Day Ten: South to Dakhla

As you can see, we've now chalked up 3,250 miles, which is allegedly more than halfway to Bamako, but doesn't feel like it.

After a Friday night in the very chilled-out little beach town of Mirleft, where the sat-link power ran out before I had time to add much, we headed down to Layounne, 'capital' of the disputed Western Sahara. It's allegedly the safest town in Morrocco because there are so many police, soldiers and UN peacekeepers. It still felt dodgy, even by Morroccan standards, and the 2* Lakourra hotel was pretty overpriced. On the other hand, it's tax-free, so petrol is about 60p/litre.

Today took us on a long desert odyssey, from the stony desert outside Layounne into real Saharan sand dunes, and a fairly scary dust storm with visibility down to about 10m and lights no help. Morroccan coach drivers are the only ones who don't slow down, and nearly took out a couple of fellow teams overtaking on the narrow 2-lane highway.

A fellow team also rescued the Monkeys from an empty fuel tank. Remember I said it was 60p a litre? That was fine until the unleaded ran out, and then the petrol stations ran out when we decided to just stick leaded in and damn the consequences. Team Subaru stopped by with a spare 10L, which was just enough for the haul to Dakhla, deep in Western Sahara and just north of the Tropic of Cancer. It's an awful lot warmer. Pouring petrol into a funnel with only the car to break the sand-laden Sahara wind isn't an experience I'd recommend, and we've now got 40L of spare fuel – leaded, unfortunately.

Titch has escaped any serious problems so far, although I managed to break the glovebox, and the boot lock can only be released by jemmying it with a screwdriver from the inside. Might be able to take it apart tomorrow, but for now it's a new security feature. I'm sure the sand and bumpy roads will soon have something to say, but so far we're one of the smoothest-runners.

We've also paid our first bribes, or 'petit cadeaux' as the rare dodgy copper calls it. I lost us 200 Dirham (about 13 quid) after making an illegal U turn. It was 400Dh until I asked for a receipt! A couple of packs of fags were handed over at a checkpoint in Tan Tan (Camels bought for the purpose en route) and a packet of lollipops somewhere south of Layounne (“pour les enfants, mon ami”!). Checkpoints occur at almoist every town in Morrocco. In Morrocco we were waved through almost every stop, but down here you have to hand over a 'fiche' – a pre-prepared document with all your passport and vehicle details to make everyone's life easy. If Morroccan police had a computer filing system instead of handwritten logbooks, woulden't be any chance for criminals around here.

Dakhla itself feels like a town at the end of the world, so what our next stop will be like is anyone's guess. It's an almost pointless town, a port for the Western Sahara phosphate mines, and an over-wintering spot for Germans in motor homes. You see odd collections of these, all with satellite dish, along the coast all the way down. Tonight a group of teenage German girls, presumably dragged down here by hippy parents and bored as hell, toured the new arrivals at their campsite with a basket of surplus food, trying to drum up a few Euros and a new conversation.