Leaving Morocco is not so easy. You go into the border area, park your bike and drop off your passport. Then you wait. And you wait. And you wait along with twenty million other people of all sizes and skin colours, dressed in European jeans and Arabic gowns.
When someone finally calls your name (or something that sounds like it) you smash yourself through the mass of waiting people, before they put your passport back on the bottom of the stack of documents. Finally. Can we continue to Mauritania now? We have no car so we should be able to move into the nomans land. If a man in green with a gun would not have sent us into another line of waiting people, supposedly for luggage inspection. When it is our turn we are invited to sit down by an officer under a tree (finally in the shade) and thirty seconds later we can continue. Let`s just remember the interesting conversations we had while we were waiting.
While biking in nomans land Antoine has to point something out: `Chantal, you lied to your mother`. (The evening before we had sent several messages back and forth in which my mom stated her fear for our trip through the mined nomans land between the Western Sahara and Mauritania. I said that the road was very clearly marked, so no worries.) No need to say more.
Nomans land seems to be the best place to dump your run down car, caravan or truck. Besides these rusted vehicles, we see sand, stones and sun. Beating sun. It feels creepy to be in this area and it takes us a while before we make our way through. There is supposedly one road, but trucks and other traffic create new tracks every day to avoid deep sand. When we hesitate at an intersection, Martin catches up with us. He is driving a car with a canoe on top through the desert, which is a very interesting appearance. We follow him and make it safely through. On the other side, at the Mauritanian border we meet Johan and Jeannette, who we have met before on the Moroccan side. They have had the pleasure of getting stuck in nomans land with their 4 wheel drive. Antoine and I make it through this border rather quickly and without a problem. The officers in charge are very correct and try to impress me with their knowledge of The Netherlands. This entire border crossing took us only six hours. I feel whiped out so one kilometer into Mauritania we take a break. Johan and Jeannette catch up with us and we decide to camp together in the desert.
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