Today supposed to be a rest day with only 150km to drive, but we missed the low tide and had to drive in deep sand on the beach, which, together with the week cooling of the Beast, was kind of exhausting (for the Beast and for us). In Nouakchott (the capital of Mauritania) our first goal was “car parts city”, a suburb of garages and used parts dealers. Of course all of them knew how to repair our coolant tank, or they knew somebody who knew, or they knew somebody who knew somebody else who knew where to get a spare part. It was a real African experience. Finally a young boy was showing us a backyard out of town with some rusty skeletons of Nissan Patrols, and one of them still had the tank. Then came the price negotiation, which took equally long. We managed to reduce the price to ~17 Euros plus a t-shirt, two torches, some ballpoint pens, and we also traded in our compressed air horn (Michal is really sad about that, his favorite pastime was to blow it inside the car, but the rest of the team is happy to survive the trip without serious hearing damage).

There was not too much time left to have a look at Nouakchott, we found a street market and spent most of the time around that place.

Chippendale No. 2: WE ARE SORRY, THIS PICTURE HAS BEEN AUTOMATICALLY REMOVED BY PARENTAL CONTROL

Today was the first full offroad day, no single meter on sealed roads. In the briefing meeting Andrew (the organizer of the rally) said it would be the most difficult stage, but it was OK, the Beast is doing well even in deep sand. We didn’t even have to use our sandplates, deflating the tires and a little shoveling was more than enough. A bit disappointing, but finally we at least have some pictures showing the Beast bogged down in sand. It is a pity we only have satellite Internet and cannot upload the movies abour our dune crossing.

In the afternoon, in the middle of deep sand, our engine was overheating and the coolant container started leaking, but some two component glue and lots of duct tape seem to be an adequate temporary solution. Tomorrow in Nouakchott (the capital of Mauritania) we will buy a new one.

We had the best dinner of the whole trip today (sorry, I have to say it as I was the chef): we bought 4 fish from fishermen who just arrived back from their trip when we passed by and made fish couscus provencal (using more or less everything we have in our kitchen box). A Hungarian couple we met on the ferry brought us a few cans of beer and we invited them to dinner. There was nothing left over to give to the soldiers protecting the camp (we gave them some rice). It is strange that in Morocco, where selling alcohol is legal, we never managed to buy beer, but in Mauritania, where alcohol is forbidden, it is easy to get it.

The camp site tonight is called B2 Beach (B2 stands for Budapest-Bamako),  regular camp on the Bamako, directly on the beach between the dunes. It is beautiful here, I decided to sleep outside watching the stars and listening to the waves.

Michal is well again, but now I have got kind of a flu, trying to ignore it.

We spent most of the day to cross the Morocco-Mauritania border, it was 4pm until we passed all the checkpoints (2 long queues on Moroccan side, 3 on the other). The border crossing is a beautiful example of African bureocracy and inefficiency, everything is done by hand, sometimes the forms to be filled out are drawn in front of you by pen & ruler.

In the afternoon we just had enough time to visit one more shipwreck and the city of Nouadhibou. Mauritania is obviously much poorer than Western Sahara, and what we saw until now was sand, sand, and once again sand.

Today’s camp is in the middle of nowhere by the dunes, with a big campfire in the middle. We can also see the distant campfires of the guards protecting the camp in the night.