Sandstorm makes you ill – Loneliest beach in the world – Personal questions – Take hitchhikers with you?

After a wonderful week, we leave the idyllic Atlantique campsite with a heavy heart. When we like a place as much as we do here, we always find it hard to pack up our tents and move on. It is particularly painful when we have met friendly people who are still here and there is a possibility that we will never see them again. Nevertheless, we are always drawn onwards, driven by curiosity and a thirst for adventure. We are always excited to see what surprises, encounters and breathtaking landscapes await us around the next bend or in the hours and days ahead. This uncertain expectation gives every trip a special charm and makes us look to the future with anticipation and excitement.

Before we continue to the famous Plage Blanche, we want to visit the town of Tan-Tan again. With a bit of luck, we find the workshop where we had the air conditioning in the cab of the Terra Love repaired about two months ago. Apparently the workshop was unable to rectify the fault definitively, as the air conditioning system failed again four weeks later. The air conditioning technician explains to us that it doesn’t really make sense to fill the system with new gas. “To find and repair the leak, I would have to dismantle the whole front. It’s best to have it repaired in a specialist workshop,” he advises us. He is proved right, because just one day later the system is once again blowing nothing but hot air. Even though it’s getting really warm now, we’ve come to terms with it. “You can’t control the snow in the mountains or the sandstorm in the Sahara,” says Tanja with a laugh, by which she means that there is no point in fighting facts and moaning about the heat. We continue our journey towards the picturesque and remote Plage Blanche beach, hoping to spend a few days there on a secluded Atlantic coast. Another one of the countless sandstorms comes up. Fortunately, we are sitting in the cab of our Terra Love. Nevertheless, I’m a little worried whether our expedition vehicle will be able to cope with the constant fine dust in the air. Is the engine at risk as a result? I think. “I should clean the air filter more often,” I say to Tanja. “Why is she asking?”, to which I explain what has just been going through my head. Fortunately, at this point I don’t yet know that the fine sand we have been breathing in continuously for over two months will give me an eye infection and a severe, very stubborn nasal mucosal infection…

As we drive through the seemingly endless desert, we would like to take this opportunity to let you know that we have recently launched our new website. With 3,400 pages and 11,000 media contents, it is one of the most comprehensive websites in the outdoor scene worldwide. Here you will find a look back to the year 1987. We have recorded many of our adventures, expeditions and stories in text, pictures and film on this impressively comprehensive site. A life’s work in digital form that would, without exaggeration, take you months to capture everything. Take a look and let yourself be whisked away to another world. We would be delighted to receive your feedback in the comments. You will find the link to the page in the video description.

How do you actually do that? Do you like photography and filming as much as we do? Are your notes so valuable to you that you sit down in the evening to archive, label and index everything? Do you also edit videos? Do you have your own YouTube channel? A website? Do you share your experiences with friends, family or, like us, with the public? Do you have a claim? A message? Or are you simply interested in sharing your life with others? Or are you one of those who take it easy? Do you travel for the sake of traveling, enjoy every day and are happy not to have to work? Do you think a person can cope without work in the long term? Or do you think that documenting your experiences to a certain extent makes traveling more profound and valuable? We would also be very interested in your opinion and experience on these points.

We’ve been following a narrow, brand new, very lonely strip of asphalt for some time now, which hasn’t even been registered by our navigation app yet. We are excited to see what the unique Plage Blanche dune beach will look like – one of the most beautiful and deserted beaches in the world, which ends in magnificent dunes and is said to form an incredibly beautiful desert landscape. When the road ends somewhere in the middle of nowhere, we turn back. Back on the asphalt, we look out over the barren, stony desert strip, always on the lookout for a path or a track that could lead us to the coast. “There, there’s a path!” Tanja suddenly calls out. I brake the Terra to leave the asphalt strip again. We follow a trail and our instinct. “There’s an expedition vehicle there by the cliffs,” I say happily, as we’re obviously heading in the right direction. On the way to the Atlantic coast, we pass one of the countless military posts that are set up at intervals of around 5 to 20 kilometers. These posts are part of an extensive military presence in the region and are aimed at securing control of the area and warding off potential threats. Fortunately, the guard lets us drive on. On the contrary, one of the soldiers waves to us with a friendly smile.

We share the incredibly beautiful and romantic pitch on the Atlantic with two other expedition vehicles. Both couples come from Germany and, like most world travelers, are incredibly nice. Shortly before sunset, two more off-road vehicles arrive. After a brief greeting and briefing, the two drivers make their way down the access road to the beach, which looks dangerously steep to us and is bordered by rocks on both sides. According to her, you can drive about 170 km along the beach down there. The tide is still low, which the two drivers take advantage of, because when the tide comes in, this beach can become a fatal trap. Unpredictable tides, difficult navigation, a lack of local knowledge and rapid weather changes are just a few of the reasons why numerous overland vehicles fall victim to this route every year. We wonder whether we should do the same and take our Terra Love on this fantastic but certainly dangerous route tomorrow or the day after.