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

The first of two difficult sandy stages is done. It was tough, but we managed to reach almost all the geo challenges. 500km in 16 hours.

The oasis we are in now is said to be beautiful, unfortunately we will not see anything of it: we arrived at 11pm, will leave at 5am tomorrow, and there is no electricity and hence no lights here. Even sat phones don’t work, the oasis is located in a deep canyon without satellite visibility. I am blogging from the entrance of the canyon, about 5km from the camp now.

The only challenge today was to cross the border to Mauritania, and that is less and less challenging from year to year. Our data is not copied by hand into big black books anymore, there are computers and fingerprint scanners now. (Btw. the computers have been there in 2011 already, still packed in boxes. In 2013 we saw the same computers installed, but covered in plastic and not in use. Now they are finally in use.)

The camp tonight is close to the border in the dunes. There is always a big fire in the evening. In the afternoon ten of us bought a mutton which is currently being barbecued. Looking forward to a nice dinner.
The next two stages are the most difficult of the race (sand, sand, and more sand), we will go to sleep early today.