December 31, 2011

by Mike Reali in Daklha, Morocco

Preface This writing was to be an introduction to how we came to find ourselves in Dakhla, Western Sahara; a place we expected to spend 24 hours in, and instead spent the next 33 days. What follows is an account of the first several hours of our visit, originally written during the third week of our stay.

Part Two unfortunately belongs to the ages.

** Mike’s Dakhla Account - Part One ** 30 December, 2011

“One night in Dakhla” is what we told the officer at the checkpoint at the top of the peninsula, and he waved us on. We had driven a straight twenty four hours from Marrakech in the hopes that we would make it to the border in time to cross with the other teams, who were camped there for the night as we drove. But early in the day, and with 400 kilometers still to go, we knew we wouldn’t get there in time to make the crossing. The border would be closed by then, but even if it wasn’t, we would never make it from there to Nouadhibou before sundown.

It’s commonplace for travelers who are heading south into Mauritania to make a stop in Dakhla, so we had already half expected that we would be visiting the place. I had driven the midnight shift, with Kunal navigating while Stephen and Dennis slept. At some point during the night we drove into a dense wall of fog. Under the circumstances it was easily one of the most dangerous routes I had ever driven. The landscape was pitch black, save for just a few feet of road ahead, and a million stars above. The road was narrow, with no markings, and the condition of the tarmac varied from fair to deteriorating. Occasionally, oncoming headlights would temporarily blind me as a speeding lorry passed, sparing only inches between us. At these times my best bet was to concentrate on the edge of the road just ahead of the front right wheel, because it was all that I could see, and keep as close to it as possible. Eventually the fog dispersed as abruptly as it had appeared, only to later reappear in the form of a silky white ceiling hovering about seven or eight feet above the ground. It was quite surreal.

Apart from it being the last stop before Mauritania, I didn’t know anything about Dakhla before arriving, so I was curious to see what the place was like. We had driven miles and miles with nothing but desert to our left and the coastline to our right, and suddenly there appeared to be a large lake out the driver’s side window, with people around it, and what looked like a tiny resort on one side. This in fact was the top of the bay, and we were just entering Dakhla Peninsula, a thirty mile stretch of sand hanging off of the mainland like a donkey’s tail. The city is located about two thirds of the way down on the lagoon side. The whole area is a hot destination for kite surfing.

As we rolled into town we began eyeing up hotels, considering where we would stay on our last night outside of the third world. One thing we were all set on doing was getting showers before beginning the drive through Mauritania. It had been a week since I’d last showered at Jen’s house in Rabat, and even longer for Stephen. By then my hair felt like straw, and I’d grown all too accustomed to the collective odor in the ambulance.

We parked outside the Sahara Regency, the nicest looking place we’d seen, just to get a price quote on a room. Amazingly, on the sidewalk there we ran into one of the two Polish girls whom we’d given a lift from Rabat to Casablanca. Somehow they’d made their way to Dakhla and were staying in a rental flat with a few other travelers. She said there was about five of them in a full apartment, and they were only paying 350 dirham a night. So with visions of a warm shower in our heads, we went with her there to see about getting one of these places for ourselves for the night.

I dunno if one or more of us has the word “sucker” inscribed across our foreheads, I didn’t check, but the price we were quoted was a bit higher; 600 dh for a single, 800 for a double. So with that we decided to go for lunch. We headed down to the waterfront where the main strip is, and skipped from place to place looking for anyplace that served pizza, since this is the only vegetarian meal Kunal has discovered in Africa. (Even ordering a salad that didn’t include tuna proved difficult.) We wound up sitting on a fancy deck overlooking the lagoon, at an upscale looking tourist restaurant called Samarkand.

Kunal and Stephen tend to prefer eating at restaurants, where they feel safer about the food, the more western looking it is the better. The problem with restaurants is, unless they’re recommended, the service and quality is unpredictable, often mediocre at best, and for more money. But sometimes it’s just easier. Dennis doesn’t seem to mind what or where we eat.

Myself, I prefer the food from street carts or cafes, for several reasons. First off, you can easily judge the place by its clientele; just go where the locals are all going. Secondly, you can see the food; unlike in a restaurant, where you sometimes don’t even know what you’re ordering. (Example: I was especially aggravated with myself for ordering a cow’s foot at a restaurant in Rabat.) Thirdly, you can leave whenever you want. You’re not stuck there for an hour waiting for your server to return with the bill. And finally, the food just tastes better, for less money and less time. It’s worked out well for me so far. Actually, I consider myself pretty lucky I haven’t gotten sick. And I’d like to state for the record that I’m the only member of the team who hasn’t thrown up on this trip, at least not yet anyway.

But when we sat down at Samarkand I felt like absolute shit. After the previous three nights in the ambulance I was finally coming down with something. I had the body aches of a fever coming on, and I needed to eat something, which is the perfect recipe for a bad mood. I ordered a chicken sandwich and received a kefta sandwich. I sent it back.

As we ate we were still considering where we’d stay if we weren’t going to rent a flat. Stephen kept mentioning this person who had contacted us some time ago on the team’s Facebook page. I hadn’t seen the message, but the impression we all had was that this woman had an inn of some sort and a connection with the rally organizer, who neither endorsed nor discouraged a stay at her place. We phoned her up, and coincidentally she happened to be at the same restaurant as us, just downstairs. In no time at all, this slight, British woman appeared, very bright and welcoming, greeting each of us in turn with a kiss on both cheeks. Dressed neatly in pants and a button down shirt, she kept her dark hair very short. She looked to be just on the edge of forty, but clearly she had a youthful energy about her. Turns out she was there photographing food for the restaurant’s menu.

She joined us at the table and spoke as if we’d been friends for years. After five days in Marrakech and one day on the road, none of us could quite match her openness and positivity. And after Marrakech especially, I was very skeptical of who I could trust. But Freya was not a Moroccan, and she was a wealth of valuable information about the road ahead. Over coffee and a cigarette she explained to us what we could expect at the border crossing into Mauritania. Rally teams camp out at the border for a night so they’re there early when the border opens at 8am. But officials don’t let people through on a first come first serve basis. Cargo trucks take precedent over tourists, so we would do better to rest a night in Dakhla and arrive at the border around 11am, about the same time we’d get through even if we’d been there at 8. Then, the number of hours it would take to clear customs would vary. Basically, if we were through and on our way before 2pm we’d have enough time to make it to the capital, Nouakchott, before sundown. But it was highly unadvisable to be on the road after dark, so if we cleared the border any time past 2pm we should go straight to Nouadhibou, which is closer.

Either way, things would be very different once we crossed that border. Everything becomes ten times more difficult, and Dakhla will seem like Paris in comparison, she said. Any provisions would be difficult to find, gas would become more expensive, and the police more corrupt. We all could certainly use a day in Dakhla to recoup before this next leg of the journey. By the time we’d gotten the check, we agreed to go with Freya to her place. She hopped in the front of the ambulance and directed us into the southwest part of town.

The buildings in Dakhla are all flat-roofed cinder block and concrete boxes, covered in stucco. They’re painted all different colors, which I have to imagine must have been bright at one time, but are now faded and subdued. Ornamentation is added arbitrarily in the form of geometric window frames, and sometimes clay tiled eaves hint at the Spanish influence of the old city’s architecture. A good fraction of buildings are incomplete, cinder block shells, with no signs of any current or even recent work in progress. Sidewalks range from cracked pavement, to colorful

mishmashes of leftover tiles, to bare sand. Cars and carts and people move through one another in perpetual motion; the notion of a crosswalk is completely alien in this place.

We arrive at a four story apartment building, bent around one quarter of a roundabout. Up a flight of stairs we enter a sparsely decorated flat. The living room is dim. Two bare light bulbs hang from the ceiling, unlit. Instead, a golden sunlight illuminates the air, filtered through a cloudy picture window and the haze of cigarette smoke. Outside below, the large traffic circle adds a din of motor scooters and fish trucks, the sound wafting in with the cool, temperate air. Flies casually share the space, seemingly unnoticed. On a long couch that runs three quarters the perimeter of the room sit three men. Two of them are local Saharawi men, friends of our new hosts, and they stand to greet us happily. The third man is British. He’s in his sixties, with a short gray beard, and he sits casually, his sandals on the floor in front of him, and his feet tucked lazily beneath him. His sheer confidence contradicts his attire, which is tattered and stained. He remains seated as he shakes my hand with a knowing grin that I would come to know well.