Border

The crossing from Tamanrasset took 2 days. Tire pressure was the chief concern, avoiding “fesch-fesch” (particularly fine and voracious sand)a priority, and keeping dust out of the truck an impossibility. We ate a lot of sand.

Twin mounds

I've been away too long...

Late in the first day we encountered a truck mired in sand, a crew of Tuaregs working to clear the tires. Wolf stopped the truck, grabbed his camera and started filming from a distance, but we were quickly discovered. Wolf later said what scared him the most was their eyes: there was no there there.

Truck

Refer to Steven Spielberg's first movie after film school

The crew came after us with rocks, there was a brief intervention from Ahmed as Wolf, shirtless, stared them down, and we quickly retreated to the truck with the gear. Ahead of them now, we soon realized they had gotten underway, and we spent a tense hour attempting to put some distance between us before finding a campsite well away from the piste. There was no question in our minds that the crew we had encountered with that truck would attack if they ran into us again. We kept our lights off until it seemed impossible that they hadn’t passed on, kept an eye out when later that evening a truck stopped on the piste near us, and finally slept without incident.

Paving Laouni

Paving crew taking a break

We reached Laouni the following day. The treacherous Laouni sand flats have ended the trip for hundreds and hundreds of travelers forced to simply abandon their cars to the desert as their engines consumed sand or the sand consumed their tires. Many have died losing the correct piste and driving off into the desert until their gas runs out. I had seen grim pictures and read grim stories and so did not expect to find many of the wrecks removed and a paving crew extending asphalt this far north. Laouni as a significant threat to north-south traffic appears to be no more.

Gas line

We needed diesel at In Guezzam late the second day, and discovered when we finally arrived a tremendous line of cars waiting for gas delivery.

Gas line

Luckily they weren’t waiting for diesel. Unfortunately, we parked in front of a police barracks, accidently included the building in some pictures, and were immediately stopped by two hefty characters who demanded our cameras.

Rolling gas containers home

Again Ahmed intervened and after some tense negotiation managed to save our gear, but we were too late to cross the border into Niger. I suppose it was poetic symmetry then, that I camped out on the Algerian border heading out exactly as I had camped out on the border coming in. We crossed into Niger the next morning after only 3 hours of delay at customs.

Assamakka, Niger