Today was the last day in Mauritania, we are at the border to Mali, which is the Senegal river here. There is water, lots of animals, baobab trees, and the people are black. We finally arrived in the “real” Africa.

Unfortunately the “real” Africa also means that the maps are poor and out of date, navigation is difficult. The best maps for today’s stage were the French and Russian maps from the 1940s and 1950s, but a lot has changed since then, whole villages have disappeared, and then big pistes were degraded to donkey tracks. We wanted to arrive in camp a bit earlier than last night and hence skipped the most difficult part of the stage.

The landscape is quickly changing now from desert to savannah. Yesterday we spent the time between (huge) rocks and (lots of) sand, today the dominating colors are green (grass) and red (the sand under the grass). Driving is much easier in the savannah, but navigation is more complex because of the myriads of faint tracks criss-crossing the landscape. You don’t know if the chosen track is going in the right direction until you have driven a few kilometers. In addition there are many dry riverbeds which are hard to cross. Plus thousands of cows, donkeys, and camels you should not hit either.

This was the most difficult day yet. Deep sand, huge rocks, giant dunes, no roads at all. Dead tired, falling asleep now.