Short summary of today’s events, again without pictures because I have satellite Internet access only:

• We had a very nice high speed offroad stage today, little bit of soft sand, but mostly hard gravel
• Had tea with farmer Mahmoud in an oasis we passed by and now know everything about agriculture in Western Sahara. For one kg of the small tomatoes omnipresent in our supermarkets he gets 0.023EUR. No, there is no mistake, it is 2.3 cents.
• We met a former Vice President of Alcatel Canada, he is participating in the rally too. Thanks to the nice stickers on the Beast he quickly recognized us as Alcatel-Lucent people.
• A British team rolled over with the car after the explosion of one tire, fortunately there are only minor injuries. But it took us 2 hours to put the car on its remaining wheels, to fix the critical missing or broken parts and to clean up the mess. Therefore we only arrived now at our camp.
• We did not miss too much by arriving late, the “camp” is along the last few 100 meters of the road before the Mauritanian border. The cars are parked on the road, we pitched our tents just beside the road in a mixture of sand and rubbish. Huge trucks are passing every few minutes 2 meters from our tents. Its a very strange sight.
• Michal is ill, I gave him Paracetamol and antibiotics, now he starts feeling better.

Should you ever need a mechanic in Tantan, here are the coordinates: N28° 26′ 13.7″ W11° 05′ 54.8″

They fixed our car as promised and even found a screw which went loose and which we would have lost in the next days.

In evening we visited a blowhole (a hole in the ground connected to the sea by a cave washed out by the ocean) and a fort. The fort was rated “must see” in the roadbook but at 9pm there was not much to see. 

Shipwreck at Sidi Ifni:

Luxury beach resort:

Dinner with Dutch, South African, and British teams: