Story and photos by Louise Orlando and Andrew Barbour

[15 years ago, Louise Orlando and Andrew Barbour, Cape Charles, VA, spent a year driving a 1960 Series II Land Rover from London to Cape Town. Their adventures formed the basis of Andrew’s writing the Fodor’s Guide to South Africa. Part I of their adventure ran in our last issue. Here’s Part II –ed.]

“Mines to the left. Mines to the right. Stick to the piste. Bonne chance!” With these encouraging words, our Moroccan military escort removed a length of chain that hung across the end of the paved highway and waved our convoy of 23 vehicles into the minefield separating Western Sahara and Mauritania. To reach safety, we would have to traverse 50 kilometers of desert sown with anti-personnel and anti-vehicle mines. Oh, joy.

The convoy’s engines roared to life and, one by one, our vehicles rolled off the asphalt into the yellow sand that stretched to the horizon. We had not moved more than 400 yards when the convoy ground to a halt. The piste, a French term for a marked route through the desert, had simply disappeared. A huge sand dune, blown there during a recent sandstorm, now stood where the piste should have been. We looked back to ask advice of our Moroccan escorts, only to see the rear of their jeeps as they hurried back to base. The chain had been returned to its position. Abandoned in a giant minefield, our convoy presented an unlikely picture. Our SWB Series II, with its Koenig winch, shovels, sand mats, and high-lift jack, was one of only three vehicles actually equipped for an overland expedition through Africa. The other vehicles were mainly
four-door sedans—Peugeots and Renaults. Young German and French adventurers bought old cars in Europe and drove them to West Africa to be sold at a handsome profit. They carried no equipment whatsoever. When they started their adventure, these Europeans—like us—had planned to cross the Sahara through Algeria. Although no walk in the park, the Algerian route was at least well marked. After Muslim fundamentalists began murdering Western tourists earlier that same month, Algeria closed its borders. The only route left through the Sahara was this one, traversing a minefield between former enemies.

We were all out of our depth. Now, in a giant game of Russian roulette, each vehicle left the safety of the piste and inched into uncharted desert, forging its own path through the sand. Soon, vehicles were scattered
over a wide swath of desert. And most of them were stuck.

Our heavy trailer was proving to be a millstone. Again and again, it bogged down in the sand. To extricate the trailer, we would have to unhitch the Land Rover, turn it around, and then spool out the ½-inch cable from our winch. On its own, our Series II was unstoppable; with the trailer, we struggled.

Nevertheless, our progress was excellent compared with the other vehicles in the convoy. When we stopped to extract our trailer for the fifth time, a small Renault driven by two Germans caught up with us. They explained that a large van was stuck and needed our help. We paused. We had just traversed several kilometers of minefield; now we were being asked to go back and do it all again. But what choice did we have? We could hardly leave people in the middle of the Sahara.

Leaving our trailer where it had bogged down, we headed back through the desert to a large blue van that had nosed itself into a sand dune. We handed the Italian driver a shovel and indicated that he should dig the sand out from beneath his tires. We wedged our sand mats under the rear tires, and attached the winch. At a signal from us, we engaged the winch while the driver gave his van some gas. Slowly, the van rose from its sandy
grave and a cheer went up.

As we coiled the winch and stowed the sand mats, we noticed another vehicle, 300 yards away, on top of which stood a man waving a white handkerchief. The Land Rover cavalry was being summoned again. We started the old girl up and rode to the rescue. After that, we were in high demand. To the unprepared Europeans, who had set out on this journey as if they were headed to the supermarket, we were AAA service without the annual fee.

So far, none of the vehicles in the convoy had exploded, and we had not seen a mine. We began to wonder if the mines had been removed or, perhaps, had never been there in the first place. With growing confidence, we drove to the next group of vehicles, a quartet of French travelers. They were leaning nonchalantly on their Peugeot, smoking cigarettes and drinking wine from a shared bottle. The women were wearing lipstick,
for God’s sake! We pulled them free. In payment, they offered us a swig of wine from their bottle (um, no thanks). As we prepared to move off, the driver lazily waved his arm to stop us.

“Do not goes that way,” he said. “We are seeing several mines zere. The wind is uncovered them.” Sure enough, as the day progressed, more mine-spottings filtered in. One person reported nearly stepping on a mine when he walked behind a dune for a pee. If we ever needed reminding, we now knew this was serious stuff. Our white-hat cavalry charges through the

desert started to look downright foolish.

Seven hours and countless rescues later, one of the vehicles rediscovered the piste, a surviving section of old colonial stone road that ran straight as an arrow for several kilometers before being swallowed again by the desert. With palpable relief, the convoy regrouped and bumped down the broken stone road. As night fell, we were back in the sand, still some 10 kilometers short of the border. Convoys were not supposed to spend the night in the middle of the minefield, but we had no choice. We wondered if the Mauritanian army would send out a patrol. Yeah, right. The Mauritanian border post was nothing more than a tent, flapping in the wind. The tent’s occupants, two officials wearing aviator sunglasses, were more interested in trying to extract bribes than questioning us about our whereabouts.

The destination for our convoy was Nouadibhou, a small fishing port hemmed in by the Sahara on one side and the Atlantic on the other. Not a single road connected this remote outpost to the rest of the country; the nearest town was hundreds of kilometers away. A solitary rail line, served by a weekly train, ran 250 kilometers east from Nouadibhou to Choum, from where a paved road ran to Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital. After the difficulties of the previous few days, almost all the European travelers decided to load their
cars onto the train. Their driving adventure was over.

A young Dutch couple in an orange VW Combi was an exception. They desperately wanted to make the desert crossing with us to Nouakchott, 500 kilometers to the south. For reasons of safety, we also didn’t want to attempt this journey alone, and the Combi seemed like a good partner. What’s more, the Dutch carried a GPS system, something of a novelty back in 1994. The first two days were almost a mirror of the minefield crossing, as we attempted to forge our way through deep, deep sand. Again, the trailer was our Achilles’ heel and we got stuck several times. The Combi, whose driver was not terribly skilled, became mired incessantly. Each time, we would pull alongside, hop out, and start digging. The Dutch woman wanted no part of this. Instead, she sat rooted in the Combi, occasionally dispensing salty little coins of Dutch liquorice to the troops outside. We wanted to smack her.

Mohammed would be back as soon as possible to salvage our wreck. Released of the burden of the trailer, our Land Rover didn’t get stuck again. She fairly floated above the sand as we surged southwest toward the coast. She was in her element and seemed to be enjoying herself. Later that afternoon, we crested a high ridge of dunes and found ourselves on the beach, 160 kilometers from Nouakchott. From here, the highway to the capital was the beach, a run best attempted at low tide. Our relationship with the Dutch had not improved, especially after they had considered abandoning us in the desert while we repaired the axle. Now they wanted to press on to the capital, so we let them go. Instead, Andrew and I decided to stop and enjoy the scenery. We set up camp above the high-tide line and watch the sun set over the Atlantic.

The next morning, a dark cloud appeared in the distance. We thought it was another sandstorm, so we gathered our equipment and stowed it securely. It was no sandstorm. It was an immense swarm of locusts—millions upon millions of them, blown into the desert and now starving. They descended on us
in a fury, consuming the remains of our breakfast and chewing at our tires. We swatted at them with our shoes, but it was an uneven fight.

We dived into the Land Rover and pulled onto the beach. It wasn’t quite low tide yet, but we couldn’t stay where we were. As it was, locusts were trying to work their way through the mesh covering the window vents. We cranked the vents closed, hearing the crunch of locust bodies. Locusts thudded in a steady stream against the windshield.

Our run down the beach was fast and smooth after the dunes of the desert. We picked out a straight line just above the wash of the waves and floored it. As I crushed a locust that was working its way through the vent, I caught a glint from the corner of my eye. I turned just in time to see a huge rogue wave come rushing up the beach. Before I could even yell a warning, the wave hit us, sending a sheet of foaming water over the Land
Rover and obliterating any view of the outside. The engine sputtered, caught, and then died. We sat stranded—again—with seawater cascading around us.

We both jumped out. In one quick motion, we had the hood up and started drying off sparkplugs, distributor cap, and everything else. We were a blur of activity, while water lapped at our tires. We knew people had lost their vehicles on this last stretch. We didn’t want to be a chapter in that book. Andrew jumped in the car, turned the key, and pressed her starter button; she coughed, sputtered, and purred. We were on our way. We had survived the Sahara.

[To be continued]

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