22 january

DEPARTURE FROM NOUAKCHOTT

Fabrizio and I go to breakfast in the morning, take some money and then go home. Let’s go, quickly prepare my things, load the bike and go. Fabrizio proposed to go with them to a small bay about two hundred kilometers north of Nouakchott, there are about thirty kilometers of dirt road to go. I reserve the right to confirm when I get there, I want to see what the road is like, doing it with the jeep is not the same thing. We stop to eat something and to make petrol, as often happens in Africa, the distributors do not supply petrol, but magically there is the black market, paying it much more obviously, but in Africa it is so. Shortly after we reach the crossroads for the bay, the first five hundred meters are deep sand. I’m sorry, but I decide not to go, I don’t want to risk burning the clutch, however I’m not lightning on the sand and I’m tired. I greet and thank Fabrizio for the hospitality, I leave with the intention of arriving at the border with Morocco. I arrive around five but I decide not to enter, I stop in a tavern just before the border. Bad place and bad faces. I take a room and park the motorbike inside the hut. I don’t eat anything, I’m not hungry and I go to sleep dressed as a motorbike, the cleanliness leaves much to be desired.