The most difficult stage of this year’s race is awaiting us tomorrow, 550 kilometers across the Sahara, 450 of those in the dunes without any road or piste. In preparation of the big challenge we spent a nice evening eating and drinking with friends.

Laci used the free afternoon to shave

others were relaxing in the shade of the cars

or in the car

Twelve years ago when I first came to Mauritania, the border crossing took a full day, despite the visas being in our passports already. At passport control there were three guys, one drawing lines into a big black book with a ruler, the second one reading out loud the passport data, and a third one writing into the freshly lined books.

The first signs of evolution were already visible in the form of still sealed Compaq branded cardboard boxes with desktop computers piled up in the corner though.There was one toilet for all the employees and visitors of the border post, without door and running water.

Two years later the procedure was still the same, but meanwhile the computers had been installed and covered by plastic to protect them from the sand. Btw the brand Compaq was already extinct at that time, and the toilet was still in the same condition as two years before.

The evolutionary hockey stick took off somewhere in the following two years, in 2015 visas and passports were processed by 3 guys sitting behind the computers, and the black books took over the place of the Compaq boxes in the corner.

Another 3 years later (still the same) computers were equipped with fingerprint sensors and cameras and as far as I can remember there were a few more than 3 of them. You could still see the huge pile of old dusty black books in the corner, but the toilet got a door (which you couldn’t lock, however). There were slight improvements in processing speed, but crossing the border was still a nerve wrecking experience of several hours.

In contrast, this year the visa processing is outsourced to the first camp in the desert. The cars are waved through the border post by friendly officers checking off the cars and their passengers in their lists.At the camp there is a big tent with ten counters issuing visas and checking passports. You can register with your wristband and get the estimated waiting time. We got our visas in 5 minutes (OK, Lackó’s photo was mixed up with someone else’s, but who cares, nobody is looking at photos on visas anyway).

Next (car) door there is a money exchange (offering 10% less favorable exchange rate than the black market, but again, who wants to negotiate in parallel with several money changers yelling at each other to save maybe 5 euros).There is also a “health center”, and you can buy sim cards which actually work.

The only thing that hasn’t improved in the last 12 years is the number and the condition of the restrooms, in fact it has worsened a lot: you have to dig your own toilet, and since the desert is very flat here, you have to walk far away to have some privacy.Impressive evolution!

The next big thing in Mauritania seems to be green power. The windmills are still in the condition of the computers in 2013, installed, but not yet operational. Looking forward to visiting their inauguration party in 9 years!