Western Sahara ...

Leaving Tan Tan was a bit difficult, I was torn, such a scruffy little town but everyone we met had a heart of gold, I really wanted to stay on but was also concerned that 'wasting' time in Morocco would leave less time to see Mauritania!

Getting a SATAS bus to Dahkla for 320Dh was a good move. Clean, heated and more spacious I knew this wasn't going to be the same journey from hell as we had had with the other bus from Casablanca!

The journey was relatively uneventful apart from the odd police posts where yet again I had to interpret no less than 7 times for him, what his job was, not once did he ask me how to say it or practice it in case we hit another police post! We reached Laayoune when I was told not to get off as we would be moving shortly. Fine, lots of people got off and I thought that we might just get lucky with seating and have 2 seats each to spread out in and sleep overnight as it was now 9pm.

How wrong I was! It filled up again (40 minutes later so I could have had a tea!) then we reversed into an alley .. I thought to turn around; no, they were still loading. Then it seemed as if we were off, but someone had tried to fiddle his ticket and was getting a public telling off for doing so ... eventually we pulled out, but only for a kilometre, we didn't have enough fuel!!! By this time we had spent over an hour and a half in Laayoune, I was gasping for a drink!!!

We pulled out and after 2hrs or so at 1am we pulled into a service station, ate and had another mint tea. We then went on for an hour before reaching Boujdour, a new town, very typical of the Western Sahara where the Moroccan government has poured money into create these new little towns. I got off and left my travel companion dozing next to the window, whilst I was off I started chatting with Buchara who was hysterically funny, my age, recently divorced which she thought was hysterical as it wasn't 'the done thing' in Dahkla, we spent 20minutes chatting out in the rain!

Arriving in Dahkla, Buchara and I said goodbye as her taxi had turned up to take her home. It was a little van and suddenly she called out to me asking if I wanted a lift further into town to an open cafe - an offer like that at 4.30am went down well so I got my backpack and called to Julian to jump into the back of Mohammed's van. He dropped us at a cafe and we had a coffee and listened to the Koran full blast from a Kuwaiti TV station, I was desperate for some sleep but I wasn't going to get it here and really wanted to use today to push on and get to Mauritania.

Forty minutes after being there and I decided to send J off on a 'test' mission to find 'something' open, internet cafe anything that was quieter than the Koran blasting from the TV prior to the first call of prayer. He came back saying he was being 'followed' by some Moroccans so he'd turned around; no comment; being almost dawn, I suspect these Moroccans were on their way to the mosque!! Then suddenly Mohammed returned and was parked outside the cafe, he came over and asked me if I wanted to go back to his to meet his wife who had invited us back for breakfast, I interpreted all this to Julian and we clambered back into his van for a second time and drove out to near Dahkla's grand taxi rank to his flat. Barka was in fact his second wife and heavily pregnant, due 20th January! Over an impromptu breakfast with the four of us (I don't think that poor Barka had any idea we were coming!) Mohammed wanted to know more about us both so I explained about the trip and what I was doing and did a fair bit of interpreting on J's behalf before falling asleep on the cushions (fantastic guest aren't I??!).

Later that morning (9am) he drove us out to the police post at the northern end of town to get a van to Mauritania - 450km away!