Camera: Canon EOS 1Ds MKIII,
Canon EOS 5D mkII
Lens: Canon EF 16-35 mm. f/4.0L IS,
Canon EF 70-200 mm. f/2.8L IS mkII

During this years Western Sahara adventure we all had plenty of new experiences, one being the tiring and difficult driving in the wet desert, another would be to watch the normally very dry Sebkat Arida flooded with water from the resent heavy rainfall. This will probably be a once in a lifetime experience for all of us. We also tried to visit the Sebkat Arryd, but it was undoable the surface was not drivable, so we had to head back to the Arida. We had lunch here overlooking the interior from high ground, a disturbing rainfall passed us during this lunch-break. The desert floor and the standing water in the Sebkat had already grown a green color-cast; the organic life which had been in hibernate waiting for this moment, apparently wanted to make the most from this rare opportunity.

Again today it was a pain driving in the wet interior of the desert, - on our way towards the Sebkat a few trucks got so stuck that use of a kinetic-rope tow was needed. When heading onwards after lunch it all got a bit silly, the piste was a death-trap; you could at one moment be cruising relaxed on it on some solid foundation, the next minute you would bee sucked deep into the wet stuff. At one point it got a bit scarey because nearly all our vehicles got stuck at the same time, leaving us with very few options to get unstuck again.
We all took a minute to evaluate the situation and estimate what our best options would be. After some effort with a kinetic-rope we had succeeded in rescuing all the vehicles but mine. I had the misfortune to be on the trail when the dry crust simply collapsed and diapered beneath my Geländewagen within seconds, it was so thorough stuck that it had to be winched out from it´s misery.

We were headed north towards the line of sand-dunes witch we intended to follow further north in the direction of Laayounne. Our best option were to stay on high ground avoiding the deathly tracks. The going were pretty tough and we had to pause a few times to wait for Ken to catch up in his overheating Defender, being fairly low-powered the small engine simply struggled too hard on the soft ground. During our battle to cover some distance and elope the soaked desert, the sky did not look to promising, we were concerned by the passing of dark clouds with potential rainfall; fortunately the rain did not get to serious and we only saw a few scattered raindrops.

After a while we finally made it to some more drier regions and the driving got a bit more relaxed. We even had the opportunity to collect some wood for a bonfire. During the last few days it had been difficult to get wood in the normally very dry parts of the Western Sahara.

That evening we made camp under blue skies on the solid desert-bed in between the dunes; we had finally reached the dune-belt that stretches up along the North Pacific from Boujdour to Laayounne.