5 days of bush camping to and through the Western Sahara

All of us were ready to head into the Western Sahara as we’d spent several weeks already just in Morocco alone. On the drive to Agadir, we saw goats in trees,

amazing waves and lots of surfers.

We stopped at the last McDonald’s

and the last Marjane supermarket until Cape Town and everyone made the most out of both stops (although I think I was the only one who didn’t have Maccas!)

Dom and Guber even made use of the Marjane carpark by sitting there and scrubbing their feet with a pumice stone. Not surprisingly, the locals were highly amused.

We also stopped at the Saturday morning camel and sheep market outside of Goulimime, where Bruce found out that one Tuareg trader walked for 30 days with his camels to come here.

It was unusual seeing a goat in the back of a wagon

and trucks seriously overloaded with straw.

On the narrow two lane roads, trucks would whizz past us and some drove like maniacs.

I did some litter picking after lunch, getting more into the swing of picking up 10 pieces of rubbish every day, instead of collecting rubbish in bulk every few days.

We were over-excited to find wooden crates by the side of the road as we wouldn’t have many opportunities to collect firewood over the next few days. We filled up the firewood box, as well as bits of the water storage compartment and two crates which we put down the aisles of the truck.

We had a few interesting pee/photo stops along the way such as by this tent set up nearby the salt mines

and this cliff face.

Needless to say there were many days of driving involved, so we played card games, dice games, country capital guessing games, read books, chatted, watched the passing scenery, and some even did push-ups down the aisle!

The fashion for the driving days was varied involving anything from a snorkelling mask to a Saharan headscarf to a djellaba.

We stopped at Lâayoune though all we saw was the main square, a patisserie for a mille-feuille (vanilla slice) and freshly squeezed OJ, and many UN vehicles.

Our camp spots were quite spectacular. One night we camped by the beach near some local fisherman though it was extremely windy and despite putting huge rocks in our tent we were nearly blown away!

The best night was when we camped by a sand dune. Getting there was nearly half the fun as all of us along with the inside of the truck got covered in a layer of sand. We ran up the dune and then many of us tried different ways to slide it down it – though the wok, the spade and the hessian bag cover for the wok didn’t really seem to work. The night involved some people sitting around the sheesha pipe smoking, others sitting by the fire, and others on the top of the sand dune. Ron conducted a yoga class at 6.30am which a few of us attended on the top of the sand dune. He even had music to accompany the class and it was quite surreal doing yoga moves on the top of a sand dune in the middle of the Sahara!

Nonetheless, we were all happy to cross the border into Mauritania to Nouadhibou for a campsite with showers.