Steve's Cycling Blog

The first call to prayer was at 0515 and that seemed to be enough to stir people who were camping, to the point that someone turned the car park lights on at 0545 which made it like daylight in my tent so that was the end of sleeping.

Surprisingly there was quite a lot of condensation on my tent, so it’s gone away pretty damp – I did manage to get most of the dust and sand out, and apparently there’s more vegetation by the end of today, so maybe we’re done with camping in dust bowls – let’s hope so anyway!

A fairly quick riders’ meeting – there aren’t that may instructions, getting out of town is relatively straight forward, then it’s simply follow the road to camp.

Doug, the tour mechanic also advised lowering tyre pressures, and cautioned against switching sides of the road to avoid holes and traffic – apparently on the really windy sandy days some of our number had been riding on the wrong side of the road to minimise the blast of sand from on-coming trucks. Sounds pretty dangerous to me!

On the road and the centre of town was pretty quiet with not a great deal of traffic but as we got further out things really started to build up.

At one point we went round a giant roundabout which is obviously also a major transport hub for the ‘service taxis’, with probably 150 – 200 of them coming and going dropping off and picking up people – a certain kind of chaos that somehow works!

At the next roundabout I was leading our group out, and I noticed that the pavement was missing and that there was a significant hole in the road filled with sand. There was also a group of teenage boys on the corner. As I approached I yelled ‘hole’ to alert riders behind me, which resulted in the boys yelling ‘hole’ back at me whilst continuing to wave – perhaps for generations the weird English greeting of ‘hole’ will live on in that part of Mauritania?

It didn’t take us too long to get clear of the city – no great avenues of streetlights on this side of town, but there were huge piles of stinking rubbish which appeared to be being sorted through, presumably for recyclable materials.

At the 20.9km police checkpoint we had a few issues because they wanted to keep the copies of our passports which we handed them – that wasn’t going to work because for most of us that was the only copy we had.

We’d passed Erwin, Jacquie and Paul not long before, and they rolled in while we there, as did Italio. In the end the force of an angry German (Erwin) speaking French was too much for the police who thrust the pile of copies back to Kevin, and told us to go. We went promptly before they changed their minds!

We stopped at the 37km coke stop for a cool refreshing beverage, during which time Erwin et al passed us again. At the next police checkpoint we met up with Peter, Dominic, Italio, and Erwin et al. These ones wanted to register us, and Paul didn’t have a copy of his passport, only the original so was getting somewhat perturbed when they wanted to take his passport away to their tent.

While we waited tea was served(!!) and Jacquie and I took a LGCC selfie!

Passport copies back and on we went – thankfully that was the last of the annoying checkpoints the remainder of them simply waved us through like they usually do.

The good road ran out as expected at 38km and we alternated between bad pavement and sand / gravel. With about 10km to go before lunch we got to a section of roadworks where the new road is almost ready to be sealed. I pushed my bike through the ditch and onto the new road and was back to doing 32km/h on a brilliant rolled-gravel surface.

I was nearing lunch when I passed a water truck – the driver made very clear ‘get off my new road onto the deviation’ gestures at me, which I chose to interpret as a friendly wave, so waved back and sailed past with a cheery ‘bonne journee’.

Seems everyone else had the same idea and did much the same because some time later he turned up at the lunch stop less than happy! (Some discussion ensued, he phoned someone who came in a Hilux, more discussion, and apparently it was all ok for us to continue on there).

While we were at lunch the dinner truck came in – Noah was finding it slow going on the corrugations of the diversion so it was taking them a while so a quick lunch break was ordered for them.

We set off again just after the truck and I decided to see if I could catch them.

When I got to camp Noah was like ‘it was so embarrassing, the guy on his bicycle was going faster than me’.

In that process I dropped the others from the group, so continued on my own. Canadian Kevin and Mateo caught me just before the 104km coke stop while I was stopped trying to take a selfie with a camel which wasn’t working out so well.

At the coke stop there was a gaggle of small boys, who seemed to think that we needed to buy them a present, which wasn’t going to happen. We had a cold drink, then continued on.

The 109km coke stop turned out to be the town of Tiguent which was quite a large town. Slightly disconcertingly as we came into town there was a military vehicle complete with machine gun mounted on top facing the road!

It seemed that we’d arrived right on lunch time as the town was complete chaos, made worse because there was so much sand through the main street that it wasn’t possible for two vehicles to pass easily, and the queue for the petrol station was also blocking traffic so we had to thread our way through the gridlock.

With 26km to camp I spotted a sign for Rosso at 106km away, which confirms my estimation that we have about 80km in Mauritania and then 8km in Senegal tomorrow.

We stopped at the 119km coke stop, but the main store (the one that has the gas bottles) was closed – we tried another but all they had was room-temperature pretend coke – I passed, though Kevin and Mateo decided it was worth it.

A few more undulations and Mateo spotted the truck in the valley below the road. We’d been warned that there were lots of thorns, so we carried our bikes down to avoid the risk of future punctures.

As I’d hoped there are even some grassy patches, and some shade from the acacia trees – I’ve got as close as I dared with my tent to one, and right now at least it’s providing me with some good shade. I think I’ll get sun later, but I’m not too bothered because it cools down pretty quickly once the sun goes.

Interestingly the children on the sides of the road have been more prevalent, and more aggressive today – I had a few lob stones at my, as did Trixi who actually got hit. One child went to throw a hub cap at Australian Kevin – he stopped him in his tracks with a squirt from his water bottle right in the face!

As we’d passed through Tiguent we’d seen a few rally-style cars. Later we heard from Sharita that it’s a rally from Amsterdam to Dakar, and that they had been throwing sweets out their windows to the children – no wonder they were more aggressive with us who were offering nothing but a bonjour and a wave. I think a strongly-worded letter to the organisers of said rally is required!

It’s pretty pleasant where I’m sitting right now – I’m beside my tent somewhat away from the main camp where most people are, in the shade of the tree, with a gentle breeze bringing the dinner-cooking smells my way. It’s smelling good, and looks like it’s going to be shepherds pie.

Later: I’ve just been for a walk up into the dunes above camp and there are some cool colours and shapes in the sand.

Getting up there was a little fraught – not only are there acacia thorns, which I now know will go right through my jandles and into my feet, but other pointy little seed pods which are thinner and sharper and dig right in – both are something to be conscious of during night time excursions from my tent!

As I went to sit back down by my tent I spotted a chameleon under the stool I had my feet on, which proceeded to investigate my bag and tent before climbing into the tree behind me – the speed with which it could change colour was super impressive! Apparently it was a big chameleon – it’s still in the tree somewhere, but now looks so much like a stick I can’t find it again!

For those who are interested my butt is slowly but surely improving – each riding day doesn’t make things worse, and each rest day makes things better. I’m hopefully that by the time we leave Dakar all will be ‘back to normal’.

Later still: Riders’ meeting was somewhat protracted as plans for crossing in to Senegal tomorrow were outlined – the process is somewhat complicated by the fact that no-mans-land on this occasion is a river!

For larger vehicles there is a ferry which crosses at 0900, 1145, 1600 and 1700. For passengers and bikes there are smaller local boats which shuttle back and forth ‘on demand’.

Max and the dinner truck are aiming to get the 0900 ferry, so we’ll be rolling early tomorrow as they pack away the kitchen pretty swiftly after breakfast. All going well the lunch truck will make the 1145 ferry.

With only 70km to ride to lunch, and then another 5 to the border, plus the fact that time has turned back so we can start around 0700, rather than the 0800 of Morocco, this all seems significantly more manageable than getting in to Mauritania was.

As Sharita said, this is the plan, but this is Africa, and of all the borders she’s ever crossed this one is the biggest shambles, so I’m sure it’s going to be nothing if not entertaining tomorrow!

And it was indeed shepherd’s pie for dinner, followed by a couple of cups of camomile tea – that’s all that could be found without caffeine, and now it’s time to sort my tent for the morning and get some sleep.

View from my tent

Selfie of the day

Riding data

You’ll get captions for the photos later – my laptop battery is almost dead so I want to post this now before it dies completely!