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Months ago many of you watched the video that we put together about our time in the Sahara in the Banc d’Arguin National Park.  Here are the photos.

Photos On Flickr

See the video

When picturing a national park, most of us probably think of rangers that help to protect the wildlife and answer visitors questions about the surrounding area and the flora and fauna that reside there. As you get farther and farther from the main tourist tracks in the world, the standard and definition of national parks changes dramatically.

In Mauritania there is a park called “Banc d’Arguin National Park.” It is a World Heritage Site, and like many other World Heritage sites we have visited on our journey, it has a long way to go before one could call it protected. It does, however, offer something that no other national park has that we have been to…vastness.

The “entrance” to the park is a GPS coordinate listed on a small map provided by the park office in the small town 200kms away. This map has a list of GPS coordinates that we tested before we left for the park, of which over 30% of them were incorrect. We knew this going in, but figured that we navigated Mongolia with just binoculars and compasses so with the GPS…how could we go wrong?

The local population is only approximately 500 Imraguen tribesmen that live in seven villages within the park. We visited most of these villages and with so few people inhabiting over 12,000 square kilometers of space with no real infrastructure, it is safe to say you are on your own if something goes wrong. For three days we navigated the park, digging out of sand traps and motoring over sand dunes with a moderately accurate map and a couple of boards to help drive over soft sand.

I would not call this the most stunning or spectacular national park in the world, but it does offer a playground for a real deep in the dunes style Sahara experience. We left the park at the end more dehydrated and dirty than any of us have ever been in our lives, nearly out of gas, with sun and wind burns, but for three days we gave the largest desert in the world our best and came out triumphant.

At least you get the beach to yourself when there are no roads to it.

 

 Banc d'Arguin National Park - Mauritania [2:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (559)

What else would you expect when you are in the middle of the Sahara Desert? All of us knew that we would encounter lots of sand as we drove through the western part of the Sahara on our way across Mauritania, but I do not think any of us would realize just how much sand we would come into contact with… literally. Thanks to our friend Paul (AKA - Soloride) TWBR is now equipped with a GPS device. The GPS unit helped Paul navigate his way around the perimeter of the United States and we were confident that it would help us navigate our way through a 250 kilometer stretch of the Sahara Desert… all off-road. After a 24 hour cram session on how to use the GPS, we plotted our way points and headed off into the sand.

There is actually supposed to be a town here?

When we actually did stop at what the GPS unit told us was the turnoff for the “beach run,” I could not believe that I was actually about to drive off a nice sealed road and head out into blowing Sahara sand. The situation was even more logic defying given that we had talked to numerous people about the run through this part of the desert and getting stuck in the sand not once, but multiple times seemed a near absolute certainty. It did not take long for those words to prove true. In fact, it only took about twenty minutes.

Round one…

Round two…

The power of the Thundra actually made our lives a lot easier in the desert

Finding some firmer terrain is always a treat

Digging your car out of the sand is hard work in any conditions, but doing it in the mid-afternoon Sahara sun with temperatures well above 40 degrees (100 degrees F) makes the task even more challenging. Luckily, we had decided to purchase some eight foot sections of wood to use as “sand planks.” When you are driving off-road in the desert, sand planks are an absolute necessity and we soon found out the benefit of spending $25 for some makeshift planks in Nouadhibou. By the time the planks had helped us out of the sand twice over the span of about two hours, I realized that it was probably the best $25 I have ever spent in my life.

Hopefully the last of the digging… collecting Sahara sand for souvenirs

Thundra “Money Shot”

During the next three days, we probably ended up digging the trucks out of the sand at least seven times, and even though the sand planks make the job exponentially easier, I think that by the seventh time, all of us had enough experience getting unstuck to last a lifetime. Even though navigating our way through massive dunes and deceptively soft stretches of sand was a lot of work, it was well worth it. The Sahara Desert has to be one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. Perfectly sculpted sand dunes stretch as far as the eye can see… real Laurence of Arabia type stuff. It is not too often that you can peer out over an endless stretch of sand and say that you actually drove your truck through it. We also managed to find some dunes to play on and although though the surfing has been fairly flat down most of the North African coast, we at least got to put the boogie boards to good use.

Not many people can claim they drove through terrain like this

Bouey catches some air off dune number 5783

While Shoppman demonstrates how easy it is to knock the wind out of your body

A couple of years ago the TWBR route began to take shape. When first planning a route for a grand voyage like this, the sky is the limit. Countries that you never even knew existed become possibilities; geography becomes a daily topic of conversation. It is quite interesting just how large some countries are that probably 90% of people do not know exist. Mauritania is one of those places. With a population of only 3 million people in just over 1 million square kilometers, this country is a giant desert with large expanses containing very little signs of life. For most of us the Sahara desert is something that we read about in books or hear about in romantic adventure stories while we are growing up.

The last week or so, however, the Sahara desert is the place that we have been calling home and although signs of life are few and far between, they are quite intense when you do find them. A year ago Mauritania was a country that we did not even know how pronounce and was a place that we decided we would not be traveling through. Since our original route became basically impossible as Libya would not issue us visas and Algeria’s borders are closed, Mauritania has officially become our second country in Africa and we could not be more pleased with the new route. The first day we spent here is like no other day on the trip so far. We are staying a town called Nouadhibou, and here there is a ship graveyard with well over 40-50 ships that fill the coastline. Ranging in size from small dinghies to giant industrial ships, the coast has a post apocalyptic feel like something really bad has happened here. The beach is full of all kinds of different trash ranging from the standard plastic bags to pieces of heavy machinery.

The truth, as we have been told, is that the harbor master over the last handful of decades allowed people to decommission their boats for free here. The “decommissioning” process here is to simply leave the boats on the shoreline to rot. Certainly the large amounts of industrial trash and toxins that are released from these boats are not good for the environment, but the spectacle they leave behind is something that all of us will never forget.

Mines are all along the road on the way here.

Some people have taken the trash on as a home.

It is hard to understand how this ended up the way it did.

I heart goggles and turbans

 

 Mauritania and the Shipwreck Coast [1:18m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (486)