It was not our best day, that’s for sure. First we missed the last gas station before turning off into the desert and had to go back, wasting half an hour of valuable daylight.

Then we broke through the thin salty crust covering a swamp (yes, such thing exists in Mauritania) and had to walk 4 kilometers and kill a bush to rescue the car. It was a lot of fun in 39 degrees.

It was after noon when we finished the first task, and we still had 300 kilometers of desert in front of us. The desert here in central Mauritania is green, there is grass growing on it. But that does not mean the surface is harder or the dunes are smaller.

As soon as we arrived at the dunes, things started to improve. The car was performing well and we had a lot of fun. And only had to use the sand ladders a few times.

Apart from a small incident in the afternoon (our airflow sensor broke again, this seems to be a must in Africa) we were lucky to finish the stage without any breakdowns.