It took us two full days of driving on a cramped truck, in the heat, over a road that has so many pot holes, we averaged in some sections 20-30km/hour to get here, but once we got to the national park, it was totally worth it. We saw our first big african animal, the Hippo. We spent 2 nights here, so we were able to relax and enjoy the park. In the morning, we went for a nice relaxing boat ride along the river to spot Hippos, which are apparently one of the more dangerous animals in Africa. During the boat ride we spotted 3 hippos in the water ahead of us; so the boat operator turned off the motor and we drifted quitely towards the hippos, hoping to get closer to them, but as we ... read more

Crossing the border from Mauritania to Senegal was an adventure in itself. Quoting directly from my journal... '...at yet another Police/Military check point along the way to get to the border of Senegal, we've decided that the border crossing at Rosso is probably going to be pretty tough and take upwards of 6-8 hours and potentially multiple bribes etc, so we're going to be taking a detour to another border crossing which we've heard through the grapevine is much easier to get through. The Border guards for Senegal are notorious for requesting bribes etc. It took us 4 hours of driving along a dirt road to get to the alternate border crossing, and even then it took us 2 hours to get through the Mauritania/ Senegal border and one stupid toll of 25 Euro (originally he ... read more

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 to allow the tide to go out so that there would be a large enough strip of firm sand to drive on. Once the tide was out far enough we were only about 10 to ... read more

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 through. We were prepared to do hours of digging in the sand, but were plesently surprised with the conditions. Our thirst for digging would be satisified later...not to worry! Upon exiting Morocco, we came across ... read more

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 all times to avoid getting hit by the scooters that were constantly zipping through. The internet here is pretty fast and reasonably easy to locate internet cafes around. So we thought we would take advantage ... read more