The shy older guy who looked after the tents, Silvo, helped prepare the fish and they were barbecued on a drift wood fire pit dripping in Remmie's marinade. Remmie pulled out the stops and presented the fish on a big dish piled with rice and cucumber and we ate together in the coolness of the tent. This really was the life, if only we had a few cold beers!
It grew dark quickly and we re-stoked the fire, Silvo joined us with his tea making equipment and brought a carpet and some chairs, I got the feeling he was pretty lonely as he didn't actually live in the village and enjoyed the company. Again master chef Remmie got on the case and between them we went to bed full of omelette and sweet tea.
The group got an earlyish start to tackle to route back. Robin and I made good progress this time despite some wandering dunes and thankfully this time without major incident made it back to the Total station in an hour and a half. The Hilux had just arrived and they were pumping the tyres back up, we'd completely passed each other in the desert without noticing. With some quick goodbyes again Torsten negotiated with a truck driver heading south and the Belgians took off north, with luck we'll see them again in Morocco.
Robin had received some sad news about the loss of a very close friend's mum while we were in Senegal. At 11am, to coincide with the funeral in the Uk, we headed in to the desert behind the station and had a quiet moment, facing north. Two curious donkeys came and joined us while Robin said a few words about Sheila.
Back in the station about twenty early 90 Mercs had arrived as this years German Dust and Diesel rally, driving down to Dakar before back to Mauritania to sell them, if only Torsten had waited half an hour! We ate breakfast and got on the road.
It was strange to see the landscape changing again in reverse, even the types of cars and encampments rolling back, like some kind of test to check it had all been real the first time. The storms must have passed and the sky was clearer again and mercifully the air cooler, in fact as the road turned along the iron ore train line to head back towards Nouadibou the temperature fell noticeably, the wind now coming from the sea rather than the desert. We met the dodgy looking road block again at the turn off for the frontier but could see they were real gendarmerie in the pickup this time, a document check and away across the rail track where the air was now properly cold.
Since I had done the Mauritanian entry I elected to do the exit, which all went surprisingly quickly after a wait for the end of lunch break. It was quiet today and these guys had all been a lot more professional last time than their southern counterparts, in an hour we were back in no mans land, determined not to buckle another wheel on the rocks or plough it into a other sand pit!
We rode past the wrecked cars and piles of pillaged goods, along the sand tracks and past a few cars and lorries picking their way in the other direction. When we reached the money changers in the central clearing Robin stocked up on a few Dhirams before we rode the last section to arrive in palm tree lined reception alleyway of the Moroccan frontier. If Senegalese border posts were Ford Fiestas and Mauritanian BMWs, Moroccan felt like a Bentley. Efficient, polite, smiling (maybe they could send over a few interns from US immigration). With a chat and a laugh and a 'Bon voyage!' we were back in to Western Sahara. The Bureau de Assurance closed at 6 so arriving at 5.45 the guy had already gone to the pub, there was nothing for it but head up the road to camp.
Learning from last time we found a pile of rocks marked with a rag and headed down the track towards the Marine post, turning to head along the beach a bit. We had a very friendly visit of course to check who we were and cooked dinner, washing up in the crashing waves on the rocks beyond the small sandy cliffs.
The way back seemed a lot longer than the outbound leg, unwillingly my mind started playing games trying to guess the next petrol station or land mark. I remembered the sand eaten rocks, hollowed out by the whipping winds, the herds of shaggy camels looking grumpily at the noisy vehicles, towers of rocks built up by shepherd boys, great slabs of sandstone stood up and hand scrawled with an advert, but I hadn't noticed the emerald green sea, streaked with blue and topped with long racing white horses. Sometimes it appeared between the cliffs or dunes others it dropped away and I stood on the pegs to catch the last glimpse, it was beautiful in the sunshine.
The KTM was getting a bit of a wobble on so I pulled in to a petrol station to check the tyre pressures, low front, very low, then we spotted the thorns, about twenty of them from the desert. In fact just as we'd pulled out two that had made it through the 4mm inner tube and patched them under a tree Robin checked his front tyre and found the biggest thorn of all, deflating the tyre instantly when he pulled it out. It was going to be slow progress today!
In the next petrol station a man in crazy glasses and juggling trousers approached us, he was Portuguese and with his friend riding two GSs down to Burkina Faso. He asked about Mauritania, if we had experienced any problems and told us they had just had three days of rain through Morocco. Further up the road we could see the evidence, the desert was flooded on to the road, bowls and oueds in the landscape now full of redish brown water, some areas of green looking brighter beside the dark wet ground. It seemed crazy, mud, in the desert!
We spent the next night in Boujdour, a fishing town come military base, being served by a mini Joey form Friends just down the road from the traditional Moroccan styled hotel El Qoeds, tiled blue with hand carved plasterwork, the bikes even got a garage.
The sand kept rollin past but now there were less dunes again. Laayoune was full of white UN 4x4s and minibuses. They helped us locate the only bar in town, hidden through a network of passageways at the back of the smart hotel. In the dim illicit surroundings a few business men wobbled about served by an old school barman with everyone on a tab, we drank the first beers since our most southern point in Senegal. The interior decor must have originally matched the rest of the hotel but it was obvious it hadn't been touched or even cleaned in a long time, like the shady black sheep of the family, lead astray but still reluctantly included in the establishment.
It was no easy task trying to find the southern entry to Plage Blanche from El Ouatia along the coast behind Tantan. An old guy with deep sunken eyes told us by the beach in town that he hadn't heard of it but that the coast further north was full of US military playing war games. This tied up with what the French lads had said last time we were there, they had stood and negotiated access from a side road to the beach. We headed up the track along the clifftops and passed through some abandoned earthworks, it was stoney and hard going on the DR, with the odd surprising muddy puddle! Climbing a rise we stopped to discuss progress and an APC appeared from no where grinding it's way at a steady speed across the track! Looking around there were more of them, spinning, driving, going in every direction at once like a box of windup toys let loose. A jeep bounced over with an irate older guy and a smiling middle aged driver both in uniforms, it was indeed now ALL a military zone and these ten tonne ballerinas were the toy soldiers the old man had meant. More than a bit disgruntled I told the officer a road sign might have been a good idea, we got an apology but not much else, just a lumpy 10km back to town.
Turning inland the countryside instantly became greener and we pulled up hills and across plains, overtaking lorries stacked high and old Renaults burning oil. We were out of Land Rover land again back in to the world of the hard worked Mitsubishi truck. As the sun got low we found a sandy washout behind some rocks cut through by the main road, it was surprising how quickly the sound if the road disappeared and then stopped as the traffic wrapped up for the night. The stars began to poke out and Robin decided to break out the last of his 'gift' shortbread, it had survived the miles of desert for a fitting end; sitting on the rocks with a nice cuppa overlooking the valley.
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