1998 Barcelona - Dakar cycling holiday full GPS track

This is not the exact GPS track of this route, I just have connected the places together that we have passed by during that bicycle trip.

Update 2021: recently Willem Hoffmans did about the same trip, but when though the inlands of Morocco and continued to Conakry. See for his gps route: www.wikiloc.com/routes-fietstochten/2021-barcelona-dakar-gonakry-afrika-route-by-bike-93619424

Willem wrote a book about it. The book is in Dutch and contains maps of the route he took daily: www.boekenbestellen.nl/boek/afrika-van-binnenuit/44773.

Own 1998 route: altitude meters have been added by using: [www.gpsvisualizer.com/convert?output_elevation] ; 40,500 meters, although I don't remember this trip as a very difficult one in terms of altitude meters; so it pobably will me (much) less if you would follow your barometric bicycle clock. Note: I didn't upload the track with this hight information to Wikiloc, I only added (later) a picture with the profile. If you need the GPS track with added altitude meters, drop me an email.

It’s just a pretty adventurous trip in terms of finding a place to spend the night and in terms of logistics; e.g. how many water to take for the next stage through the Sahara desert. In those days to enter Mauritania, you needed a visa and flight ticket to fly out of the country, arranged beforehand and before crossing the border. There was a business in terms of selling flight tickets that could be cancelled and sold back against a certain fee when reaching Mauritania.

The part through the Western Sahara from Dahkla to Nouadibou (Mauritania) went in an army controlled convoy, due to the road mines that are still there. In Dahkla, you need to arrange transport (hitchhiking) with mostly Europeans that want to join the convoy with often second hand cars; they fly back home after having sold the car in e.g. Mauritania. Not sure if this is still the same system after so many years. It was all good fun!

From Nouadibou to Choum we travelled during the freezing night, sitting with locals on an open wagon, that was part of an very, very, very long iron ore train, the most amazing adventure ever! But I think there is a tourist train these days as well with great views over the dessert.

After reaching Atar we left our bikes and walked through the dessert for a few days with guides and camels carrying our stuff, until we reached Chinquetti.

Again, great experience.

Jeffrey Sipma, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, jmsipma2@hotmail.com

For more pictures: www.flickr.com/photos/119944846@N08/albums/72157672990049512