If you had told me after my 46-hour bus ride from Mali to Senegal that it wouldn’t be the longest one I would have to do I would have laughed and said come on, but you would have been right.
After a night in Nouakchott I found a car heading north to Laâyoune the last large city in Western Sahara and about 2000km from Nouakchott. So, this is a very short account of this trip as the whole thing ended up taking 56 hours.
The first day we left at around 8:00, the car was good and very empty since the man had to get to Laâyoune to pick up something. The only other passenger was a Senegalese man name Stephan, the driver was hoping to pick up people along the way. The road followed the coast line and made its way through the dunes of the coast. The rain had played havoc here to and we had to go very carefully through some flooded sections, passed stuck cars, all the while hoping we wouldn’t join them.
The driver was in no rush though even on the good sections and this started to annoy Stephan and me as we knew the boarder would close. But he stopped to chat to people and we had many more rest stops than needed. We figured he didn’t want to drive in the night and he got his wish because we missed the border by 30mins and so began my first night sleeping on the side of the road.
Stephan was nice, and we chatted a lot and played cards. He had tried to tell the driver we were in a rush and wanted to go faster the next day, the driver said he would see what he could do. I met three French guys who had been cycling from France to Senegal but had been stuck at the border for five days due to issues with their visas, there were hoping that the next day was their last.
The morning came, and the border slowly opened at 8:00 and we finally got our exit stamp and piled into the now full car. There is a small 3km strip of road between the borders, it is not paved and seems to be a sort of dumping ground for dead cars and other garbage. But soon enough we hit the Moroccan border control and it was just like night and day compared to all the other ones I had been through. The facilities were like that of North America or Europe; they even had x-ray machines for the cars and trucks. I didn’t need a visa, just an entry stamp, and that was obtained simply.
This is where the trip gets a bit interesting, the driver had found another car that would supposedly move faster, and I was transferred to this car. Stephan was having trouble getting through the border and said that he would have to wait there to get it sorted out, so we had to say goodbye.
The new car did move a bit faster and the guys in it where very friendly, but my French wasn’t good enough to have a conversation with them. Even in Western Sahara things were very difference, the road was perfect and rest stops started to pop up. They had all the amenities, restaurants, petrol, groceries and places to rest. The guys bought me my first tajine in one of these stops, fried beef and vegetables that you eat by using bread as a spoon, it was fantastic.
Now the car was moving faster than the old one, but we were packed in and it wasn’t moving that fast. We were stopping a lot for various reasons, and one time while waiting to get some police clearance I saw the old car catch up, which was a bit annoying, but I didn’t see Stephan in it. They pulled up and the police barrier and then suddenly I saw Stephan run up behind them, get something out of the car then runs back. Then he saw me and came over to me.
He had finally gotten through the border and had run into another Senegalese man who was a driver and had just dropped someone off at the border and was returning home. Now he was a private driver, so the car was returning empty. Stephan said that I could come with them and pay nothing to Laâyoune and then just give the bus fair equivalent and they would take me all the way to Marrakesh. This was brilliant, Stephan insisted I sat in the front and two of the guys from the other car joined us.
The trip from this point on was brilliant, sitting comfortably in a brand-new Renault in my own seat, we had tunes blaring, and good tunes at that. It began to feel like a road trip with buddies as we laughed and had a great time together, stopping for meals and everyone getting me new things to try.
We past through Dakhla and they Laâyoune, I was shocked by these cities, there were in the middle of nowhere but had a modern feel with proper boulevards and street lights and shops. I was very surprised in the comparison between Nouakchott and these cities which aren’t even capitals or in the main part of the country. About two hours outside Laâyoune the driver was getting tiered and, so we pulled into a rest stop. The Senegalese guys and I slept in the car; the other two Moroccan guys went and slept in the mosque, an option not open to us.
The next day we hit the road and the flat desert landscape began to get rocky and mountains sprang up, green returned to the spectrum. Not only did the landscape change but so do the roads and cities, everything got more built up. When we got to Agadir and got on the freeway heading to Marrakesh it looked and felt like I was in somewhere like California than Africa. The sun was setting when we finally reached Marrakesh. They drove me near my hostel and walked me right to the door. I ended up spending 56 hours traveling but had a fantastic time in the end and it was because of those guys.
If you thought, I was surprised by Laâyoune it was nothing compared to Marrakesh. I think my mouth dropped open as I was hit by reverse culture shock as everything that was impossible to get was at my figure tips. I saw a McDonalds and I think shed a tear which is defiantly the wrong response. But I’ll leave it here for now because Morocco is a whole other story.
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