Day Sixteen

January 13, 2006

An extremely enjoyable day. And there’s a very simple reason – we hit the beach. And pictures here can’t even begin to describe the scenery. We broke camp at around 10:30am and had to traverse about 5 miles of fairly challenging terrain before we actually got to the shore. As always, we got stuck here and there (Panda only got bogged down once!), but overall progress was solid and we arrived at the western edge of the African continent by around 1pm.

But once we hit the Atlantic Ocean, the surroundings were truly awesome. Miles and miles of sandy beaches, a small fishing village here and there, and clear blue skies. And the coolest thing by far was the fact that we were able to drive right along the water’s edge for hours at a time. Nice, solid packed sand that made forward progress very pleasant indeed.

It’s already 730pm here in Mauritania as I write this and we’ve got a very cool experience coming up tonight. Right now I am sitting in a huge tent, right on the beach, that belongs to the village nearby. So instead of individually pitched tents, we are all bunking up together under this one primitive roof. The entire group of 13 – like one big happy family. I must say, it’s pretty awesome to be sitting here right by the ocean, in a Bedouin tent, listening to the waves, as I write a report for our CarDomain readers. As a matter of fact, our guide Hameen just poked his head in and told us that the local villagers are going to be cooking us fresh fish for dinner. Now how cool is that!

Ah yes, dear Readers, I do have one little incident to report that we all found quite humorous. You see, our little Citroën that underwent body straightening yesterday also suffered a most interesting form of steering failure around noon today. And it’s pretty simple: the steering column snapped and broke away from the steering rack. Here are the ingredients that made it all happen:

1. Take one Declan (our wise old mentor)

2. Add an underpowered French vehicle with about 25 horsepower

3. Ensure said vehicle had its frame bent & unbent within the last 24 hours

4. Use Declan to propel vehicle in a circular path at maximum speed (to build up speed for a tough hill ascent)

5. Turn steering wheel as far as possible.

6. Bang! Snap! Voila! Broken steering column.

So picture this. The entire group has already proceeded, a lone French Citroën is making a huge donut in the middle of the Mauritanian desert, when all of a sudden it loses all directional control and proceeds in the direction diametrically opposite to that intended by its pilot. I needn’t say more.

Now on most cars this would have been a debilitating failure. On the Citroën, however, we just shoved the steering column back into position, whacked it a few times with a rubber mallet, and done. Fixed again!

But we had performed open air surgery for the second time, so drastic measures were in order. Declan, being the talented and fearless Citroën pilot that he is, would be required to continually whack a rubber mallet into the center of the steering wheel while driving along the Mauritanian coast at about 45 mph. As a matter of fact, I just spoke to him a few minutes ago and he told me that he had developed a ‘bail out plan’ in case all steering control is lost and the vehicle suddenly swerves uncontrollably into the Atlantic. Now I know I shouldn’t be thinking this way, but somehow, deep down inside, I would love to have watched that plan in action. It would have been worth the loss of one Citroën…

Okay, I think the fish is ready. Time to grab some local food and enjoy an evening under the stars with new found friends.

Signing off from N 18 degrees, 52.200 minutes & W 16 degrees, 10.480 minutes.