We left the campsite this morning at about 8am and drove the 15km back to the gas station we stopped at last night for some coffee, croissants, and orange juice. If the inexpensive fresh squeezed OJ is a Moroccan phenomenon, we will miss it!

We drove for about an hour and arrived at the border. First was the exit from the Moroccan side, which was fairly straightforward. The pavement ended at this point and we were now in the 8km section in between countries which is reputed to be mined. We followed the track for a short distance and met a man sent by Artouro to be our guide. We followed him along the dirt track to the Mauritanian border. The contrast between the Moroccan border facilities and those of Mauritania is remarkable. The Moroccans have basic concrete shelters, whereas the Mauritanian facilities might as well be a camel herder's shack, with low ceilings and tarps for walls. First we stopped at the police checkpoint, where our details were copied onto a piece of paper. We paid 10 Euros as a tax on our vehicles. Next it was on to customs, where we declared the foreign currency we were bringing into the country. The last stop was immigration where our passports were stamped along with our Carnet du Passage. We were again charged 10 Euros, which in retrospect I believe was bogus. In any case, we made it through the border formalities in about 2 hours, far less than what we'd expected. Next it was time to pay our guide and be on our way. According to Artouro, the standard fee was 200 Ouguiya (there are about 267 Ouguiyas to the dollar). The guide first demanded we pay 200 Euros. Graham, who was unfortunate enough to be the one negotiating, told him that we'd pay 200 Ouguiya and negotiated a deal whereby he changed 100 Dirham for 2000 Ougs, resulting in a profit of about 500 Ougs for the guide. He still demanded 30 Euros, so we drove off. They followed us for awhile, trying to get us to stop, but then they finally gave up.

We soon crossed the railroad tracks and turned east. The railroad primarily serves the ore mines inland, and the ore trains are reputedly the longest in the world. Our route will take us about 450 km inland, following the railroad tracks all the way. The Japanese are working on building a sealed road, but we're following a dirt track that meanders along next to the tracks, crossing sections of sand and rock to keep the driving interesting. Jen and Witt got another flat, so we stopped early and found a nice campsite. Graham helped Witt fix the tire, and we made a meal of pasta with a sauce made from fresh tomatoes and garlic bread. There is no moon tonight and stars are amazing. Graham built a fire and we spent a very relaxing evening sitting around the campfire talking and stargazing.

We have a two part movie about driving in Mauritania.

Waking up in the desert is a great experience. Those of you who have done it will know. Those of you who have not, should. We broke camp and headed out early still following the ore railway towards Choûm. The terrain was very varied and we were surprised at the amount of green grass in some areas. Mauritania is one of the most sparsely populated countries in Africa, and this was evident in the few, very small villages that we passed.

The driving was great fun, and Witt did manage to get Rafiki stuck in some soft sand. A quick tug and he was out, though. We stopped fairly early close to a small mountain to prepare a good meal and relax. Connie and Graham cooked a pork potjie, a South African recipe which turned out pretty well. About the time of dinner, Witt discovered that Rafiki's tire rack was pulling free of the back door, having broken two of the bolts. He and Graham spent a few hours pulling the old parts off and finding new bolts and washers to try to repair the damage and make it stronger. We all had a good time after dinner enjoying the fire and the stars.

After getting up, we finished fixing the tire carrier on Rafiki. Witt also did a check under the car and made sure everything was tight. We carried on the piste, much as yesterday. When we got close to Choûm, we turned southeast and made our own track towards Atar hoping to pick up the road. We did reach the road eventually and followed that into Atar. For the last 15 miles we were privileged enough to use a brand new asphalt road provided by the US government. Of course this meant we had to stop and air up our tires. After getting into Atar, we made our way to Bab Sahara, a campground run by a Dutch couple. They are smart enough to put their GPS coordinates on their business card, so it is easy to find. Despite being in the middle of Atar, the campsite is clean and well maintained with showers and some of the nicest toilets we have experienced yet. Graham spent the evening wrestling with a flat tire while Witt cooked dinner that we ate on the verandah at Bab Sahara.

We were relieved to learn that Jus, the Dutch owner of the campground, can arrange visa extensions for us, which means that we won't have to rush to Nuokchott today. Graham worked on his car while Jen and Connie did laundry and Witt played with the computer. The campground is very nice, with a shady veranda, sinks with soap, and toilets with toilet paper! In the afternoon we walked into town to use the internet. It's easy to see that Mauritania is much less developed than Morocco. We were hassled by people trying to sell us trinkets and get us to visit their shops on the way back to the campground. We had arranged to have dinner at the campground restaurant at 8pm. The dinner consisted of some charred bits of meat and overcooked french fries, leaving us quite disappointed. We met an older German guy who works for a firm that digs water wells. He has been to 30 African countries and must have some amazing stories to tell. We're planning to head for Chinguetti tomorrow.

After an unsuccessful attempt this morning to send our website updates, we left for Chinguetti, which is the seventh holiest city in Islam, and was once home to Islamic scholars. The piste out of Atar started out corrugated, then we hit a section of new but rapidly crumbling tarmac as we climbed onto the plateau. At the top the road returned to dirt, but it was freshly graded and fast for 40km. After we passed the road crew it became evident why the grading was needed. We arrived in Chinguetti shortly thereafter, and looked for somewhere to have lunch. We didn't find anything and were rather disappointed with the town, so we headed out into the sand dunes to camp for the evening. We drove down (or up, I don't know which way the water flows) an oued or river bed along the route to Ouedane. Witt got stuck once again (he forgot to engage the differential lock) and Graham's winch acquitted itself well in extracting him. Three local women and a couple of kids approached during the recovery. Jen tried to speak to them in French, but the conversations quickly degraded into requests for gifts. We soon stopped and made camp. Graham took off his desert driving hat and put on his pastry chef's hat and made a loaf of bread to be baked over the fire in the dutch oven. Strangely, the bread came out looking almost identical to a Moroccan Frisbee. We watched few camels and a camel herder on the horizon through binoculars then enjoyed a beautiful sunset. We had Graham's bread with dinner, and were treated to another night of excellent star gazing. During dinner our fluorescent adventure light attracted a small swarm of grasshoppers (not more locusts!). Graham had the bright idea to move the light near the fire. We enjoyed watching the little buggers leap into the flames. Sweet revenge.

We left Chinguetti this morning after a delicious apricot scone, also baked by Graham. He's talking about trading his Land Rover in for a bakery in Louisville (not really). We stopped in Atar for fuel, and headed toward a piste described by Chris Scott which ends at a Guelta, or the end of a canyon with palm trees and in this case a swimming hole. Unfortunately we weren't able to find the correct road and ended out heading down the main road toward Nouakchott, where we will get our visas for Mali. The road is newly surfaced, financed by the Japanese. In some places it is already crumbling at the edges, and one section has been washed out by a storm. We were able to make good time despite a camel sitting in the middle of the road and various animals and people crossing the road in front of us at various times. Late in the afternoon we pulled off the road into the dunes and found a lonely tree to camp by.

We arrived in Nouakchott shortly after noon today. All we really need to do here is buy some groceries and get our visas for Mali, but it's Friday and the embassy won't be open until the next working day on Sunday. We spent the afternoon uploading web updates at the internet cafe (hooray for fast internet connections and qwerty keyboards!!). The campground is nice and shady, but they play rap music on the boom box all day, which gets a bit tiresome. We had a good dinner at a local restaurant and were happy to get to bed early.

We decided this morning to stay at a nice hotel today, so after breakfast we drove around town checking out the fancy top end hotels. Mauritania doesn't have any ATM machines, so we have to conserve our supply of cash. Therefore the hotel had to accept Visa. We found one with a nice pool and decent rooms. It used to be a Novotel, but they have just built a new Novotel in town, and this one got redesignated "Monotel." You could tell it was old, but it was well maintained and the pool was great. It cost about 20,000 Ouguiya per night, or about $70. Witt and Jen spent some time relaxing in the pool while Connie and Graham enjoyed a nice air-conditioned nap. After some laundry in the bathtub, we went to Pizza Lina for dinner (we had had lunch there as well). Graham and Witt had their first taste of beer since Marrakech and it went down very nicely with the pizza. It was almost worth the 1000 Ouguiya it cost!

We awoke this morning after a very restful night's sleep in the comfort of air-con. We filled our water jugs and went to check out of the hotel. Some French aid workers staying at the hotel warned us that the proprietor was charging their credit cards in Euros, and was using 250 Ouguiya to the euro as the exchange rate. The official rate is 350 and we've been getting 370 changing on the street. So now our $70 hotel is costing us 84 euros after the tourist tax. Seemed more like a tourist screw job to us. We did have the option of changing cash to Ouguiya on the street and paying in cash, but the whole point was to avoid depleting our supply of hard currency. So we accepted our medicine and went on.

Next we headed to the Mali embassy to get our visas. We dropped off our passports, filled out the paperwork, and paid the 2000 Ouguiya per visa and left with instructions to come back at noon to pick up our passports. We did some grocery shopping and then went to the internet cafe. At noon we returned and picked up our visas on schedule. We talked about a third and final pizza before we left, but we were eager to leave Nouakchott and started out of town. Today was the first working day since we've been here and the increase in traffic is noticeable. Driving here is absolute lunacy. Cars in roundabouts are expected to yield to traffic flying through from entering roads. Traffic lights where they exist are mere decoration, and stopping at a red one invites angry honking from behind. A common practice for drivers merging onto a road is to reach out the window and make a "slow down" motion with the arm, indicating that you are to let them in. Many intersections are uncontrolled, and traffic there is left to figure itself out. This amounts essentially to playing "chicken" with oncoming traffic. Things flow along relatively smoothly as long as there isn't too much traffic. We experienced one intersection in particular that demonstrated the inefficiency of this method. Cars were backed up in all four directions, and there were cars pointed in every direction in the intersection itself. Whenever someone would move, everyone behind would jockey for position to take up the empty space and inch forward. Cars were going around the intersection on the outside (plenty of room for this on the dirt verges), only to encounter the traffic trying to enter the intersection on the other road. Our size and the fact that our vehicles are completely enclosed in steel make us particularly well suited to this game. Witt was leading and moved forward to edge out a van vying for the empty space ahead. At the same time a Mercedes taxi (all the taxis are old, beat up Mercedes 240Ds) decided that reversing would be a good idea. His trailer hitch hit Rafiki's front tire and driver looked a bit concerned that he had hit a tourist vehicle. With no damage sustained, we finally made it through the intersection.

Nouakchott is currently experiencing a fuel shortage (this may be normal; we're not sure) and most gas stations were empty. The few that did have fuel were apparent by the long lines of cars. We had been told that fuel was available outside of town, so with a little less than half a tank we headed for the next town down the road, Aleg, a distance of about 260km. We tried for fuel at a town in between with no luck.

We arrived at Aleg and had to get fuel here in order to make it to the next large town. We pulled into a gas station where people seemed to be getting fuel, but we were told that we had to go see the "Prefect" to get an "Authorization" to get fuel. When asked where the Prefecture could be found, and were told he was "in the mountains." (To be fair, since Witt and Graham don't speak French all that well, this is what we understood. I'm sure that what they were saying was far more helpful). Eventually we learned that he was in the official government building on the hill. We walked up the hill and were told that the Prefect had gone home for the day, and we received vague directions to his house. Each of these interactions is of course prefaced by lots of "Bonjour, ca va? ("Hello, how's it going?" in French)", "Salaam Alekum" ("hello" in Arabic), shaking of hands all around, etc. While all of this was going on, Connie and Jen were stuck guarding the cars, with all the children in the village crowded around asking for "Un stylo" (a pen), "un cadeau" (a gift), or whatever they could think of. They'd hang on the door and look around inside and point at stuff asking for it. Eventually the only choice was to roll up the windows and ignore them. We drove in the general direction indicated by the guard at the office, and eventually someone directed us to the Prefect's house, where he invited us in to his living room. It was air conditioned and very nice. There was a TV in the corner showing "Weakest Link" in French. One of his "people" brought us tea, and he asked us where we were going, where we were from, etc. He wrote out to fuel authorizations for 70 liters each, which judging by how much was being put in other vehicles is a large amount to be given to one person. We received our diesel and after giving 60 Ougs tip to the attendant because he didn't have any change, were finally on our way. Thinking back on this experience it amazes me that in the entire town there is one guy who can authorize the purchase of gas. I'm trying to imagine having to go see the mayor of Boulder to get an authorization to buy some gas. Oh well, whatever works for them. It only took us about an hour to buy a tank of diesel.

The second part of our Driving in Mauritania movie was shot getting out of Nouachott.

We woke up this morning, ground some Kenyan coffee we bought in Paris and used our French press to create a great brew. We'll enjoy it while it lasts, because when it's gone we'll be down to Nescafe. We got on the road at about 8:30.

The passenger side window on Witt and Jen's car became disconnected from the lifter mechanism, necessitating an early stop for lunch. We disassembled the door panel and used the pull ring off a tin can to try to anchor the window in place. We'll see how it fares. We arrived in Kiffa at about 2pm. Our intention is to take the dirt road (or piste) 280 km south to Kayes, Mali. Kiffa is the last customs post on this route so we stopped here to get our carnet stamped. We met Lisa and Griff at the customs office who are returning to England from a trip to Ghana. We exchanged information with them while waiting for customs and bought the last of their CFA (Currency used in Mali and many other countries in West Africa).

With our paperwork in order, we headed for Kayes, following the waypoints Frederick (from France whom we met at the campground in Marrakech) gave us. The route took us down the runway of the local airport, which was the widest strip of asphalt any of us had seen in some time. The road is taking us farther into the Sahel and away from the sand dunes of the Sahara Desert. The landscape is rolling hills with dry grasses and some sparse trees and bushes. We camped a little way off the track after a couple of hours and spent the evening repairing tires and writing updates for the website.