Mauritania

I've now reached the end of the road.... literally.  I'm in Ouadane, pronounced Wadan, an ancient caravan town in the proper Sahara.  To get here, the last 100 miles has been a corrugated piste where I saw a total of 2 families of camels, 1 4x4, 0 buildings and 0 people.

I've also visited Chinguetti, Mauritania's cultural capital where there is a rather impressive 500+ year old library with ancient Islamic scripts and astrology charts.

Other exciting snippets are;
- My first real attempt at riding on sand.  Started well, then I unexplicably decided to pi k a route through the softest, loosest looking sand and promptly fell down. Crash #1. Slow, embarrassing, but painless. Luckily my new riding partners could help pick the bike back up and remind me they have it all filmed.
- Getting the last laugh as Ferry and Gulcin run out of petrol and I have to rescue them.  Nearly every vehicle in Mauritania runs on diesel, so we have to carry lots of bottles of petrol to get us to the next station that hopefully has petrol.
- Realising my army mess tins are slightly less useful to cook with when they dont have handles. Though vice grips make a pretty good substitute.
- Half a day spent trying to compensate for my terrible French by acting out 'glue' and 'rubber hose'.
- Half a day, using said glue and a needle and thread to repair my panniers that are suffering a little with all the bouncing up and down.

Photos
1) Aftermath of crash #1
2) Street food in Atar
3 & 4) Chinguetti library
5 & 6) Road to and view from OuadaneRead more