December 30, 2011
by Stephen Jan in Daklha, Morocco
Dakhla sits on a 50km peninsula that cuts along the Atlantic ocean and is the last big city before Mauritania. Perhaps “big city” is a bit misleading. I should say, Dakhla is the last black dot on a blue line on our map before the Mauritanian border.
As we neared the city, we came up upon another military checkpoint – three guys in neat grey uniforms asked for passports and three questions in the same order: Where are you going? Where are you coming from?
What is you occupation? We printed all this on a sheet of paper called a fiche on which Dennis wrote “Fencing Coach”, to be unique and smart. A word of advice for future Timbuktu ralliers. If you don’t want spend 30 minutes explaining your job to corrupt police officers without the aid of language at every check point then make sure you have a boring job, or just lie about it. Be like Mike and me: Artist and Engineer.
Now Dennis doesn’t speak French and the soldiers don’t speak English. Living out in the desert, they haven’t ever seen fencing. Every soldier that comes across “fencing coach” asks for an explanation. So for every explanation, Dennis gets into a silly en guard position, hops around, and makes poking movements with his finger, all the while repeating “escrima? escrima? coach? coach?”. Fantastic stuff.
Pulling into Dakhla felt like pulling into a Caribbean beach town. Locals walked in sandals, shorts and colorful jalabas. European RV’s, land cruisers roamed the streets and surfers milled around in sunglasses. The weather was moderate and pleasant, I felt like we found an oasis in the middle of the desert.
We were all pretty dirty and disgusting by now. Me being the only one who hadn’t showered once since entering Africa 11 days ago, I was probably the worst. The Sahara Regency offered western accommodations for western prices: 600Dh for a single room and 800Dh for a double room. It’s offerings were probably no better than your run of the mill Holiday Inn off route 95 but here in Western Sahara, it proudly brandished four stars.
Over lunch, we debated taking the Sahara Regency, renting a flat for 350Dh for one night, or spending more time searching for another hotel. Instead of all that, in an interesting turn of events, we happened upon a very special individual: Frey McCall. Frey ad Dakhla McCall, as she is known on Facebook, sent us a message about a month ago before we left for the rally. We had no idea who she was or what she wanted, but when we called her from the café, it turned out she was at the same restaurant, downstairs. She invited us over to her flat and completely shaped out Dakhla experience in the Western Sahara.
