The great catchup.

The sun had yet to rise above the desert as we where getting up from our humble hotel room. There where none showers taken - if you had experienced this hotel experience - you would do the same. We where first in line to cross the border and after some creative shuffling of passports we got to leave Morocco. We headed straight out into no mans land - where the no men live. We were first in - so we had nobody to follow. Confident we went by the guides offering their services - saying "no" - confident we where saying "this would be no problem to cross at night" - confident we got stuck in the sand. For about 10 seconds. The no men were at our car in no-time - looking for the possibility to help and for euros. And euros we paid.

The crossing into Mauritania was unspectacular - we did not have to bribe a soul. All in all getting into Mauritania cost us 3 hours - 3 precious hours. The process is in some 3 steps at each side of no mans land. First passports - getting them stamped - then the police - more stamps - then customs - even more stamps. There is always the possibility for stamp tax. As some other teams experienced there is a possibility to get every and last page of your passport stamped. There is also the possibility of tax tax, just to dig the knife a little deeper into your flesh.

But. We were quite surprised how smooth the crossing had gone. And we were laughing as the border guard explained to us the concept of potholes. "Yes, yes, we know that there are potholes." We kept that in mind for about 10 seconds. The roads were straight and smooth and traffic was non existent -our deathmobile cruised along at 130. Then. The mother of all potholes. There was no going around - there was no breaking - there was just a loud crashing and grinding sound that shook the very core of our being. We stopped and expected carnage under the car. But. Nothing. Absolutely nothing had happened to the car at all. Our bash-plate saved the day. As it did time and time again that day. Now let me tell you about potholes in Mauritania - normally a pothole is just a hole in the road. In Mauritania you have nice straight roads of surprisingly good asphalt. The surprise is even greater when the road seizes to exist for 2-3m and instead of the road there is a 30-40cm dip. The first pothole we got to claimed at least two cars from our rally. Amongst them a 4x4 mobile home - a car laden with equipment and gear. We commented on it in camp earlier - saying that this was the way to do the rally - travel in style.

We drove trough Mauritania that day - the control posts not asking for bribes - or trying to rip us of by finding some excuse to fine us. Just as the light totally disappeared we got to the border crossing at Rosso - the crossing that had been described as rather chaotic and the chance to get ripped off or just robbed blind was not something we really wanted. As we were leaving Rosso we got called up on the CB by some teams that had their passports and money taken by the police in Rosso... So we got out on a dirt track going towards Diema. A dirt road. In Mauritania. In total and absolute darkness. Living in western countries you never truly experience absolute darkness - the darkness of Africa. The dirt road is rather close to an off road experience - an experience we had to endure for 96km. About 10km in we were driving on the dirt track as it suddenly changed to a river of mud. And we got stuck. The car halfway into the mud. The car stalled and would not start as the batteries had almost been drained of our excessive use of power for fans and lights and electronics. We almost expected to stay in this big mud-hole for several days. But as a miracle the car started and as an even larger miracle we were able to back out of the mud. The rest of the trip was agonizing with bumps and our bash-plate and various other parts of our car hit various parts of the ground. But we puled trough. We got to the border at midnight - and it should have been closed for a couple hours. A 100euro got us trough it though. 2-3times what most had to pay to cross - but less then what some had to pay.

We were in Senegal. It was smooth sailing towards Dakar - just some police that did the whole highway robbery in uniform trick as our tail light had rattled a little out of its socket on the dirt road. Another 70euros. Finally we were closing in on camp. We were soon to see the other teams. Victory was in our grasp. Then. We chose the 4x4 entrance to camp. Deep sand. And now we got to see how bad our car does on sand. It just got stuck. Not going back or forwards - not spinning but our clutch did not get our wheels spinning. It was as if we where trying to climb a really, really steep hill. We called out for help on the CB and our call was answered by the same team that we had talked to earlier - the team having the nice and pleasant Rosso experience. The cute californian girls from team 94 - they insisted on being mentioned in our blog, but we don't fall for that kind of flattery and nice girls in general. With the extra man (and girl) power we got our car out of the sand - back on the road and into camp. At 6:00 we were officially back in the Rally!