The night was still quite humid and hot despite the sea breeze. This certainly did not help us to sleep well. We both got up early when the first sun razes hit us, had a lovely proper shower and started packing in Eeyore. The staff was wonderfully accommodating. They served us a very delicious breakfast for little money. A great start into the day and our drive to the Northern border town Nouadhibou some 450km away.

After paying, we set off, quickly filling up Eeyore’s tank with the best diesel we could find. Mauritanian diesel is known to be of notoriously bad quality.

With our tank filled, we drove out of the capital to come past a couple of gendarmerie and police check points. Some waved us through, some wanted just a friendly chat and some wanted fiches from us for their administration.

The landscape started changing slowly from having some bushes and grass to more and more sand and fewer and fewer bushes. Next to us ran, like a snake through the desert, high voltage lines that accompanied us all the way to the northern border. With the arrival of the desert also vanished the small villages we had seen before.

We had arrived in the true Sahara desert! The road was in various states from brand new to a horrible road full of potholes like a Swiss cheese.

The traffic was sparse with mainly minibuses or trucks driving much faster than the police would allow.

The temperature was climbing by the hour from a pleasant 29°C in the morning to a blistering 41°C after midday.

While driving into Nouadhibou, we saw part of the famous Iron Ore train arriving at the end of its line. I would have loved to put my vehicle on it on our way back south, but due to security concerns that plan was scrapped unfortunately. We followed the train to snap a few pictures and didn’t notice that we missed our turn off. Quickly turned around, we were back in track to the hotel/campsite. The road went straight to the coast and then along the coastline to the very end of the peninsula. We found the hotel and met the lady of the house, a nice Scottish/South African Tish, who showed us around. Later the owner, the Dutch Victor also joined. Christoph chose to take one of the lovely small rooms and I will camp right at the sea shore with a splendid exclusive view over the bay.

Here, we met the other overlanders, Paulina and Olivier, Belgian vets, returning backpacking overland via Madagascar, Southern Africa and West Africa to Europe from Reunion, where they had worked as veterinarians for two years. They have plenty of hilarious, adventurous and interesting stories to tell from the past 18 months of travelling. We also met Roland from Germany on his 1992 BMW motorcycle with more than 200,000km on the clock starting on his West African adventure to South Africa being very thankful for all the advice we could share with him. He had been riding his bike all over Europe, the Americas, Asia and Australia. Africa was his last continent to discover. I was happy to help him with his Garmin navigator and motorcycle helmet’s vizor.

We shared a very delicious dinner together Tish and the Belgians had prepared, Camel pasta with tomato salad. Afterwards we gathered on the terrace for coffee and tea at a very comfy temperature sharing lots of travel stories!

Tomorrow, we will cross our final border crossing on our northbound journey into country number five: the Kingdom of Morocco and will also have to adjust our clocks.