Week 14, Resting the knees before the Sahara crossing & backtracking to Rabat to extend an expiring Mauritanian visa.

The knees were in need of a well deserved rest and no better time to do so than before the crossing of the Sahara desert. I found myself sitting in a Moroccan tea den catching up on the journal going over my route south when I pulled out my passport to have a  gander at the Mauritanian visa.

Date of issue was December 29th 2010, a 30 day visa that seemed to be ticking away from the date of issue instead of the post dated date I had requested in order to have enough time to traverse the +- 2500 km from Rabat to the Mauritanian frontier.

Sure enough the visa would expire prior to my arrival at the border leaving me stranded in the middle of the Sahara desert with an invalid entry permit for Mauritania and an expiring Moroccan visa, not an optimum situation by any stretch of the imagination.

To continue and chance it?, or return to Rabat and go in the opposite direction and backwards, a mind twist to say the least knowing you have 35 000 km to cover going the other way. The toss of a coin coupled with a splash of common sense and I found myself scouring the town of Essouira for a safe place to stash my gear for a few days while I went through the painful process of backtracking hundreds of miles hitch hiking and using local night buses to go through the laborious process of trying to sort out my visa issues.

Well aware of the nightmare process that awaited me as I disembarked the night bus at 6 am at the Gare Routier in Rabat, I made quick tracks for the embassy only to get dismissed by the diplomat as he waved me to the door with a unique problem and told me to wait till everyone had finished applying for their first visa for Mauritania before they could tend to my issue.

10 hours on a pavement waiting, hoping , praying for a glimpse in the door I managed to get sorted with the help of a very handy Ghanain fellow that seemed to speak a myriad of languages and helped me to iron out my problems, eternally grateful I skipped out the embassy just after 4pm a few days out of pocket but with an extended visa that surely gave me enough time to reach the border in time and tackle the Sahara confident I would gain entry on arrival at the Mauritanian border.