Today was a relatively quiet (2nd) day at the sea in Foum el-Oued just outside of Laayoune.

We headed to Laayoune which is a reasonably sized and modern city of about 270,000 inhabitants and has well maintained tree lined streets and beautiful parks.

Our first stop was the Cathedral of St Francis of Assisi, built in 1954 during the Spanish colonial era. We arrived about 30 minutes before the Mass and so were confident it would be open. There were only about 5 people there when we arrived, all African and more arrived while we were there. The church is quite small with a simple interior, unlike many other catholic churches around the world.

We then stopped for a few photographs overlooking the river that runs next to the city and towards the sand dunes. It makes quite am interesting sight the water, palm trees, flamingos against the backdrop of light coloured dunes with a camel or two walking along the ridge.

We then drove across the river to see if we could get onto the sand dunes for another view of the city. Unfortunately the area we wanted to get to is military area and so closed.

We then headed into town in search of a supermarket to stock up on a few items and also found a bakery where we bought some baguette and cheesecake ! We had noticed a lot of advertising boards for McDonalds, the first we had seen since we left Marrakech, and so decided to get a Big Mac and eat it at the seaside where we wanted to see the beach at El Marsa, a small town outside of Laayoune where there is a fishing port and phosphate plant. Trying to get into the McDrive proved a bit of a challenge and we were stopped by a police officer who said we had made 2 traffic violations crossing the while line in the middle of the road. Trevor said he was struggling to find the entrance to the McDonalds and the officer just smiled and waved us on.

There was no beach where we had hoped, but we took a look around the port where hundreds of fishing boats we tied side by side preparing their equipment. It was quite interesting to see, it looked like they had small cranes used for stacking plastic crates presumably with fish that had been caught.

Next stop on our circular route was at a shipwreck just outside of El Marsa on the road back to our hotel. There are building operations close to the beach and so it was difficult to get close by for good pictures. Trevor stopped the car at the side of the main road on two occasions and walked the 150 or so metres to get a closer view only to see a local drive off the road and all the way to the beach. We followed him and were able to get much better pictures.

Then we took a drive to check the beach on the opposite side of Foum el-Oued to where are staying. There were some people playing football but not many swimming and Trevor gave up the idea of having a swim and we headed back to the hotel and realized that we had just clocked the 10,000 km mark since we left home on 17 Oct.