Day Eleven

January 8, 2006

Hello Everyone. And greetings from the Sahara desert and what is probably one of the most isolated towns in the world. Dakhla, Western Sahara (or part of Morocco, depending on which map you look at).

On that note, I’ll digress for just a moment here and give you a bit of background on Western Sahara. Technically, it’s still a separate country recognized by the UN, but for all intents & purposes it’s now part of Morocco. It’s a vast desert region which once belonged to the Spanish, when it was called Rio de Oro (which is actually a very odd name, if you ask me, since this corner of the world doesn’t have much of either gold or water).

After the Spanish pulled out in 1975, Morocco & Mauritania both laid claim to this land (God only knows why), which is why we have that wonderful minefield we’re going to be crossing in a day or two. Mauritania quickly backed out though (and if you ask me, they’re the clever ones), so Morocco started pouring money into infrastructure projects in the region. And then they offered its people up north incentives (jobs & tax free living) to move down here.

And this takes us right back to Dakhla, which really is an odd little place. This town of about 40,000 inhabitants is pretty much a day’s drive from anywhere else (except a few gas stations), but everything here is brand new and clean. We even indulged a bit and had dinner in the town’s 4-star hotel this evening (but please do keep in mind that a 4-star hotel in Morocco is sort of like a Holiday Inn back home). Some of our team members had steak, I had some delicious fish (dorado, in case you’re curious) and they even served nice cold Budweisers (in cute little 250ml bottles). I tell you – a proper meal and chilled beer never tasted so good!

Buildings everywhere are sparkling & new, shops are well stocked and the streets are all in good shape. There are very few beggars and no slums at all. It’s just completely different when you compare it to the cities further north. So needless to say, the Moroccan strategy has pretty much worked. To emphasize the fact that the Moroccans consider this region theirs, we didn’t even encounter one of the many police checkpoints at the actual Morocco/Western Sahara border, which we crossed a few days ago.

By the way, for those of you interested in all things technical, you may have noticed that our pictures aren’t quite the quality that we’ve had earlier in the trip. And that’s because we are now out of cell phone range and into satellite telephone-only territory. The phone itself sort of reminds me of a regular cell phone from about 10 years ago. It has a huge antenna as well – about half an inch in diameter and 12” long when extended. On top of all that, it only works outdoors. Finally, once connected, the data speed is quite slow too, so I have to reduce files to about 30-40k to get them back to CarDomain home base.

But, and this is the most important thing, it does work! And that little device is what enables CarDomain to bring you completely up-to-date coverage of what is perhaps the nuttiest automobile event in the world.

So we’re off to Mauritania tomorrow. And that’s where we hit our first crazy border crossing, the mine field and the real hardcore desert. I can’t wait!