Africa – Here We Come (and Were Nearly Gone!)

Mauritania
By Rikus Visser

There are various ways of getting from London to Cape Town, the quickest being simply jumping on a plane and flying there in 11 hours. However, we decided to do it a bit differently, by trekking across this continent with a 4×4 vehicle. It took us 8 months to cover the 45,000 kilometres, 17 countries and uncountable unforgettable experiences.

Peter getting ready to work for his lunch

You might wonder what possessed us to tackle such a trip. For starters, we followed the easy 1-2-3 steps to get to Cape Town as described by a fellow traveller. ‘Basically, you drive south to Spain, catch a ferry to Morocco, continue south, turn left when you hit the West coast at Ivory Coast, continue east until you hit the east coast of Kenya, turn right and just keep going south and — ta ra — Cape Town!’ (Un)Fortunately the description of what lies inbetween needs to be completed by each traveller.

Peter, Karina (both Danish), Regina (German) and myself (South African) departed on our Trans African adventure from London to Cape Town. From the town Dahkla in southern Morocco, one must join a twice-weekly military convoy through a minefield to Mauritania. At the border, one is tactlessly reminded to stay on the road. Fellow travellers describe in grim detail the story about a Frenchman and Italian who overtook a vehicle stuck at the sandy border crossing and were killed when triggering a landmine buried next to the road. We, however, arrived in one piece in Mauritania’s border and coastal town Nouadibou. The choice to go south is either along the 400 kilometre coastline’s high-and-low water mark which is described in the ‘Lonely Planet’ guidebook as a ‘diabolical’ route. The alternative, which we took, was to follow the railway track due east for 480 kilometres into the Sahara desert to a town called Choum before turning south to Mali. Boringly enough, ‘Lonely Planet’ did not mention that ‘diabolical’ was actually invented on this latter route. However, we are here for the adventure and hey, afterwards we can sell our story for millions. The only time we came close to this figure (not resembling money terms but different vehicle and human parts) was when we drove through a non-fenced off minefield. We asked a local how long it would take us to reach Choum (a total useless question in Africa).

“One day, maximum one and a half.’
“And how far is it to Choum?” (Another useless phrase in Africa).
“Me be your guide, no problem!!!!”
“No!!!” (A very useful phrase in Africa).

Thought the Underground is Overcrowded?

All our guidebooks recommended the ‘easier’ track on the northern side of the rail line for the first 80 kilometres, but one should stick to the tracks due to the danger of landmines. After this distance at the control post, one crosses to the southern side. So why risk our lives; stay south and do not worry about mines.

Hakuna Matata (no worries) until we hit the first sand dune not 20 kilometres outside Nouadibou. Soon Peter was holding the GPS satellite compass that navigated us smoothly to the next sandpit where we could get stuck, Karina holding record of all the tracks we haven’t came across yet, myself holding my breath that the Land Rover will be able to cross the umpteenth sand dune and Regina holding onto basically anything while being thrown around the bouncing vehicle. After battling for hours to cover a mere 80 kilometres to the first control post, we came across a line of neatly arranged stones running from the rail track straight south. We stopped to clear the ‘road’ and contemplated the horrible effects of sunstroke that would cause someone to pack stones in a straight line in the middle of the desert! The next moment we saw soldiers on the northern side of the rail track standing with their hands covering theirs ears (obviously expecting a loud noise any second) and waving frantically with their protruding elbows at us to get away from where we were, because ‘YOU ARE IN A MINEFIELD!’

“Who us? No fellows, that is actually on your side.”

Sand, Sunset, Solitude – what more can one wish for?

As we walked abreast towards them, they pressed even harder on their ears. The officer in charge went totally ballistic, so before he could squash his head any further and cause a definite explosion, we decided to drive towards them. His screaming about us driving through a minefield caused more damage to our eardrums than a mine explosion would have. However, we were convinced he was just trying to scare us. After 3 days of hard driving, getting stuck on almost all of the thousand sand dunes, passing the odd wild camel, drinking tea in a Bedouin tent in the middle of absolutely no bloody where, we stumbled into Choum. So much for local info regarding distance. A couple of days later, after telling other travellers about our ordeal, their reply was: “you can thank your lucky stars. Some time ago a local driver got in the same area during a sandstorm, landed on the southern side of the rail track, hit a mine and got blown to smithereens.” We did thank each and every star — very thoroughly.

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Rikus Visser works for Getaway Africa – “Making your African Dreams a Reality”.