African Mopeds

Wow, can you imagine yourself riding a little moped in the middle of the desert ? We did it and we can tell you it's a real life experience, trust us ! Stepped onto the only road crossing the Sahara, we quickly got to the heart of the matter : wide plains streching until the horizon, sand dunes and the Atlantic ocean below. Because of the bitter sand wind, we found ourselves obliged to hide our faces in scarfs... looking Lawrence d'Arabie-alike. Riding in the desert is really strange. Some hours just fly : you enjoy the landscape, you cross cars, you dream of what will be your next trip (yes, it's true!) etc. But some others hours just stretch as if they'll never ever end : it seems like nothing happens at all, your moped is really slow and you can't stand that scenery any longer. Even if the road is in good condition, some parts were trickier than others. For instance, you can sometimes see roadsigns preventing you from going off the road because of the presence of mines ! Quiet worrying, really. It's even worse at the border between Western Sahara and Mauritania as there is a five-kilometers-long no man's land where the road is nothing but a trail full of sand and pothole. As you can understand, our poor and loyal mopeds didn't much like the 2'000 kilometers in the desert and we had no choice but confide them to that guy who had been introduced to us as a mechanic. Garage European standards being really different of Mauritanian ones, we really thought we would never ever be able to ride on our dear mopeds again. Seeing our mechanic fixing our engines with a great many blows of screwdriver on the carbuttor was so stressfull... But guess what ? Our guy did well and the mopeds started again as if brand new ! We have now finished with the crossing of desert and we're getting nearer and nearer of the Senegal border. Our aim "Dakar" is not far. Nouakchott, 3rd of July