Plan C

After an extended stay in Dakar, in part due to my lingering Man Flu, we have a plan for our onward movements...and it doesn't involve a fat lot of cycling or ships :(

We aim to leave Dakar on Monday, in a van. There are two reasons why cycling north out of Dakar doesn't appeal so much. First and foremost, this is the section where we got stones thrown at us on multiple occasions. Maybe I'm being a bit sensitive but I didn't much like that experience, so we're going to skip that bit. Secondly, Dakar is the most intense place we have cycled so far and we've done it three times already. Avoiding that will be a bonus of the wider 'avoid children throwing stones' plan.

Then we aim to cycle and camp for a couple or three days, to cross the border into Mauritania. We look forward to getting back on the bikes and visiting the national park near Diama again. We'll be looking out for what has changed.

Then we will meet our friend Issa, who kindly already took us into the desert. This time he has organised a guided tour of Mauritania for us. As we mentioned previously, we were sad to have mostly just transited Mauritania last time, so this time we are going to take this opportunity of a guided tour. Our instinct is always to cycle but, realistically, cycling this at this time of year (inland temperatures are pretty much permanently over 40ºC now, and regularly in the high forties) is beyond us. Or at least, beyond us if we don't have to do it. This will be an unusually resource intensive jaunt for us but we're not going to be too hard on ourselves...

This tour will end with Issa dropping us somewhere near the Moroccan border, which we will cross by bicycle. That will get us to Guergerat, which we have fond memories of. That's where we met and camped with our pal Linz, and where we slept next to a petrol station forecourt while a dog gave birth to two puppies. This time, it will be where we try to hitch a lift north with a truck driver. We have met a couple of contacts who can hopefully assist with this but failing that it'll be down to charm, instinct and cold hard cash.

We really like the idea of accompanying a part full lorry right through to northern Morocco. Not least because our experience of Moroccan lorry drivers was so positive previously, but also because it'll be a new experience. Actually, I've hitched a lot before and lorry drivers are often accommodating. Only this time we'll be making use of some of the space in the back too. We hope we can pull this off, or we may have a week or more of riding into the sandy headwind to get to Dakhla for a Supratours bus north. We'll see.

We are looking forward to this next bit and to making it back to northern Morocco. I think we're both simultaneously quite ready to get back to somewhere a bit more familiar and sad to be leaving one of the most mind-expanding places we have ever had the pleasure of visiting. Maybe one day we will return.