After 650km and 8 police and gendarmerie road checks we finally made it to Dakhla. The checks are a constant reminder that we are in disputed territory. But we have a good routine going on. Louise rides in the front and when she takes her helmet off, gives them an enthusiastic “bonjour!” They then look at me and ask for our passports; I say she’s the boss and she carries them both. Then I show them the sticker with our route outline on my windscreen and say that we’re going to Banjul “inch’allah”. This makes us look friendly and has eased the procedure. That being said we have found people in Western Sahara very nice!

As we were crossing the city of Laayoune (which is very clean and modern) we heard fun fire and thought “uh oh”… Only to realise they came from men in robes on beautifully decorated horses. It then became quickly obvious that this was a celebration. We were immediately swarmed by a crowd of young people with Moroccan flags and pictures of the king. They were celebrating the Green March (a mass demonstration in November 1975, coordinated by the Moroccan government, to force Spain to hand over the disputed, autonomous semi-metropolitan Spanish Province of Sahara to Morocco). They all wanted to have they’re pictures taken with us and we were happy to abide. This level of enthusiasm was contrasted later by a petrol station attendant who, when he saw our stickers which mention “western Sahara” said to me discreetly in English “yes, this is Western Sahara, not Morocco!”.

We entered the sandy peninsula of Dakhla to be greeted by an amazing orange sun setting on the white sand dunes. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect!

We had a very long day planned for our first day in Western Sahara. We wanted to ride all the way to the famous camping Le Roi Bedouin near Laayoune but my battery had different plans. Instead we had a 3 hour stop in Tan Tan where local mechanics fit me out with a “batterie d’origine” which is at best Chinese and most likely what they equip their 3 wheel trucks with. But it works!

i have to give a special thanks to Steve who contacted me after seeing our blog on the ABR forum. Steve told us about a nasty little trick the police plays on unsuspecting out-of-towners. There is a concealed stop sign at a round about on the way out and a policeman hides and catches anyone who fail to see it. He charges 40€ for it! We were warned and managed to avoid being caught, unlike two cars of Senegalese people we had met at s petrol station earlier… Thanks for the heads up Steve!

The delay meant that we stayed the night in Tarfaya after the hottest day so far. What we saw of Western Sahara was far from what we had expected. Of course it’s long, dry and empty but we found it quite beautiful. The roads follows the Atlantic and now and then overlooks magnificent bays and kilometres of sandy beach. Our second day wasn’t even very hot; the ocean breeze was welcome and the north easterly wind meant it was in our back and made the ride easy. Also, there is no lack of petrol stations; we had been a little concerned about this.

We then made good progress through to Sidi Ifni, an old Spanish enclave which had only been hand back over to Morocco in 1969! Sidi Ifni is a seaside town popular with surfers and which has a very laid back atmosphere. The walls are whitewashed and doors painted blue.

We loved the sea-view room we found (Hotel Suerte Loca, room 12) and decided to spend two night and recharge our batteries. We swam for the first time on this trip but the current was so strong that we couldn’t go very far. We also attracted some attention as Louise was only one of three women in a bikini and some others were in Burkinis (burka bikini). That being said i think we weren’t out o bounds as this Was quite a laid-back place. We met Garth, an Australian doing what any respectable Ozzie does; travelling. He had spent some time volunteering in Cameroon to improve his French and was now visiting Morocco before going to eastern Africa and then meeting up with his girlfriend in Europe. I really like that in Australians and I think we should encourage our youths to all do gap years to see the world.

The roof terrace at Bikers Home was a great place to see Ouarzazate waking up. The colours at dawn and dusk in this part of the world are beautiful. We ambitiously set out to do a 65km track that Peter had recommended but after a couple of miles decided to backtrack. The track would have been too heavy on the bikes and would have delayed us too much. Instead we took the longer, Tarmac-ed road and didn’t regret one bit. It took us through amazing desert, very close to the Algerian border.

The people here in the Djebel Bani were predominantly berbers, have darker skin and, we found, were much more approachable. The desert can have many faces and we rode through hilly black stretches, followed by long orange flats bordered by tall mountains. We then reached and followed a very wide dry river bed which drew a ribbon of palm trees through the valley. This is where we decided to camp; under a sky full of stars and miles away from anyone. So we thought though because the next morning, as we were ready to leave a man on a moped appeared from nowhere, parked his mount against a palm tree, shook our hands and disappeared a little further. We had no idea what he was doing but obviously this is where he spent his day…