The day started with a lovely breakfast with Trich, Victor, Vincent, the Chinese, Joe, the British geologist and us three.
Victor apologised for the soft bread while serving some yummy scrambled eggs.
Over breakfast, Trevor coined their new name: ‘the Armchair Overlanders’, travelling overland with special pillows and duvets. We all chuckled. At the end of our good start into the day, we sorted out the finances and learned that Joe needed to be brought to the bus station in Nouadhibou. Victor was getting ready to bring him there. I asked, where he was heading to today and his response was Nouakchott. Why so complicated? He could simply hop into my car and catch a ride with me to the capital. Fortunately, I still had my passenger seat free for this part of the journey and I love having company on such a boring part of the journey. Sorted. Joe delighted, Victor happy and I was chuffed.

Outside at the car, I still had to quickly close my roof top tent and store Joe’s large military style rucksack in Eeyore. A bit of shifting and it was in. Ready to leave. We said our goodbyes, exchanged phone numbers last minute with other overlanders and drove off through the gate. Me, very slowly as Eeyore only had a few centimetres clearance between the solar panel on the roof and the gate. On our way out, we met Victor again, who just came back from running errands and had both his big dogs sitting on the back seats of his Mercedes like bosses being chauffeured around and looking out of the window at us. Hilarious. Unfortunately, I couldn’t snap a picture. Really last goodbyes and we were finally off. A quick fill up in town and a bit further down the road we got stopped by the first checkpoint, who wanted to have the first fiche of the day, the piece of paper with all your personal data on it, so that they can record it more easily in their big books. Many more checkpoints followed. Many waived us through and five more requested fiches. Every time they somehow believed, that all information of both of us, Joe and mine, was on that single piece. They let us drive on. I wonder, if they ever figured out that they were missing information from one person.

On the way out of Nouadhibou, we saw the famous iron ore train passing us in the distance. Joe had taken it on top of the black iron ore rocks from the desert to the coast twenty four hours earlier. He told me his experiences and where he went in the desert to visit.
We continued and the strong winds of about 35km/h from the desert to the coast hit us from the left hand side, as we drove further and further south. The wind was sometimes really gusty too and, especially, when a truck passed us, the wind he pushed in front of it, blew my magnetic walkie-talkie antenna off the car roof every single time. It then dangled with the cable from the roof. Every time I had to swiftly stop and reposition it. Tedious.

The landscape changed ever so often, from pure sand desert, with beautiful large dunes, over flat desert with not a single rock, tree or other item higher than a few centimetres, over desert with a few acacia trees or bushes, to semi-savannah near Nouakchott, almost completely green with big bushes and grass here and there.

During the drive, Joe told me more about his current and past work and we had a good time sharing experiences and adventures in Africa. He is now going to spend another day in Nouakchott, the one that he had foreseen as buffer, buying a football jersey and a few souvenirs before flying back to Abidjan on Saturday and home to Odienné, northern Côte d’Ivoire, on Sunday. Safe travels, Joe. It was a pleasure to meet you!
The wind from the side all day caused a heavy fuel consumption of both vehicles. Eeyore was very thirsty with around 16l/100km. The damage will be seen at the petrol station the next time I fill up.
With very little fuel in the tanks, we arrived at the beach camping in Nouakchott where Christoph and I had been on our northbound trip.

Throughout the afternoon, while setting up camp, Charlotte and Trevor’s large tent, a tent for Alex and, of course, my own roof top tent, we were watching the flight radar apps concerning Alex’s flight. The plane from Mauritanian Airlines seemed to have flown earlier today from Nouakchott to Dakar and then on to Bamako where it landed after one p.m.. So far, it hasn’t left Bamako to fly to Abidjan, where Alex was supposed to board the plane to come the same way back: Bamako, Dakar, and finally Nouakchott, where he should have landed shortly after nine this evening. The later it got, the more worried we all got, that something was wrong with the aeroplane and it would not leave Bamako any time soon. During dinner, Trevor discovered on the website of Abidjan Airport, that the flight had now been cancelled. We sent the information to Alex, who was still eagerly awaiting any news from the officials while sitting at the gate.

Between the three of us here in Mauritania, we discussed possible scenarios. Was Nouakchott still possible any time tomorrow or should he fly into Dakar instead. What kind of an impact would that have on our itinerary? With all in limbo and with only the certainty, that our fourth expedition member will not arrive tonight at Nouakchott airport, Charlotte and Trevor retreated to their tent, while I sat in the refreshing cool breeze, after this bloody hot day (+35°C), in front of my car, typing this blog and surfing the web a bit catching up on some news, after almost two days without Internet in Nouadhibou.
In the meantime in Abidjan, Alex is fighting to get his checked-in luggage back into his hand and then work out what the best way will be to join us. Good luck mate! Looking forward to seeing you here!