Day 15 – last bush camp before the Mauritanian border tomorrow

As the ground cover everywhere at our bush camp this morning looked like this…..

……the essential first stop was for a toilet that had a more traditional door between our nether regions and daylight.

Most toilets we’ve found are not very different to any you can get in the average supermarket in the UK. The door may not lock, there’s no paper and the flush is digital, as in either absolutely fantastic or a bucket of water. The only key difference is that around 50% of the toilets here are the “squat and drop” variety. This led to a discussion in the group about how easy (or not) it is to squat. If we had to plot the graph, I suspect there is a significant correlation between age and comfort with adopting a squatting position for more than a few seconds. There are some outliers to that graph who performed an admirable squat, feet flat to the floor, seemingly very comfortably, and so chair yoga has already been suggested to pass the time. I like the murder game suggestion more though, as we’ve just finished watching the Celebrity Traitors final at last. There’s also a plan in the making for Secret Santa, we’re a very sociable group.

A couple more toilet stops and a few camel sightings kept us entertained in the morning through what is genuinely the middle of nowhere. I always thought that was Wantage in Oxfordshire, but it turns out Western Sahara wins.

~300km later and we arrived at our lunch stop: at the Tropic of Cancer.

This is also, otherwise known as the middle of nowhere, although it does have some surprisingly pretty flowers growing there.

There was also a handy pile of rubble to provide some privacy, although once you got behind the pile of rubble, the reason for it being there looked pretty suspicious. Who precisely needs two large, deep holes dug in the desert?

Finally we reached our bush camp location for the night. This was a fine balance between being close enough to Mauritania to get to the border as soon as it opens tomorrow morning whilst also avoiding the amber zone  in which the FCDO warns against all but essential travel.

Time for the men to try and outdo each other on getting huge rocks to go around the fire, followed by Celebrity Race Across the World – projected onto the side of the truck of course, courtesy of Mark.