I like challenges. I love long distance runs, the heat, beating the dust, riding many hours non-stop. It is what gotten me through my whole life. I have never given up, until now.
It's extremely early in the morning. Last evening we decided to cross the desert from the place where we are staying overnight, in a straight line, to Atar. Almost all tracks follow the railway line in some way, or at least make a wide circuit around the erg. However, as we already know that we can flog that big-bore thumpers in the sand, we are going to take the proper Dakar line. We just need much time, to feel we are on the safe side here. The second thing is the sun, when it is at its zenith, you are not able to see the dunes, its outlines, there will be simply no shadows, everything will merge into an shapeless surface.
Ok, we are ready to go. At the same moment, the sun rises and covers Ben Amera up with a vivid red light. Drone! No words needed, Kuba sets up the RC and makes the drone airborne within seconds. Looking at the screen I know well that those shots will rock...
Another three hours later and we are standing on the hill, down there is the erg. This is our real start. It's getting late. First, early in the morning, the drone lost connection, it was blown off by the heavy wind and we found it only thanks to Kuba's heroic race against time, running through sand in enduro shoes. He made it, he caught the signal and thus the position of the drone. Then we lost time looking for a water. And when it seemed like we were finally going to move on, the Train appeared. In the longest configuration, in a perfect light, with Ben Amera in the background and the guys foreground. Pure magic is that, and a real photographic heaven. What a series of events! Only now I noticed that Ben Amera resembles an enormous elephant, has eyes, her trunk rests flat on the sunbaked surface, she is lying, comfortably, squinting with pleasure.
We look at each other, there is a flatland below, and behind it - dunes. The view is out of this world! This is the first time we will enter dunes where there is no road, where nobody rides, there is nothing, only sand. It is 50 kilometers until we hit civilization again, Atar. There is something unfriendly about this place. The dunes are low but treacherous. The type of sand changes under the wheels every second, as does the slope of the dunes. There are plenty of holes. I can't get into rhythm. I remember images from Dakar, it was this region, Adrar, that was the scene of the hard struggles. Fountains of sand in the air, bikes buried up to top of its wheels, the fire and great fatigue visible on the rider's faces, those rallies here were a pure madness... We move on, slowly, kilometer by kilometer. We often lose each other from sight. Kuba gets the first puncture. Lying in the shadow of the bike, we wait for him to repair his tube, it's actually quite a fun, good rest. Time is running out though, but after a short while we can move on. Unfortunately, the fun lasts very short and the patch gives up after a few hundred meters. We get to work once again. I'm hungry, so I eat some candy bars. It's hot already. Something we were very afraid of is happening - the shadows disappear and now we won't be able to see the details of the terrain or take the proper line. When we set off again, we know well that it is not for fun anymore, we just want to get to Atar, somehow.
Next kilometers verifies how difficult it is to ride now. The dunes are getting much bigger. So we keep getting stuck in sand and weaken within minutes. The feeling is strange, completely new to me. Like as in the good old games, where the life bar was disappearing as time was progressing. I realize that we are in a situation in which, quite seriously, we will not last long. Kuba get stuck badly, bike is in the sand above the axles. On a straight way he literally sinks under the surface, suddenly. Tomek got stuck somewhere behind, Piter is watching everything and doesn't even move. We analyze the situation and decide to head north, there is a stretch of hamada that should allow us to get closer to Atar. But first we have to get there somehow. We start striving, move very slowly, negotiating fesh-fesh, extremaly fatigued. The heat is merciless. At some point I find myself a companion to Tomek, whereas Piter and Kuba, from what I noticed, are somewhere on the left. Tomek falls and has no strength to get up. I pour water from the camelback straight on his neck and try to give him a shadow with my own body. I call radio for guys. We more or less set a path between the dunes, there are at most a dozen of them left... Just before Atar there is a stretch of new asphalt, before that, fast pistas. Breath of wind gives the long-awaited relax. Green grass and smaller plants appear again. The landscape is monumental. This desert gave us a lesson. In Atar we fill up, eat, and buy water. Staying still for a moment, I observe life in the city. It's another world, literally.
We gather and head to Terjit, the oasis. We decide that it will be a perfect place to give us some time for a rest. Do the laundry, chill in the water, in the shade of palm trees... Yes please! On the way, Kuba stops me and asks about the voltage my bike is displaying, compares it with his own, and then turns off the lights, well... We arrive at the place in the dark, surrounded by kids running just in front of us. The first thing we do is go to the oasis, put headlights around the pool and spend the evening the right way :-D
The night is terribly stuffy. I set up the inner tent between the walls and the canopy at the campsite. No draft, nothing. Once again, I find that sleeping in nature, so called bivuac grall, is the best thing in this world. We're not in a hurry in the morning. We had some hot discussions earlier about taking a day off, and finally we decided to take half a day and then move on. So again, I spend time lying in an oasis basin, red dragonflies keep landing next to me, one after another, as if each wanted to show their beauty off . The canyon is deep, full of palm trees, and filled with the sound of flowing water. It's a thrilling thought that all this is in a place surrounded by hundreds of kilometers of harsh Sahara. When the time of setting out comes, the heat has already built up completely, hot air is coming from everywhere. But hey, it may be too hot, but adventure is calling :-D I have a particular strong memory from this moment. We want to get more food, so we stop at the only shop. There is nothing except processed products such as flour and sweets, this is normal for Mauritania and all developing parts of the world. So we take what is there, eating some straight away. We have a rule of thumb that we try not to teach local people that tourists are money boxes, so we do not buy gifts, nor sweets for children. Besides, sweets in countries where there is probably very poor dental service is a bad idea altogether. Nevertheless, the whole issue is very difficult, but I believe we are doing the right thing. It's the same this time - quick shopping, water in the tankbags, a chocolate bar. But something happens that will stay in my mind for a long time. When I get on the bike, a girl covered in chocolate appears next to me, and in the back there is a boy who finishes licking the paper we threw away just a moment earlier. These kids took candy bar wrappers out of the trash and literally licked the chocolate out. Don't know what to say, have no words. I just start the engine.
Riding along a short stretch of asphalt right behind Terjit, I have time for a moment of contemplation. The landscape around, African nature, especially this type, makes me enhustiastic. It is hauntingly beautiful, I am in a fairy-tale place in the world. Now, the most difficult section of the entire trip. When planning, I included it as an optional track, to be used only when we feel confident and the earlier sections went well. The entire 500 km of it is sand, there are only two places along the way where we can find water, a geodetic object and an old well in the middle of nowhere. The chance that we will meet someone is close to zero.
We hit the track. The way leads to the canyon, which we will follow until its end, and then through the open desert to the northwest. I find the descent, along steep rock shelves. Lucky me. Next, the ruts and loose sand along the rocks that are so hot that it burns when You touch them. Now, a downhill, to the bottleneck between the vertical, pitch-black walls of the gorge. The sand is so soft that I have to keep throttle open to go down. Finally I get between these rocks, it's very narrow, Tomek and Piter are with me. We feel terrible heat. Approaching sun-blazed rock walls takes your breath away. Instantly, we look at each other and give a command to turn back! While it was nearly 50 degrees Celsius at the top, as long as you kept distance to the black rocks, it must be way more here. It is exactly the same feeling as opening a hot oven, or a sauna. I make a pivot, have only one thought - go up at all costs, at a very first attempt, because I won't have a chance to start if I stop. Greta is screaming when reving her up, made it! Now Piter and Tomek, they must be at the same adrenaline rush as me, they both reach the top at once. Kuba is nowhere here, still I'm not worried about him, I know he can handle the sand well. But we are waiting. Suddenly there he is, I can hear his engine roar. Kuba doesn't reach the top, he gets stuck, turns back and tries again. Nothing. Once again. We stand in the heat of the sun and watch. Kuba ride back down, turns the bike off, it is overheated. He takes off his clothes and he's waiting, I go to him. We cool down for a while in the shade of a small acacia tree and decide on a strategy here. I'm going back up the hill, keep fingers crossed. Kuba makes another attempt, the second time he is on the top. What an absolute legend, roar of the engine echoing off the canyon walls and Kuba, totally covered in sweat, with his back and shoulders red from that short moment in the scorching sun. Everything seems to be taken straight from a novel about pioneering African explorers :-D But we are really here, and we need to move on to cool down. We decide to go around the canyon and join the track from the east side - along the seasonal river bed. So far so good, yet another lesson learned, if you want to ride the canyons in Mauritania in March, it is best to do it in the morning, this is smart, because then the temperatures are deadly. Yes, it is totally possible that after a few switchbacks we would have reached the open space, which could be a nice ride. It is also possible that one of us would eventually overheat his body and have a crisis in the middle of nowhere... the chance for help is thin, and the chance for a quick escape is no exisitng...
We reach Aoujeft in no time, so we stop by the store. Wherever I look, it's obvious that Sahara is the ruler here, it's merciless. Sand gets everywhere, into the streets and into the buildings. While we drink and eat outside the store, we are surrounded by curious kids. It's already a ritual. Then, a soldier comes and pulls one of the boys by the ear, children scatter immediately. The soldier stands with us for a while and then when some random car approaches, he waves it, carelessly. They stop immediately and take him no questioning. In Mauritania, officials form a kind of separate caste, they have complete power and can dictate what people would do.
The heat got lower a little, so we hope to make some more clicks this day. Full supplies, confidence back, off we go. Just outside the village, I negotiate a shallow riverbed and beyond it I climb a rocky slope. All that is not that easy, I have to wait a while. Piter show up first, he is alone. We wait together until Tomek and Kuba join us. There are rumors that Tomek was so distracted by the sudden increase in his bowels pressure that he crashes. Quite badly so he broke the windscreen. We cut the windscreen to get rid of sharp edges.
We ride some crooked road for quite a long time. All the landscape is much rocky. Suddenly we find ourselves face to face with a swathe of dunes. From this perspective they look amazing and a kind of innocent. I take photos but at the same time I think how to get to the other side. We go down a steep path and reach soft sand. I try to trace some tire marks, it always works, the locals know best how to get around here. Suddenly, a wonderful wide valley opens up just in front of me, most likely the bed of a seasonal river flowing just between the dunes. It's a moment, I am getting faster, hitting well over a 100kph, when suddenly I hit several bumps. Pedal to the metal and I am aiming at a dune to lose speed, you really need to be focused all the time. We move on, all the time along the riverbed, which has now opened up into an even wider space. We come across more and more patches of fesh fesh, Tomek gets stuck several times, and finally Piter too, we are running on empty. This is an obvious sign to look for a bivuac. We make our way through the village, we are quite an attraction here. A dozen or so kilometers further we find a perfect place to camp, two palm trees in the middle of nowhere, at the bottom of a dry riverbed. This is it.
Night falls quickly. However, this is not the end of the day, oh no. During the whole day Kuba was noticing increasingly worse voltage readings, something is wrong with either the stator or the voltage regulator. Fortunately, I took both of them with me and now we carry them as spares. It's going to be a service night in the middle of the desert in the light of headlamps, sounds great. I cook the dinner, while Kuba and Piter disassemble the bike. Step by step, they eliminate the causes, take off the tank, check the voltages... I fall asleep in the tent, looking at the starry sky. Magnificent. There are no cities here to disturb this spectacle.
In the morning I see that the bike is still not assembled. Kuba and Piter decided not to replace the stator, mainly bacause the one that is installed still provides enough power to run the bike and keep the energy balance on the safe side when the lights are off. We are setting the camp up, and while I eat sardines with sweet biscuits, I think about the section that awaits us - this is the biggest challenge that we will have to face on this whole trip. As every morning, we start engines and move on, except Tomek, he is standing still. His battery is flat, Kuba has left in the meantime. Ok, it is nothing, probably the cause is charging accessories in the morning. We decide to jump-start the bike using Piter's one. It works and after a short while both machines are running. When we want to go, it turns out that this time there is flat battery in Kuba's bike. Ok, it may be, during the previous day, there was plenty of struggle in the dunes, the fans were running almost non-stop, and we were turning the bikes off many many times. So, without shuting down Tomek's bike, we decide to jump-start the Kuba's one. We connect both bikes and let them run for a while to charge the battery enough. We wait... suddenly Tomek's bike splits its fuel all around and the gas cap blows into the air. The fuel has boiled. Tomek turns off the engine immediately, the overheating light beams, the fuel bubbles, and the fan howls like a hell. To make a story even better, a light sandstorm is starting around. Ok, we turn off all the bikes and think. First of all, we need to cool down Tomek's bike. We know that two out of four have flat batteries. We wait for a while, replace the batteries, and think about the sequence of starting the bikes. After about an hour, everything is ready, the adventure is waiting for us. Although the morning's chilly window has just closed, we are not the nae slayers, we are still determined to go southwest and hit the remaining 400 km of the desert track. What happens next blurs into one series of events, completely unbelievable, things are going hard, as if fate wanted to warn us, knowing what we are going to do. When we start all the bikes, put on helmets and want to finally set off, Tomek loses the clutch, again. It's already very hot. We take a place in the shade of palm trees, struggle with the master cylinder, undo the lever, open the slave cylinder, lose and find parts in the sand, replace batteries, moments of enthusiasm mix with moments of doubt, all while the whistling wind pushes the sand into all the places possible. Finally, we make a dificult decision and withdraw. We call the place the cursed oasis. We head back to Atar.
Track: https://www.wikiloc.com/trail-bike-trails/2023-dakar-stage-4-mauritania-the-rugged-rides-153550264
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