Todays plan was simple; a meeting around ten-ish, departure around twelw-ish, and a 120 km drive southwards on the beach to get to Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania. After the mandatory morningswim we packed the car and got on our way. There is simply no way to describe the feeling of driving on the wet sand, speeding away with the view of azur sea and rolling waves, only three meters from the side window. A bit hypnotized by the experience we sometimes forgot that we were -not- on a boat, hit the water and got a free car wash. With the music blasting and wind in our hair, life was good indeed. 

We only stopped when getting to the fishing-villages. Finding our way between the boats and fishing nets and of course buying a giant fish for dinner. Some more stops to swim, fill our memorycards and simply sucking up the feeling og complete and utter perfectness. It will be a lie to say we didn´t pity our fellow students back in Krakow. 

The joy stopped after five hours of beach-driving. Our GPS showed a paved road 700 meters inland, and we steered the car over the dunes and into the bush to find it. Following more and more wheeltracks in the right direction, we also saw buildings of what looked like some sort of compound. Suddenly a group of camouflaged men with helmets and machine guns came running towards us. They made a pretty understandable sign for "stop immediately" and looked a bit angry, even from a distance. We slammed the brakes and sat completely still, sweating slightly. Armed men surrounded us and a the guy in charge approached. Red beret, dark sunglasses and a gold tooth drew our thoughts in the direction of "long sleeve, short sleeve". First in arabic, then french and english he asked what we were doing in his military camp. Johan explained in broken french that we were looking for the road. After some confusing moments we pulled the old "i´m a medical student"-trick which has proved very efficient in the past. Shortly after we were handing out paracetamol, aspirins and eye drops to the soldiers. An even higher officer was called for to asses the situation, we apologized again for appaent surprize attach from the beach and the misunderstanding was cleared. Finally the colonel got in our car to guide us through the camp and on to paved road. After that, it took less than 20 minutes to get to the hotel for the night. 

We pitched our tent in the hotel garden and enjoyed a nice home made fish meal with Cape to Cape and the dutch Peanuts before calling it a night.