In november of 2000 I bought a Toyota 4x4 and started out across Africa with my old buddy Tyo...

The Sahara started after we crossed the Atlas mountains. In the stony deserts of southern Morocco we came across this ancient mountain full of caves, where stone age trogolodytes must have lived.

This prehistoric burial ground was right near by. We slept on the slopes of the mountain. It was cold but we saw no ghosts. We reached the coast south of Agadir and drove south, into the area which used to be called 'the Spanish Sahara'.It is now a part of Morocco, although the Polisario still wants independence. The coast is barren, the desert runs right into the ocean. All along the beach, at the bottom of the cliffs there are old shipwrecks, like this one near Boujdour.

The road south is pretty lonely, and the distances are huge.

The French writer Antoine de St Exupery, who wrote The Little Prince, was also an aviator who flew from St Louis in Senegal to Paris every month to deliver the mail. This was in the 19 twenties! He crashed somewhere on this barren coast, managed to survive for a year and built this house, near the fishing village of Tarfaya.

At Dakhla, the last town in Morocco, a convoy is formed by the military. They don't want anyone to stray off the road because there are landmines everywhere. The convoy is accompanied by military vehicles. Some people in the convoy drive old cars to Senegal and sell them there, others are travellers headed further into Africa.

Somewhere in the desert, at a derelict old fort, the Moroccan military stop and tell you to get lost. From there on you have to find your own way to the Mauretanian side. You have to stick to the track and follow the socalled 'Spanish Road', and old strip of tarmac the Spanish built about 50 years ago. It's the only way you can be sure not to hit the landmines. There's hardly any road left...

There's a lot of sand and some people just get stuck all the time, and then other people have to tow them out....

It takes a day to get to Nouadhibou, the first town in Mauretania. Then another two thru the desert to Nouakchott. Halfway, we arrived at the beach. From there it was a great drive all the way along the ocean. We traveled with Alex, a biker from London.

By this time we had become pretty surnburnt.

On the way i caught a fish, we didn't eat it because it wasn't very alive anymore.

We crossed into Senegal, still driving along the coast, and then turned inland, towards Mali. We drove along the Senegal river for a few days, and at Kayes we entered the Sahel, which is dominated by huge baobab trees.

The rains in north Mali have been good this year.There were a lot of puddles, and sometimes we got stuck.

We got tired of all the mud so we began to make detours thru wild bush....

The tracks were terrible, it took us two days to get to Nioro du Sahel, but the landscape, like here near Sandare, was beautiful.

After 4 days (counting from Kayes) we made it to Bamako via Diema. Most of the roads were in a terrible state, so we were really happy to be driving on tarmac again. Tyo flew home and I went on to Djenne. At the point where the ferry crosses the Bani river, I have bought a piece of land. In november, I began to build a house there, right where the photo has been taken..

in the meantime, I have rented an apartment in the middle of town with a view of the marketplace and the mosk. This is the view from my roof terrace on all days except market day:

And this is what it looks like on mondays.

I'll be working on my house for the next few years. In the meantime I'll be living here, in town. I will post more photo's in february. See U then.