Africa-trip 2012 Back to Spain refugee style

The Malian side of the border was somehow exactly the opposite to the Guinean one. The people seemed very relaxed and friendly. Everybody was smiling at me and the necessary stamps and the laissez passer was done in no time. The road to Bamako was very quite, only in the outskirts of Bamako the traffic was getting dense. If I would not have known there had been a coup d'etat in Mali I would not have noticed. Everything looked absolutly normal. At around 6pm I arrived at the sleeping camel, a lodge at the south side of the river in Bamako. It was nice to arrive somewhere nice after this horrible day. As soon as I entered the lodge I met Kati and Tobi a German couple travelling with two motor-bikes. The lodge was rather busy and I learned they had a curfew in Bamako over the last 6 days and the people were all waiting for the airport, which was shot, to reopen.

As well I learned there had been some heavy shooting during the last days. All the shops and the markets were closed and the only traffic were military vehicles. I arrived at the first day the situation went more or less back to normal. Even though I was totally exhausted and hungry, the first thing I did was getting a large icecold beer. Yes, a beer never tasted better. A group of Portuguese people was just about to leave to the airport. A french couple tried as well to get a ticket for a flight but they came back. I heard people at the airport were fighting over tickets. Everybody was eager to leave the country as soon as possible. For me it was not that simple, first I had to get a visa for Mauretania and then I still had to go to immigration to get my Mali-visa. The next morning I went with Kati and Tobi to the Mauretanian embassy, they needed a visa as well. In the afternoon the visa was done and we could pick it up. The first step was done. Later I found out, we were the last persons who got a visa for Mauretania in Bamako. The rest of the afternoon I used to check over the car. Surprisingly there was not really anything to repair, at least nothing urgent. Ok, there was some oil dripping out of the rear brake drums, which meant the seal in the axle was broken again, and the steering had too much play, but it was nothing I had to fix right now. Immigration was where I was going the next day which was a Thursday. Normally it is kind of busy in there but this time there were only two more people waiting. But still they didn't do the visa the same day. I was been told to come back the next day in the afternoon. Being on the north side of the river already I went to the market to do some shopping. Back in the lodge I heard the first news about the Tuareg who took over large cities like Kidal, Gao and even Timbuctu. But this was not the only problem, news were getting worse. Larissa who was working at the German embassy as a consul which was just next door came over and kept us updated with the latest news. Sitting there enjoying some German beer, an unexpected gift from the German embassy stock, we heard the borders to Mali were closed again. This time because the surrounding countries united in the ECOVAS did not accept the new Malian leader. When I heard the news I jumped into the car and went to the next fuel station and filled both fuel tanks and all the jerry cans with diesel, you never know I thought. One hour later we heard there was a 72hours countdown before the embargo would kick in. It gave us some time to think eveything over. For sure, for me the most important matter was to get my passport back which was still at immigrations. Staying with us in the lodge was Georg, an Austrian fellow who was travelling by bicycle. He was coming down from London and was planning to move on to Burkina Faso where he had a visa for already. He was trapped by the time frame. I offered him a lift out of the country. Yet the bad news kept on coming in. Larissa told us one of the heads of the Al-quaida in Mauretania was asking for 50 dead white bodies. I wanted to leave the country via Kayes Selibabi, in fact the same route I came in. But according to Larissa this route was an absolutly no-go. I never've got any proof about this but there are times and situations where a proof is not really necessary. Kati and Tobi were planning to leave Mali in the very South to Senegal. This was the route I was taking last year. After a while I decided to do the same and to join them. The next morning Kati and Tobi left very early with their bikes. We were planning to meet again at the lodge De Mako in Senegal the next afternoon. Georg had thought his situation over and he had decided to take my offer. We were putting his bike on top of the car. I felt a little bit sorry for him. He was a very tall guy and the passenger seat in the Landrover was not really built for tall people like him. So I guess he was not very comfortable. There was another problem; to pass through Senegal I needed a laissez passer for the car. At 9am the next morning I was already waiting at the Senegalese embassy which was luckily very close to the Sleeping Camel. It didn't seem to be any trouble at all. But I noticed they were very busy in there. Many people tried to get a visa for Senegal in the last minute. I saw some huge amount of money changing their owners. Luckily German citizens like me didn't need a visa. I payed 5000CFA and came back 2 hours later to pick up my laissez passer. Back in the lodge I said a farewell to the owners. They were not sure what to do. The power supply was already cut off. They said when we leave the place it will be looted, so I reckon they had to sit it out. We, Georg and me, left around 2pm. First I had to go to get my passport and fortunatly it was there waiting for me. Bamako seemed very quite, not much traffic at all. We had to pass through Kati, the resident of the coup leader. At the outskirts of Bamako was notable little traffic, the shops and petrol station were deserted and outside Kati they had put tanks and heavy weapons along side the road. Before the checkpoint soldiers with automatic rifles lined the road. A lorry queue started which seemed to be kilometers long. It felt all very wierd but we just drove through, nobody stopped us. By late afternoon we were deep in the savannah, well away from all the activities in Bamako.

At the Senegalese side of the border the customs officer caused some trouble. I had already my documents but he didn't want to give Georg an entry stamp. We had to go to immigrations in Kedougou to get a stamp. At late afternoon we arrived at the lodge De Mako and met Kati and Tobi again. They were awaiting us with serious faces. Tobis bike had problems. The lodge was actually shot down for renovation but the owner allowed us to stay and even cleaned out a shower and a toillet without charging us anything. I offered Tobi to give him a hand with his bike. We spent more than half the day fixing it the next day but at the end it was working allright again. By the time we finished it was too hot and we dicided to stay another night. Because of the heat I had problems the night before.

In the middle of the night all of a sudden a hot wind was turning up. I mean it was hot anyway but it was even getting hotter, and the humidity was raising on top of it as well. I couldn't wait to get closer to the coast where it would be cool. It took us another two days to reach St.Louis where we were planning to stay at the Zebra-bar. Getting closer to St.Louis finally the temperature was dropping. I needed to take out some warm clothes again. St.Louis like the whole part of the North-West African coast is always very windy, with winds always coming from the North. I spent four nights at the Zebra-bar. I took the time to check over the car again. I had still 4000km to go. On Saturday the 7th of April it was time to say good-bye to my travell mates. Georg still didn't know where to go or what to do. And Kati and Tobi were planning to stay a little longer before they wanted to head to Tanger to take a boat to Genua/Italy. I very much appreciated their company. I wanted to reach Nouakchott the same day, for that reason I left early in the morning. The border Mauretania/Senegal must be one of the most corrupt borders of all.

And funny enough the guy at the Senegalese customs said my laissez passer was not valid. He must have been a practical joker, this was an official document. But I was not in the mood for any arguments, I just left, I had my stamp already. To get to Nouakchott I had to pass through a national park where I spotted some herds of warthogs and some very large saurians. The road was in very bad condition. I came across a dutch couple who had deadlocked their lorry-camper in sand. It looked very bad, but they had some people already helping them so I kept on going. I spent the night passed Nouakchott at the beach. To pass the border to Morocco the next day I had no trouble at all. Ok, at the Mauretanian side everybody was asking me for something, for money, for my jerry cans, even for my spare wheel, but at the end I gave them a hand to pump up some flat tyres and impressed by my little compressor they let me go. In one of the offices a big deal was going on to my advantage. A black fellow was trying to get into the country, he had a van loaded up to the top with goods, he was negociating with customs how much he had to pay. I was just a disturbance for them. He took my passport stamped it and gave it back, no car check, nothing. On the Moroccon side I had to pass through the scanner, but it was not busy at all and for this reason the whole procedure took only 1 hour. The Western Sahara, I love this country, especially the rough coast line which is 1500km long and almost completly deserted. But its beautiful. The first night in Western Sahara I parked at the beach shortly after crossing the border. Somehow it was military soil. There was a guy in uniform turning up asking me what I was doing. I told him I was going to stay over night. He checked my identity and than he welcomed me to Morocco with a hand shake. Morocco was just driving, day in, day out for almost 6 days. Nothing spectacular happened except maybe at the border to Ceuta. At customs they were obsessed with my rear fuel tank. The first guy was laying underneeth the car and checking the fuel tank, thinking it might be filled up with drugs. Not happy with what he saw he went for a colleague. This one came with a carpet already to have more comfort by laying underneeth my car. He was checking and knocking for quite a while until he finally realized I didn't have anything to hide. There was only one problem. After I bought a ticket for the ferry, which was by the way 40% cheaper than in Ceuta I went for a coffee. Normaly I don't drink coffee at all and this was a very strong one and excatly at the border I started to shake and sweat. Luckily I managed to stay cool, if not it probably would have been proof for him that I was trying to smuggle something out of the country. There was another funny detail. The ticket I bought was valid at 5pm. I had plenty of time I thought, but luckily I checked the time on the GPS which was adjusting itself to different time zones and I completly forgot the time in Europe was two hours ahead. Back in the car I jumped and headed straight to the port to catch my boat. The boat was a catamaran, a very modern built boat and normally it would travell with great speed, but the wind was very strong and therefor the sea was not really calm. The waves looked like they were between 5and 6 meter high. Walking inside the boat during the jorney was impossible. In fact the roughest sea I have ever seen. At 6pm I hit European soil again.