Blaffer Tour: From Europe through the Sahara is written by Lene Kohlhoff Rasmussen
The Blaffer method: A cheap way to travel
My then boyfriend Pete and I were standing and shouting at each other at a highway entrance somewhere in Andalusia. It was scorching hot. We were tired and hungry, but we only had a few dry biscuits in our pockets, so nothing was needed before the fuse was turned on.
The year was 1995 and we were young students who could not afford to travel so we hitchhiked down through Europe. Pete's mother had a holiday apartment in Torremolinos, but when we got there, it turned out that the apartment was rented out to other tourists, so we had to come up with something else.
Morocco was not so expensive, so we agreed to sail over to Tangier, and before long we found ourselves in the adventurous city of Marrakech.
Hose tamers and used dentures
When the morning sun rose over the large square Djema al Fna, the magical life of Marrakech awoke. The snake tamers gathered in the square on their blankets. Across the square we could see henna-painting women and the street vendors selling everything from used dentures to ostrich eggs, and there was the scent of spices and herbs.
There were not many foreigners in the city, but we met a couple of Germans, Heinz and Monika, we hoped we could use our hitchhiking technique. They were a couple of hippie types who played guitar and smoked a lot of tents while relaxing and dreaming of filling life with love and harmony.
They had settled in Gambia, but once or twice a year they traveled to Germany and bought some discarded vans, which they drove down through the Sahara in.
In Gambia, Heinz fitted rear seats to cars and sold them as minibuses. This time they had two cars with them, but they were missing a driver when one of their friends had gone home due to illness. Pete and I quickly volunteered to take over the job, and immediately we were on our way.
A hitchhiking trip with battered vans through the Sahara
There were plenty of checkpoints on the route. Heinz and Monika knew the procedure and gave the guards perfume and cigarettes as gifts, so we got through faster and easier.
On the last stretch of road through Moroccan Western Sahara and further down across the border Mauritania should we drive a military convoy. Several times a day we had to push the cars free of the sand so we had also come to hard work.
Through Mauretania we drove along a part of the road havet. We had to go through a narrow strip with a rock wall to one side and havet to the other. Here we were suddenly stuck, and the cars dug deeper and deeper into the sand as the tide approached.
We were standing in water to our knees when we finally got the cars free. We did it, we were lucky, and no matter how incredible it sounds, the battered vans survived.
Despite the many efforts to push the cars free, the desert landscapes and the starry evenings out in the middle of the Sahara were worth the whole hitchhiking trip.
One night we experienced something completely unusual: It started dripping on the tent cloth. The rain in the crisp desert was so refreshing that we spontaneously set out to dance a rain dance. The next morning we could see some small green sprouts emerging from the sand, but within a few hours they were scorched away by the bright and backing sun.
They stole my only shoes
We reached all the way through the Sahara and spent the night in a small village in Senegal. In the evening we sat and ate and enjoyed ourselves with the local villagers. At night I put my shoes right outside the tent and the next morning they were stolen.
It was a pair of worn rubber shoes that I could have done without if I had just had more than one pair of shoes with me. A bit of a crisis for a hitchhiker. Now I had to travel on to the next town in bare toes. Not only had I been robbed during the night, but south of the Sahara I was also attacked by bloodthirsty mosquitoes, which subsequently turned out to have almost fatal consequences.
Here is a good flight offer to Senegal - click on "see offer" on the page to get the final price
End of the hitchhiking trip: Home with malaria
When we reached Gambia, we pitched our tent in Heinz and Monika's backyard. We were guests with them for a few weeks before traveling home to Wales in England, where Pete and I lived together.
Pete drank some whiskey juice on board the plane, and the next day he complained that he had the worst hangovers, which inexplicably got worse and worse. The next morning he was lying in bed and was ash gray in the face. He arrived at the hospital and was diagnosed with malaria.
Over the next few days, I even started to get dull. In the morning I was going up to the bus stop, but suddenly I became very dizzy and it blackened before my eyes. I woke up by throwing up on the neighbor's living room floor. She had seen me fall unconscious on the street and called for an ambulance.
I was in the hospital for a week with malaria. We had had the worst of all types of malaria and experienced fever, diarrhea, vomiting, nightmares and hallucinations. Fortunately, we both got well again. And with this experience richer, I got a truthful travelogue and robbery story to tell about the time I, as a hitchhiker, traveled down through Europe and ended up in Gambia.
The next journey is only a raised thumb away
Add comment