We passed through a cluster of houses at our usual cruising speed of around 95km/h, when we were pulled to the side of Moroccan police. We were told the speed limit here was 80km/h and that we now owed them 40 Euros. Sebastian went to sit down with the officer in charge, as Johan started doing the friendly talk with one of the others. He had been a medical student himself, and got very excited when he saw the equipment we are bringing and heard about our project. After some more medicine-talk in French Sebastian noticed that the chief officer suffered from conjunctivitis. We offered him help, and got out our extensive first aid kit. After some discussion we gave him lidocaine eye drops for immediate relief, followed by a dose of chloramphenicol ointment. The other officers got some aspirins, paracetamols and eye drops. Needless the say, we never payed the fine. 

After driving a few more hours we could smell the Atlantic ocean, and over the last hilltop we finally saw the big blue stretching out beyond the horizon. Joyous by the sight we stopped for some lunch at the next fuel station. The restaurant looked more like a public toilet, but being deprived of food since early morning our judgment was low. We sat down and said "yes" to whatever the owner suggested, and after three minutes we were served some sort of fish dish. A few bites into the meal we got worried about the quality of the food, the short preparation time, and the earlier sight of locals walking along the rocky shore looking for dead fish. We looked at each other, and with a moments clear view we got up from the table and left. Back in the car we started chewing charcoal tablets and cursing our stupidity. 

Back on the road again we followed the coastline towards Laayoune. On a hilltop while doing a right turn we were struck by disaster. A Moroccan car hit our side, taking with it our side mirror and rear bumper. His car spun around and stopped in the dirt next to the road. We got out to assess the situation, and luckily no one was hurt. The Phoenix was not hurt badly, but our paint job and decals on the left side doesn´t look that good any more. The other driver quickly gave us a choice since he was screaming "money or police!" laying down under our car to stop us from continuing. We did not want to wait for local police, nor try to explain the situation to them, so we went the money option. The angry driver got his blood money, we fixed his punctured wheel and off he went. After all, his little car looked way worse than ours. 

Arriving in camp we were greeted by the other teams who had heard of our two-day rescue mission with Paul and the beetle. It felt really good to be together with the group again. Apparently, our little high way accident was nothing compared to what other teams had experienced that day. Two cars had rolled over, a few small collisions and many punctured tires. Setting up camp in the windy desert was hard, and both car and tent was filled with sand before we could get to sleep. Chewing sand and cleaning red eyes with eye drops has by now become a habit. Tomorrow we are heading south to Dakhla and are leaving the race.