There’s nothing quite like crossing an African border.

Firstly, you’ll spend 30minutes at a local garage negotiating in a foreign language for a bush taxi at a fair price, you’ll be up early trying to beat the heat and then you’ll find yourself in a sardine tin arrangement amongst luggage and 7 others in an old wagon.

After a few hours on the road, the relief upon arrival is like no other. Push through the hawkers and try to get to your bags before someone else does and follow the dusty tracks to the entrance gates. Battle with border guards and fork out an imaginary ‘exit tax’ and you’ll make your way onto the ferry to Senegal. At least that’s how things go at Rosso, Mauritania.

The border crossing here is renowned for its hassles but we weren’t anticipating the issues we would have over the next few hours. There’s a first time for everything and this was the first time we had been refused entry into a country within an hour.

We’d met a Senegalese guy in the taxi with working with a local NGO, Education Without Borders. Jackpot. It’s always a dream crossing with a local, they’ll help you through the craziness, fend off ‘helpers’ and minimise any ‘taxes’ at ferry gates and immigration. We thought we’d run the perfect race as we boarded a ferry to leave the desert behind.

But we’re Amateurs so you know it would be too good to be true and our optimism soon turned into despair an hour later when we were informed that you couldn’t purchase a tourist visa at the border. We were aware that Australians didn’t have access to the visa waiver that some nationalities have but our research had outlined – it was definately possible. Despite continual protests and “c’est possible” pleas we were shown the exit of Senegal and sent back across the river to Mauritania.

Our Senegalese fixer not only tried to help us with the border police, he also accompanied us back to Mauritania and through immigration. Needless to say, the 5 hour car trip back to Nouakchoutt in 42 degree heat capped off a perfect day’s travel.

We’d later also realised we didn’t get an entry stamp back in to Mauritania, effectively rendering us illegal aliens in Mauritania for however long it took to get the Senegalese Visa.

They said next day for the Visa, no worries.

75 Euro, 4 days later and after a lot of frustration we had our visa from the Senegalese Embassy. Probably the most precious ink we’ve ever seen on paper in the end. We may have even gotten our visa quicker if we were more help to the visa officer who was searching for a VW Golf from Germany and wanted some advice. Our lack of car knowledge had come back to haunt us.

Luck favoured us on the return journey. No one checked our passports properly, pressumably as we were by now locals on the highway and the police had already had their laughs at our expense 4 days earlier, hence we weren’t fined/arrested for overstaying a Visa. This would not have been ideal and we were preparing to pay a hefty sum.

What can you learn from us? – Read widely, don’t rely on the book and a few sources and you’ll be sweet to hit the road. We found out the hard way that in Africa you’re not all sweet. Do whatever you can to make sure you get a stamp in and out of every country. It cost us plenty of time and money.