The hotel rooms where we stayed last night don’t have air conditioning or ventilation although being a decent hotel. It was still stuffy and warm in the rooms when we went to bed. To refresh the air a little I opened the window and a decent cool breeze came in. We slept well and checked out early. The cafe next door served us a very good café allongé and a croissant each.

When we left, we met again the Spanish couple on their BMW R1200GS, who also slept in the same hotel and were preparing for their ride south to Dakhla. We exchanged some information and wished each other safe travels. Quickly filled Eeyore to the brim with diesel and off we went!

For a Sunday morning there was light traffic but quite a number of joggers about. Next town was Laayoune, the capital of the region. A very tranquil city with big alley ways and lots of green bushes, lawns and palm trees. A welcome change to the yellow and beige tones of the surrounding desert. Annoyingly my navi constantly wanted us to turn around and take a route that was three times as long as my planned one. Again, there must have been an error in the map somewhere, causing this strange routing. So, I just drove according to my gut feeling and a good old map. We easily found the correct street out of town.

A four lane boulevard turning into a motorway outside the city. Brand new. Unfortunately, the pleasure of driving on this new road lasted only a few kilometres, before we had to change back to the old road. For the next 100 kilometres or so, we changed back and forth between the new super highway and the old road a number of times. In the beginning we were driving very close to the coastline, where we even encountered a bit of fog and later further inland. At a few places we saw massive wind turbines turning and producing renewable energy for Morocco.

After Tan-Tan, the flat desert turns into hills and later proper mountains. The landscape becomes more interesting and less boring. Eeyore had to work hard to get us up over the hills and mountain passes. Fortunately, this stretch of motorway had already been finished. We made it to the town of Guelmin with only a few litres of diesel left in the tank. The mountains as well as the unusual strong wind took their toll on the fuel consumption.

In the town centre of Guelmin, we stopped to have a late lunch and early dinner.

You could almost say that Guelmin is the gateway to the desert because once we had left the town northbound, the landscape immediately became a lot greener and we could see fields with strawberries.

Just a few kilometres further was the town of Bouizakarne, where we found our camping. There we met three overlanders from Hamburg in Germany on their Morocco/Mauritania tour. They had returned here to flee the heat (up to 47°C) and sand storms in Mauritania that we fortunately did not experience but heard about from others as well. We chatted for a while and showed each other the cars. They travel in two old trucks converted into mobile homes, older than the owners.

Here at the camping, it is just super windy and it will be a challenge to sleep comfortably tonight. Hopefully the wind will die down later.

Today we also passed a milestone: we are now more than 5,000 road kilometres way from Abidjan. Before reaching Marrakech we will have to clock up another 500.