After a night in Nouakchott to shower and catch up on food shopping we ventured away from the coast inland to the old trading city of Chinguetti. Once a major player in Mauritania, it is still considered by Mauritanians to be one of the holiest places in Islam. The city itself is a shadow of its former self and is slowly giving way to the sands of the desert that surround it. It's incredible to see the many buildings that are half-burried in the sand, and one can only think that it is one major sand storm away from completely disappearing. [View Full Entry]

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While the cities in Mauritania are anything but special, the drive from Nouadhibou to Nouakchott was far and away the highlight of the trip on the Dover to Dakar section. There is a brand new tarmac'd highway linking the two cities, but if we took that it would entirely defeat the purpose of travelling overland. A little sandmatting was certainly worth the effort in order to experience the real Sahara. Part 2 of this drive took us along the beach through a bird sanctuary and national park. When we arrived at the beach we had to wait around for several hours [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Nouadhibou the night of the 14th. A stark contrast to relatively civilized Morocco. This is when Kathie finally exclaimed, "okay, now we're in Africa!" The town itself is not much to speak of, but it was a place to re-charge after a couple of nights bush camping and stock up on supplies for the 3-day journey across the sand dunes to the capital of Nouakchott. After a short drive along the road, we left the tarmac and began our trek through the sand. Rather than roads, there are trails left behind by previous vehicles where the tracks haven't [View Full Entry]

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Sorry for the length of time between updates. There isn't much for internet cafes when you're bush camping in the desert! We've got a lot to update on so we'll try to split it up into a few entries. The next part of our journey took us through the disputed territory of Western Sahara. We won't go into the historical details of the dispute, but the result is that there are police checks every couple of kilometers (or so it seems) and the ocasional mine field. Surprisingly though, the road is all tarmac and in very good shape the whole way [View Full Entry]

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We are enjoying the last of our day and a half visit to Essouira. It's a beach resort town and used to be popular with the hippie crowd. The atmosphere is so much more relaxed here and for the first time we felt comfortable browsing the shops in the Medina without being hassled to our wits end. We are taking advantage of the time to relax and gain our strength for the next portion of our trip. After today we make our way across the Sahara desert and into Mauritania over the course of 6 days. There's going to be lots [View Full Entry]

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What a crazy, stressful city! When we first arrived it took very little time for our driver to get hopelessly lost in the maze of streets (especially without his co-driver who stayed back in Rabat to pick up our visas). He hired a couple of local teens to direct us to our hotel which was right off the main square Djemma el Fna. This is where the action is. The square is full of entertainers, scammers, snake charmers, etc. It was fairly quiet during the day, but it really came alive at night. You had to be on your toes at [View Full Entry]

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Next stop on the list is Ait Benhaddou, site of one of the most photographed Kasbahs in the world. It's been seen in such films as Gladiator, Lawrence of Arabia, and Jewel of the Nile among many others. We only spent a couple hours here, but it was a worthwhile photo op. Much of it looks like ancient ruins until you find out that people still live in the Kasbah. We spent the night at a campsite just outside of town and prepared for the drive over the High Atlas mountains to Marrakech. [View Full Entry]

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It was a beautiful drive from Rabat to Todra Gorge, it took us just under two days of driving to get there. We saw monkeys on the side of the road, and villiages in places you wouldn't expect to see villiages. In a seemingly endless expanse of nothingness would emerge villages made of mud bricks surrounded by palm trees and corn fields. Irrigation is amazing. When we arrived in Todra Gorge we started in the incredibly touristy portion along with hoards of French and Spanish tour busses. It was a pretty cool view from the centre of the gorge, but for [View Full Entry]

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The primary purposes of our next two big cities were to obtain our visas for Mali and Mauritania. We also had lots of time in Rabat to take in some of the sites and catch up on laundry, internet and groceries. While we were in Rabat, we were staying at the Camping a la Plage, in Sale, which is across the water way from the main city. We were told that we could take a petit taxi from central Rabat back to our campsite. After doing a few errands in the city we decided to try. The driver was very kind [View Full Entry]

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Volubulis dates back to 2nd or 3rd century AD. All that remain are ruins, which some have been reconstructed by the french, to give us an idea of what it may have looked like way back then. There are also still some beautiful mosaics, which unfortunately are fading fast in the heat of the sun. Some people think that Volubulis was abanded because too many people were dying from lead poisoning. The water pipes were made out of lead. Here are a few neat pictures, again the truck kitty paid for a guide. Unfortunately the guide was not very enthusiatic due [View Full Entry]

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