Paris Dakar Rest Day #9 – Dakhla

Our 9th rest day was October 30, 2023. Dakhla is a big city of over 100,000 people. I had never heard of it before signing up for this trip. It’s fine for a rest day as the hotel we’re staying in is clean, we have access to the bikes to do whatever maintenance is needed, and there are plenty of restaurants around. You can go swimming in the bay, get massages, etc. I think most people are like me, really in need of a rest, so are not looking for museums or special touristy things to do. I know I’m not.

Our room was pretty hot last night so Daniel and I had to sleep with the window wide open and the door propped open for airflow. I finally got to sleep after 1am but slept until after 8. We bailed on the hotel breakfast at the café next door since everyone said it took forever and was average. Across the street we had a leisurely good breakfast with Wytze, with a view of the bay.

After breakfast it was time for a session of bike love. My bike has been working great all this time. I cleaned and lubed the chain, and checked to make sure it wasn’t worn out – amazing it’s still perfectly good after over 6,000 km. I swapped out the derailleur battery, checked the tires and did a little more cleaning too. It’s a really amazing machine.

I worked on a few projects on my computer during the day. In the afternoon we met on the roof where Ype brought a bunch of almonds, peanuts, walnuts and hazelnuts from the market we saw last night. It was so nice and relaxed chatting with the view of the bay and several bottles of tasty red wine. What a perfect rest day activity!

Later, we headed over to a seafood restaurant that many others found too. Most of the staff arrived soon after us, and Ype and Emily sat at our table so we could treat them. We had several kinds of salad, then a bunch of dishes, like seafood paella, calamari, grilled fish, etc. Basically from 5pm to 9pm was constant carbo-loading for me.

I’ve been asked about laundry – how do we do it? I usually hand-wash but that’s hard or impossible in the bush camps. Sometimes campgrounds have washing machines, but ideally, you’re in a campground and you can wash all the bike clothes you wore in the day right after a shower, and then dry them in the sun and start the next stage with everything clean. That worked all through France and Spain and parts of Morocco. Usually hotels charge a lot for laundry but you can find local places nearby. When we arrived at the hotel in Dakhla, we quickly found that the hotel would do your laundry for the amazing low price of 17 MAD (€1.50) per kg. Many people, me included, put in bags, to be ready by “noon at the latest” the next day. In reality, nothing was ready until 6pm and mine was nowhere to be found. But at 9:30, after dinner, I spied my clothes in a new bag, labelled with a different room number that someone else had paid for. Everything was there and clean and dry. Still it’s pretty risky and probably better to wash it yourself, at least your precious, destroyable and absolutely vital bike shorts. I learned, back in 2019 in the Andes, that you can actually wear cycling clothes two or even three times without washing. That’s not ideal but certainly it beats bringing six or more sets of riding clothes. I brought two sets with a backup pair of shorts that I haven’t used yet.

Our next block of six riding days will take us over the border into Mauritania, 829 km, to Nouakchott, the capital city. After that we’ll be so close to Dakar, it will be possible to visualize actually making it there. Right now, not so much. It’s still a long long road. If you’re interested, Bob found this article on what the border crossing we’ll do in a few days is like.