Route de l'espoir to Mali

The ridiculous amount of checkpoints on the 'route de l'espoir' to Kiffa messed up our mojo, resulting in an exciting night drive through Mauritania's mountainous scenery. Not an ideal situation I'll have you know, especially with a grumpy police officer on the back seat next to our vodka filled water bottle (heu...of course we'll give you a ride... you do celebrate Ramadan right?!). After dodging “soon to be road kill” for about 2 hours on a pitch black road, we finally made it to the 'phare du desert'. An overly expensive, but fairly decent resting place.

The next morning, after embarking the first passenger of the day (military!), we steered for Mali. The road was crappy, and on some occasions the road spontaineously turned into a river. Only one time did we get stuck in swampy grass while taking a detour through the cattle fields (see pic).

After the never ending border crossing formalities we found ourselves in the objected country... Mali. Major milestone!

We spend the night in Nioro du Sahel. A lovely little town with lovely people and ice cold BEER! (In case you didn know, Alcohol is Illegal in Mauretania). The sky collapsed on us and the families started washing, praying and eating. Everthing was Irie....