It was the ultimate fly-drive adventure - Gary Inman drove his 20-year-old Merc 230E across Europe, then through the Sahara to The Gambia to sell it for a sizeable profit
Our inscrutable guide is repeating, "Tout droit, tout droit!" It's but a murmur, a mantra I've been hearing since we left the road 30 minutes and 10 miles ago.
One of his hands has gathered up his voluminous white cotton robe and rests in his lap. The other rocks back and forth towards the windscreen, two fingers pointing as if he's making the shape of a rusty six-shooter. The rocking hand gently describes the direction he wants me to steer the car. Ahead is nothing but sand.
The guide is perched in the passenger seat of my classic Mercedes because I'm trying to drive it across the Sahara desert - not the full width or length, I admit, but quite a lot for an adventure-driving virgin.
I'm here because Africa, specifically northwest Africa, is still madly in love with early-1980s Mercedes like this 230E - and offering serious money. I bought this one for £390 a few weeks ago off eBbay. I was the only bidder.
After getting it home I booked a ferry from Portsmouth to Le Havre, the first leg of a two-week adventure I hoped would be the ultimate fly-drive holiday. If it went to plan, it would be self-financing. Between buying the car and leaving a month later I did the minimum of preparation - I organised the only visa I needed (for Mauritania), acquired an international driving permit (£5 from main post offices) and bought two 25-litre jerry cans, a pair of plastic sand ladders and a camping stove. A day before departure I pumped up the tyres, including two spares that came with the car, and checked the oil. That's checked, not changed.
THE drive through France and Spain was dull but trouble-free. I should've sailed to Santander in northern Spain, but it didn't fit my tight timescale. Instead I stayed in cheap hotels and lived on bread and cheese, preferring to spend money on motorway tolls to get Europe behind me. By the time I set sail from Algericas in Spain I couldn't wait to see Morocco for the first time in my life.
Unexpectedly Morocco turns out to be fantastic country for a driving holiday. Beautiful, friendly and with roads in good repair. Nights in Chefchaouen and Marrakesh, days in the Atlas mountains, all the time heading, at 70mph, toward the Atlantic coast. The first cash offer I got for the Merc was in a petrol station outside the coastal resort of Agadir. It came as a pleasant surprise. I'd been assured I'd sell the car, especially as it's left-hand drive, but this dispelled any doubts.
Offers to buy the dirty, white saloon continued through the UN-patrolled western Sahara, a place that was more inclement than its name suggests. I couldn't pause at traffic lights without being asked if I wanted to sell.
But the journey so far, all eight days of it, was hors-d'oeuvres. I'd set my heart on driving through Mauritania's share of the Sahara, bombing through Senegal and flying back from The Gambia after three days by a pool with a wet bar. So I kept turning down the taxi drivers, hotel receptionists and gendarmes manning the frequent checkpoints and continued cruising through Africa.
Shortly before leaving home someone asked me when was the last time I'd had a new experience. It took me a while to answer. Eventually I came up with running a marathon 10 months previously. Before that it was shaving my chest (strangely exciting).
Now, on this trip, I'm trying new things every day. Unforgettable things such as negotiating African borders, driving through a minefield in the no-man's-land between Morocco and Mauritania, escaping the Mauritanian mafia and pointing an old and inappropriate car across an unforgiving desert.
Which is where our Bedouin guide, the French-speaking Mr Abba comes in. "Tout droit," he echoes, happy that my soundtrack has changed from Razorlight to Massive Attack. The Merc's radio tuner never worked and even 40 CDs get monotonous doing 12 hours a day. I'm just surprised the 56-year-old Mr Abba likes anything I've brought. I make a mental note to rest the Rancid CD until after we part company.
I don't have GPS navigation and wanted to go off-piste, so his services were essential. He makes sense of the nothingness. Without him I'm pretty sure I'd die out here. I've no idea what he's using as reference points, but he gets me from A to B despite constant changes of direction to avoid terrain through which our two-wheel drive car would struggle.
The driving is up to me. The Mauritanian section of Sahara is dotted with small clumps of the most tenacious grass on the planet. Elsewhere it's peppered with pea-sized pebbles and patches of soft sand. "Accelerate!" snaps Mr Abba, raising his voice. I stomp on the pedal. The big, old Merc momentarily squats as the automatic gearbox wakes up and the car ploughs into a lake of soft sand. My head nearly hits the rooflining as the front shock absorbers rebound after the impact and the Merc scrabbles back on a firmer footing.
"A gauche, a gauche!", says Mr Abba, pointing left, picking the best way through the sand. In five minutes my pride and optimism will escape me as quickly as the stale air seeps from the punctured rear tyre. Unsticking my sweaty back from the seat, I'm thinking, "clumps of tenacious grass, pea-sized pebbles and dagger-sharp rocks."
At times we plod, having to stop, turn the car into the wind and let some air circulate around the radiator. When the going is good we get up to 60mph.
DURING the afternoon, we stop for mint tea. Mr Abba brews up and pours the dark green liquid into shot glasses. It's the first drink he's had since we set off at 8.30am. I've been drinking bottled water, and having to stop to relieve myself behind the odd dune every 30 mins. When I think of Mr Abba's intake I can barely believe we're the same species.
As I sip the tea, a drink so sweet it makes my eyeballs sweat, a goatherd appears. He's the first new person I've seen in four hours. There is nothing around here - no shade, no trees worth their name, no tents, nothing, but the man's handful of scrawny goats.
Mr Abba says the goatherd is a bit mad. I'd be surprised if he wasn't. I give him a carton of juice. I can imagine the relentless sun would do strange things to a man, but he doesn't act unhinged - apart from wearing socks with his plastic sandals.
After another two hours, as the sun begins to dip behind distant peaks, Mr Abba points out the big tents where we'll spend the night. I'll sleep in the same one as Mr Abba, his sister and her camel-herd husband. Do I want to kill dinner, a nervous looking goat? I decline. I do eat it though, and drink camel's milk from a communal bowl before falling off to camel snores.
A day later I wave goodbye to Mr Abba outside Nouackchott, the Mauritanian capital, after 175 sandy miles and a further 100 of rutted dirt track. I think the hard part is over. I'm wrong.
I still face the chancers and rip-off merchants at the Senegalese border. My budget is dented by a hefty temporary import levy for the car. I'm suckered into paying an unofficial "tax" at the Gambian border and then subject myself to a day and a half of tyre kickers to sell the car. But I do sell - for slightly less than I wanted, but still for close to three times what I paid for it.
The new owner is happy (but, like every other potential buyer, would've preferred a diesel manual to the petrol auto). I'm happy. I book a flight back to Gatwick for £325 and now I have two days by the pool to relax. The ultimate fly-drive? It certainly beat two weeks in Florida.