This day we had to leave our little paradise and drive back to the Laguna Beach Camp close to Bilene to continue to Ponta do Ouro the next day. But first we had to clean the camper. Thanks to the bumpy road we had to take to get to Bilene the first time, our water tank, the coffee and the chilly flakes had fallen over, opened and mixed to a sticky cream that covered most of our cupboards.
After almost two hours of cleaning we finally took off and the drive to Bilene was quite easy. Unfortunately, there we didn’t rely on the sign posts but on maps.me to drive to the camp. After a while we figured that we had taken a different path than the last time but maps.me was convinced that everything was fine. Then the road got sandier and smaller and I already had to go to the 4×4 mode to continue the drive. After crossing with a wagon carried by two donkeys the road got even worse. There weren’t even other tire marks anymore and when we reached the crossing maps.me had shown us to take a sharp right we realized that there was no crossing anymore.
We realized way to late that the card material maps.me had used was old and that the old roads were only in use by tractors. Way too late we turned around and tried to make our way back. But driving up in the deep sand was even more difficult and our engine died.
Fortunately, there was another 4×4 mode for heavier roads and in this mode we somehow made it back to the crossing where we had taken the wrong turn and from there to the Laguna Beach Camp. For the second time we realized that in a 3rd world country it takes time until a new road gets mapped and therefore you should rely less on navigation systems and more on sign posts and in our case on Daniela’s sense of orientation.
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