Fruit of the Desert

It took 7 days, and many, many gallons of water but my charming bike and I made it accross the desert into Maritania. The trip was made possible by the tremendous generosity and helpfullness we encountered while pedaling under the blazing sun.

The first day we cycle northward out of Dakhla into a strong headwind and can only complete 50km with my poor tush suffering desperately from my BMX style seat. In the evening we find a cave in a small mountainside and sleep inside. The stars are spectacular and the desert sunset incredible.

Day two we cycle hard and make good distance camping out on the open dunes. The night is made memorable as I don my Moroccan Jallaba (think Obi Won Kenobi) and Martin strikes up a tune on his old Swedish bagpipe. What a pair we make.

On we ride, day 3, day 4, camping in the cool nights and covering our faces with scarves through the day. The sun in blistering, reflecting off the sand. Each day it seems good light shines on us. An old fisherman offers us freshly caught fish for dinner, a friend I met on a bus finds us on the road as she's passing and her driver gives us an incredible camel steak and even a red bull, a caravan stops for a smoke and we eat apples and lose half the day looking out at the strange landscape and my favourite comes as I am parched for fresh food, and thinking of nothing else. I turn a bend and see a van out in front, then an arm and at the end of the arm two beautiful oranges which come bumping and rolling along the road toward us. No orange has ever tasted so good. I wave frantic thanks to the man whose face I never even see.

Day 5 turns spectacular as we reach a long awaited hotel and get our first shower since leaving. The food is great and the place is clean. We stock up and head for the border. Day 6 night falls and we must camp near the border, nervous from reports of landmines we must stay near the road. Neither of us blow up so the next morning we cross into Mauritania.

The crossing is the icing on the cake as we leave the Moroccan post after a long wait and cross an eery unmarked 3km zone of no mans land. The wind seemed to whistle cautiously past and the quiet landscape tingles your neck. Finally we push our bikes over the rocky ground to the Mauritanian post and things are now very different. 3 rough men in an old shack stamp our passports and off we ride knowing we are now truly into Black Africa.

Our first encounter with a Mauritanian local comes after another 40km of hilly terrain when we come accross a man with a large group of camels. He is gesturing to us to come help him and his friend so we wander over to see what is up and what a surprise it is. A young camel has fallen into a well! This is so astounding in fact, because the well is only about the size of a manhole and the camel is huge. We have to pull it out he says and I am thinking there is no way. This is like animal rescue or something! Needless to say, the guy gets a grip on the camels lower lip and starts to heave with the poor creature screaming like its going to die and so we just grab on and start pulling by the neck. I was sure we would injure it somehow, but we just kept pulling and pulling and soon we had a grip on its legs and up it came. It must haved weighed about 150kg (350 lbs). Incredibly, we got it up on its feet and it seemed to be ok. Though I thought its mother was going to kill us. Handshakes and laughter all around with a few pats on the back for good measure and we were off carrying silly grins on our faces. A few days have past and still we can't get over the insanity of those few moments.