the desert in between all the beautiful rock art and underneath a thousand stars. The only thing that kept us from a peaceful sleep was the heat, it was very very hot.
The next day, we continued along the track. From Ben Amera, we had to drive back towards the track first, and just when we arrived, the train was passing. It was perfect timing and we were super excited to see the train. We could follow it for quite a while because it is driving rather slow. We took our drone and followed it in the air and on the sand and had a lot of fun. We also passed some old carrieges spread along the tracks from an accident that happened a few years ago. It was crazy to see how the steel is bending in the heat of the Sahara desert.
We had first planned to spend another night in the desert in between some dunes, but when we arrived at the spot, it was only 4pm and it was very windy and of course still boiling. We wanted to set up our camp but the wind was blowing all the sand into our car and there was not much shade and it was just not very comfortable. Eventhough we were quite tired from driving, we decided to continue all the way to the coast, which was another 2-3 hours drive. But staying at this spot was just not a very comfortable option. Our goal was to reach Villa Maguela in Nouadhibou. We arrived just in time before dinner and it was such a lovely place to be. Right at the sea with a cool breeze, it was exactly what we had longed for. The hosts were very nice as well and there were two other travellers there, we all had dinner together and spend a wonderful evening.
The next day, it was already time to leave Mauritania. Our next destination was Morocco. Uwe, one of the other guests at Villa Maguela, joined us with his beautiful big MAN truck, so we crossed the border together. I was a bit nervous because I read a lot of stuff about the Moroccon border. They scan all the vehicles and search for illegal stuff, such as drones, for example, but luckily, they didn’t find ours and we had a rather easy crossing, except for the extra hour we had to wait because they closed the border at noon for a lunch break and everyone just had to wait until the officers continued their work :-D
After the border, we were technically in Morocco, but first, we had to cross the Western Sahara. Given its name in 1975 by the UN, it is the last African colonial state yet to achieve its independence. About 20% of the territory is controlled by the self-proclaimed Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic and the remaining 80% of the territory is occupied and administered by Morocco; therefore, also the border post was Moroccan. The Western Sahara is the second most sparsely populated country in the world and the most sparsely populated in Africa, mainly consisting of desert. Therefore, it is rather boring to drive through Western Sahara, unless of course, you can leave the main tar road and drive off into the desert for some fun drives on the dunes. But this needs time and a lot of planning because there are no towns where you can stock up or buy water and food and some places are occupied by the military. We, therefore, decided to just drive straight on the tar road to Morocco, which took us two full days of driving. The first night, we wild camped close to Dhakla, a small town which is famous amongst kite surfers, but since neither of us kite surf, it was not a spot where we wanted to hang around because it gets very windy. Luckily, we had Uwe and his MAN truck with us. We could park behind his big truck to have shelter from the wind during the night. To eat dinner, we all sat inside his truck and enjoyed a cozy evening inside away from the wind :D The next morning, we continued north, but Uwe stayed behind since he had some more time and therefore wanted to take it slower and explore some more of the Western Sahara.
Tom and I continued all the way up to Tarfaya. It’s the place where the famous book “Petit Prince” was written and a very small town in the middle of nowhere. We found it had a bit of a strange vibe. It kind of felt like walking through a movie set, where everyone was just put there to play a role. We wanted to camp in a parking lot in town and looked for a restaurant where we could eat dinner before. We found a small place where they served Msemen, a very delicious baked Moroccan dish. Tom also got a street food kebab, which was delicious. After walking around for a bit, we found that the people were very friendly and also curious. Before returning to our car, we sat down in another small restaurant to have a tea and a guy passing by, started talking to us. He was very inspired by our travel and even invited us to spend the night at his house. We talked for a while and shared some stories. Since we wanted to visit the very small museum in town the next morning - a museum in honor of the author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who wrote the Petit Prince - we were also in contact with the owner to ask if the museum would be open the next day. He told us he would come around to open the museum for us the next morning and he assured us that it was no problem to camp right in front of the museum, which we did. After the museum, we continued our trip up north, Ben and Moritz were staying on a campsite further up the coast so we decided to join them.
