While this is occurring we lorries that have been waiting with use are searched. They have a good way of doing this they move out the centre load of pallets (boxes) length ways on the vehicle and then walk down the middle to make sure no one is hiding in their. There is also a small amount of movement of presents of crates of stuff that goes to the guards, just to ease the wheels. We are finally waved through one of the parts of the border and on through customs. They give us a cursory glance and then wave us through. All seams to be going well and we are now pulled up in the mine field waiting for the rest of the convoy. The smell is very bad, it makes slurry smell like lavender. There is lots of rubbish strewn around, would you want to scavenge stuff in a live mine field?
There are also quite a few wrecked vehicles about. There is no sign of explosive damage on nearly all of them. They have been stripped but that's understandable. We meet up with the guides that Dean and Brian have arranged and discuss what we want to do. We decide to take the beach route and have an adventure ;) The group of guides we meet include a money changer who has a flack jacket without the armour inserts and Liberia's deficient in his skyrocket. Unfortunately we get rather hammer on the exchange rate, but you live and learn. We travel with our two guides to the Mauritanian border que. You could easily cross the minefield without a guide and it would just be a case of keeping up with the trucks hammering across the dunes. Chris and Colin both didn't see the new Spanish road that you not supposed to follow but they could have been looking the other way. Today's music selection is a bit more random and we are playing Now albums. This means Chris is manically flicking tracks going "No, No, ooh, nah bored of that one now, ooh this is a classic leave it, shall we have that again??". We have agreed with the guides to do a 3 day route down to the capital. This will mean that we get to do both desert and beach running and aren't too rushed, it will also mean we will get some excellent pictures.
As we join the que to enter Mauritania Chris gets a call and he thinks its one of the other teams. It turns out to be Rich Baker seeing if he can pop round to see him. Rich and his wife are back in the UK from the USA).. After a bit of garble and static Chris explains that he is in a Mine Field awaiting the border crossing and Rich asks why he is clearing mines????? keeping the conversation rather short Rich is told of the website www.TeamRubbish.org.uk and promises are made to catch up in the new year.
As we are now stationary Chris decides to make a brew. Working on the British principle of if you have nothing to do put the kettle on! This is ok till the que moves and Chris has to amble along with the cooker and kettle to keep up. "If I turn the burner off it will take longer to boil".
We make it to customs and the day is starting to warm up a treat. We scatter for various points of shade and await our turn to go into the hut to talk to the officials. One person stays with the vehicles so they can check them over and the other deals with the hut officials.
The BBs go in first and end up handing over a pencil case and notepad as a cadeaux, the other option was their shades. It progresses through to Simon of WWD who does his best to plead "no understand" right up till the moment the official goes "where is my present?" in English. He ends up parting with a pencil. Chris takes the approach of looking harmless and at the floor unless spoken to giving deference and statue to the guards. Also he has stripped off anything that looks like its worth more than 50p. He makes it out without handing over a gift and is feeling smug till he sees the bag of pink tennis balls being given to the official searching the car by Colin. "bugger said Doogle!"
Once we are all clear of this we then have to fill in import documents and buy insurance. Due to leaving the ferry in Morocco with post haste we have been technically running without insurance for the last few 1000 Kms.... so this is all rather new. We get the insurance from a wooden hut and are also offered a very good exchange rate for currency. Tip: Dont Change cash in a mine field.
We are finally on our way but have a pressing need for fuel as all the petrol cars are running rather low. We are travelling well till one of our guides gets us to stop so he can get water. Chris not think mentions over the walkie talkies that in the UK we call it Vodka. Diedra points out that we aren't alone and the translator is still in the bus. Open mouth insert both feet at once. Apparently the Moroccan water isn't any good according to the guide. We run the 52 miles to the fuel station and then discover that we should have been rather clearer in what we wanted. The station we have come to only has gasoil (diesel) great for PO but as much use as chocolate fireguard for all the other cars.
It turns out that the garage owner has cans of fuel for sale but the cost is high. We try to work a deal on 130 litres which is what we recon we will need but it turns out that he only has 100. After much back and forth we buy the fuel he has and one of the guides and the pikey bus travel off to another place where their may be some more leaded fuel. At this point the guy brings out the fuel and it is in plastic 20l drums. We have fun filling the vehicles up and BBs and others are concerned about the quality of the fuel but its all we can get our grubby ickle mitts on. CH buy up the shops (huts) supply of cans of fanta and WWD stock up on water. While we are waiting several coaches pull up and stop for loo breaks. The people are really friendly and one overhears us talking about phones and offer us his to make a call if we need it. This wouldnt happen in the UK.and Chris is really surprised after all the warnings we received before we arrived. Once finally fuelled we get on our way our guide lets us know that we need to get moving as we are behind on the schedule that we wanted to do.
We start into the desert and Colin starts to film. The language gets short with lots of 4 letter words and some of it is picked up on camera as Colin didnt realised that he left it running. When we stop we swap drives as Chris has had enough of the helpful comments from the passengers seat. Colin promptly gets the car bogged down and has to agree that we havent got the best vehicle for this BB are having as much problems as us. We dig the car out and use the shovel as instructed by the guide. Its hard work and still in quite a laugh, Chris has the feeling this laugh will wear off if he has to do this more than 5 times. After letting nearly all the air out of the tires we are off again and the going is good.
We pull up just before sunset on a bit of desert that looks like any other and set up camp. As we decamp the electronics and get the tents set up Chris doesn't think the guides can believe it, but not to miss an opportunity they charge their phones. Chris remembers something he read in a book somewhere about desert cleaning of cooking equipment and gives it a try. It goes well and the pots are soon clean.
Chris has a call of nature after it gets dark and attempts to use the toilet seat. It collapses and he is left chasing the bog roll across the desert, with tears of laughter running down his face. We decided to sleep in the tent and get a good nights rest before heading off.
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