• Our spirits collapse! We are exhausted!

    December 25, 2025 in Mauritania ⋅ ☁️ 17 °C

    Despite all the Adventure, Mauritania is an incredibly tough country:
    The roads, when there are some, are better described as "holes with some tar around them", forcing us to drive very slowly to not destroy our car.
    We are surrounded mistreated animals and by extreme poverty and frequently by a desperateness and begging that completely eats us up.
    Driving in the Sand requires a degree of concentration that exhausts us, and food availability is reduced to a few tins and and some bread with jam. Very little is available.
    We have been keeping our spirits up with all our force so far, but both of us are showing "ware and tare" and have bad colds for days now.
    We are exhausted!
    And then on the way from Chenguetti back to ATAR we discover that we have been driving on a corrugated dust road for hours with the back window open creating a vacuum into the car!
    The whole bed, kitchen, equipment, books and food are covered with 5mm of fine dust!
    Our resistance collapses and we give up,
    Drive back to ATAR, clean the car for three days and decide to discontinue the trip and head to Senegal and relax at the sea.
    Our plan is to drive one more dessert round and then leave the group. We inform MANTOCO.
    Promptly we meet Christian and his Gerti on an ancient BMW motorcycle. Both are specialists on Senegal and fill us up with valuable tips supporting our endeavour.
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