Pirate Pete & Other Adventures

Sunday, July 20
Nouakchott, Mauritania




By Mauritanian standards, today was pretty uneventful. I hung out in Nouakchott with the intention of doing very little. I was still fatigued by my monster journey from Noudibou, and mentally, I was in no shape to make the potentially life or death decision to either continue north or retreat south to the comfort and relative safety of Senegal--and Sub-Saharan Africa in general. My goal is to make it from Mauritania north into Western Sahara and then up in Morocco and finally into Spain. But I knew how scary the desert could be and I was waiting for a caravan of westerners who might be headed north. Or better yet, wait for a pickup truck that could carry me and my bike north through Mauritania and the no-man's land into Western Sahara/Morocco.

I spent a good portion of the day talking to Cam and Bald Pete. They are two very cool expats with a fairly untraditional outlook on life. Cam is a bit younger--closer to my age--and he's sort of Pete's apprentice. Bald Pete is a grizzled veteran pirate whose profession can best be described as that of Camel Trader. Though while he seemed to know the price of camels in various parts of the Sahara--$1,000 in northern Mauritania and $4,000 in southern Morocco--I don't think he'd ever actually traded camels for a living. He preferred importing and exporting less cumbersome trade goods. As far as I could tell Pete has lived in Istanbul, Bangkok, South Africa, England, Namibia and Morocco, and the closest thing he's ever had to traditional job has been "property development." He's a businessman in the classic sense of the word--someone who exploits massive disparities between supply and demand and keeps a little profit for himself. Pete was in Mauritania attempting to set up an import/export business for self-contained solar power units, chinese made motorcycles, and anything else that nouveau riche Moors might want. Pete has a healthy disrespect for authority that makes me look like a corporate yes-man in comparison.


Quick Note:
Mom and Dad, if I leave business school without prior warning and you have no idea where I am, I have probably moved to Morocco to become an apprentice pirate/desert trader. I still love you. But, please do not follow me. If you must find me to tell me that I finally got that spot on "Road Rules" you can fly to Agadir and ask for the Dread-Pirate-Dave at the British Pub. Do not eat their food.

love,
your son


As I mentioned before, Pete and Cam had driven through the Sahara from Morocco in their tricked out Ford Turbo Diesel Cargo Van. They drove about 160 km/h and it still took them four days. That was a bit of a concern for me as a I could only drive 90 km/h, absent sandstorms, camel trains, and greedy customs officers. I asked them about the road.

ME: Is the road in good condition?
PETE: Absolutely, I'm an exceptional driver so I rarely needed to slow down under 160.
ME: Are there other cars and places to get gas and whatnot?
PETE: There are gas stations and occasional cars and trucks.
ME: Bandits?
PETE: That might be a problem. At one point we drove by four guys standing outside of a white land rover. We couldn't tell if they had guns.
CAM: I'm pretty sure they had guns.
PETE: Well, they did have boards with nails in them to stop cars.
ME: How did you get by?
PETE: Mate, we were doing 160 kilometers per hour. We weren't stopping. I had two choices, veer off into the desert and go around them or hit the fuckers dead on. Of course, I wanted to hit them, but wiping the blood off the car may have been a hassle. We were around them before they could even turn their heads.