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.

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.