Day 54: Wild camp after Matmata – Wild camp towards Bougé

After a relaxed start to the day, the day becomes somewhat strange.

We are looking for a copy shop in Magta’ Lahjar because we are running out of fiche. We had taken 20 with us and had already made another 10 copies in Atar. Now we ask around, drive up and down the town twice and find nothing. Which is not surprising given the enormous hustle and bustle. So last but not least, we ask a few officials. They show us the way to the police station because the “copy shop”, which is now opposite, is closed. From there we are accompanied to a shop where the copy machine dies with the first copy. We continue to the next store and we finally have our 10 more copies. We get rid of six of them over the course of the day.

We continue the search for water, we are pretty low on our supplies. The two options shown on iOverlander cannot be used because they are secured or not suitable for us. In Aleg we fill up and, remembering Namibia, Wolle asks if we can also get water. Theoretically possible, but only usable for Ian and Catherine because our connections don't fit. Stupid too, later we realize that our thinking was too complicated and that we could have simply removed all the adapters. The locals simply wrap the taps and hoses with some kind of thick rubber bands.

For us that means continuing through the town. The municipal water tower does not offer a connection and we drive to a hotel. After a lot of back and forth with the only two “employees”, laying hoses, trying connections, closing holes in hoses, we finally have a solution. The two young men are fantastic and don't even want any money after the work is done. However, Becky now has a slight tiny dent and scratch from our handling of the metal water filters. The whole thing takes two hours with refueling and a little shopping.

The supply situation is not plentiful. The shops have a few canned goods, we at least get pasta and a few cookies. Some fridge has four yoghurts, two cans of cola and two melon milks – let's see what it tastes like. You always get bread and yesterday we got some really good fruit – so with the old vegetables from Atar it will be enough for a curry. Like every evening so far. Considering the shopping options, we're actually doing quite well.

We drive far slower than we thought and look for a place north of Bogué. A little late again, pretty tired again.

What's wonderful is that we sit by the fire in the evening and are surrounded by camels. We only see them dimly in the dark, but we can hear them walking and panting and now and then a deep hum.

Btw: Since we now have water, we'll take a quick shower without any hesitation. We had never tried that before, considering not to use too much drinking water.

And one more thing: there are more horse-drawn carts than donkey vehicles here, there are ancient cars on the road without lights or windows, it is overall more densely populated than the regions of recent days and the amount of garbage is increasing again.