Cool. We arrived in Senegal yesterday (at the end of our eighth week of our journey) and haven't really digested the fifteen days in Mauritania yet. When asked this morning what it was like to travel in Mauritania, we could only summarize: Wonderful and exhausting at the same time.

Above all, it was hot and sandy and windy and dusty. And it's fascinating to be in the desert. In this merciless heat of up to 50 (!) degrees. Realizing how vitally important water is. How demanding traveling is on people and material and of course also on the lives of the people here.

Endless expanses, dunes, plains, occasional low bushes, bright starry skies and total silence at night (if the muezzin call doesn't come from somewhere many kilometers away at four in the morning). White camels that appear like mythical creatures. And here and there little oases of sudden greenery. Overwhelming.

Initially in Nouadhibou – the city is pure but functioning chaos – we had a campsite at a British-Dutch couple who runs a small oasis called Villa Maguela and invite overlanders to eat and relax together in their living room. Then we had the first nights in the desert on the way east parallel to the railway of the famous Iron Ore Train (you can google it). There were campsites in Atar and Terjit, which means that there is a wall around the site, some shade, water and the most basic sanitary facilities. And if you wish, you can get a dinner: chicken or camel with onion vegetables and bread or fries. Then we had six nights in wildcamps.

We are traveling in one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world. Wherever we meet people, they welcome us to their country. Communication is rudimentary, but gestures and openness always work. And spending the night in the desert is also okay, as long as you are discreet, keep distance and don't leave anything behind.

And given the climatic living conditions, we get the idea, as we once did in the Moroccan Rief Mountains, that concealment strategies originally had more to do with sand and dust and wind than with religion. However, Mauritania is strictly Muslim and Wolle is the main contact when communicating with men (and they dominate communication). But there are also nice exceptions, especially at the omnipresent checkpoints. We used almost 40 copies of the routing slips and in the end we were only able to show our ID cards – which no longer mattered as we got closer to the Senegalese border.

The search for food, diesel and water determines our journeys through towns. Driving in deep sand increases the car's consumption to over 20 liters at times. The heat also increases our drinking water consumption enormously. And in the end, almost all of the canned food kept for emergencies is gone.

It's wonderful that we were able to spend these days with a British couple – it gave us all a little more security. Ian proved to be a great night spot scout and was responsible for the fire in the evenings, Catherine was a good cooking and organizing partner for Brigitte, and Wolle had to provide valuable services (and persuasion) as a navigator. And he also had to master the difficult passages in the deep sand. We learned a lot – also from each other.

It was wonderful that we had Abdul with us for the first few days, a Brit born in Libya, and that we kept meeting three cyclists – sometimes it had something almost family-like about it.

Now we will rest and try to fill up our online diary and even upload pictures from the camera at some point. And we have to make our plans for Senegal and Gambia, because everything has completely fallen by the wayside due to the intensity of the last few days and the offline state that has lasted for almost a week.