Senegal: Diama border

The drive through the inexplicably lawless and aggressive Nouakchott traffic over, we drove on towards Diama, the smaller and less hectic border with Senegal.

The border between Mauritania and Senegal runs along the Senegal River and the Djoudj National Park.

After 10 days travelling through the desert it was wonderful to see the river, marshlands, fat healthy-looking animals and 1,000s of excited birds chirruping and whooshing through it all like a massive bird party.

We spotted a couple of hairy warthogs enjoying the wetlands.

As we got closer, the condition of the road deteriorated, the tarmac disappearing completely at points, but worse were the corrugated sections which created bone-shaking vibrations and loosened Lenny’s bolts.

We had to proceed so slowly that a cyclist up ahead beat us to the border. We met Jason from Hastings later at the passport control and he told us he’s cycling our entire route, wild camping all the way. It’s his second time, as the first time he bashed his leg with his pedal in Sierra Leone, got an abscess and had to fly home to get it treated. “None of the crazy traffic, roads, weather or animals got me, I did myself in” he explained.

After the horror stories we’d read about the border, we were relieved to get through it relatively quickly and with only a few euros to ease the way.

On the road we’ve been using the brilliant LifeStraw water filter bottle that my lovely work colleagues got me, that not only saves our lives, but more importantly saves the environment as we don’t need to buy plastic water bottles.

We’ve also been using the solar charger my lovely sister got us, here charging on Lenny’s dashboard, so we can recharge our phones etc en route using the power of the sun.