Paris Dakar Stage 57 almost to Senegal

Stage 57 of 60, day 67 of 71: 92.6 km, 293m, 4:37, ~70 shifts, ave speed 23.7, max speed 47.4

At breakfast it sounded like everyone had a really good sleep. It was pretty quiet, the wind was low, there was no sand! I sure slept well. Simo caught something and couldn’t ride today but everyone else is healthy.

After breakfast we headed out to the main road and turned south, again with the wind. The road was smooth and it was perfect riding easy with Wytze and Daniel. It was rolling, interesting terrain, past little villages that looked a little more prosperous than further north. We saw lots of cattle, goats and tons of camels (no nursing ones though).

We stopped for drinks. I paid with a 500 and was really happy he could change it since that was all we had. I didn’t notice that I paid 90 for 3 drinks, that’s €2.25, too much. We went outside because the shop was filthy and the guy brought out our watermelon. Wytze had pointed to it to ask how much so he assumed we wanted it too. We got a big filthy knife from him, washed it, and cut up our melon. It was great. Later Richard bought one to share and Ype pulled another one out at lunch after I told him this story which reminded him he had one too.

Then we stopped at a rare thing: an intersection where we had to turn. We had some drinks and Daniel got an offer from a local: his bike and watch for the guy’s Mercedes. He bought it 10 years ago for €1500. We had a lot of fun and eventually he gave four of us a short ride. We thought of trading Ype’s bike for it and then proudly showing Ype his “upgrade” at lunch.

On to lunch. At 55 km, the pavement ended and it was all dirt from there. Lunch was at 62, a bit hot but not too bad. Then we had another 32 km of rough (sometimes comically rough) dirt road. It was pretty fun though, with lots to see.

We had some checkpoints to pass through, but they didn’t give us much trouble. We heard one of the vehicles had guys with weapons, pointedly loading clips, cocking and being menacing. But they were all pretty nice to us.

We pulled into camp and started on snacks and soup. We spent the afternoon hanging out chatting, but there were a few problems. Our NZ and Ozzie riders hadn’t all gotten their Senegal visas in advance as they are required to do. Two went early to the border today and were not allowed in. They plan to taxi back to Nouakchott tonight to get their visas tomorrow. The rest of us should be good for visas on entry. Then we realized Jan hadn’t been seen all day. He had no Sim card so we heard 3rd hand that he had made a wrong turn but was ok. He ended up safe, arriving during dinner, having ridden 180 km. Ype had a hard time driving the road and arrived much later. Dinner was early at 4:30 because at the old bush camp from last time there were so many mosquitos and bugs. But our camp is like last night: no bug problem. We sat out until dark and had three more of our 0% beers.

Bob is our best photographer and took some amazing shots today. I especially loved his spiders, taken in camp.

We’re only 8 km of dirt road away from the Senegal border, but we rode right along it today. A great side effect of being so close is that my phone can connect to towers there and now works.

Right after breakfast, we plan to ride as a group to the border and cross with the trucks as usual. It will probably be confusing and not work very well but we only have 52 km to ride after crossing so it should be ok. Here’s hoping! Only three more stages to Dakar!!!