Sergio Fernández completes the Top Cable 7 Desert Challenge crossing the Sahara on a bicycle
The challenge: Seven deserts in four years

In the last four years Sergio has crossed the seven most emblematic deserts on the five continents; he is now preparing a book and a film on the adventure.

On the banks of the Niger river, in Bamako (Mali), the journalist and adventurer Sergio Fernández Tolosa was putting at the beginning of June and end to his particular cycling odyssey. Behind him were 4,500 km and two months of trans-Saharan crossing, with frequent sand storms and temperatures that reached 45º C in the shade during most of the day, but also the habitual hospitality of the people of the desert.

“The hardest part of the trip was the climate. Because of a shoulder injury I had to change the calendar and I reached the Sahara with almost four months delay. The heat and the sand storms of the season of the year have made the route much harder, which was, at least apparently, one of the most accessible that can be made across the Sahara”, explained Sergio on his return.


From Marrakech to the Sahara Desert

The expedition began two months earlier in the city of Marrakech, regular destination of the goods that the caravans transported when they used to cross the Sahara. “One of the argumental threads of the trip was the old trade caravanner, but later, as I advanced to the south, the pure human reality, current and alive, of the areas that I’ve covered, have contributed the added value to the trip, something that I was looking for both for my own experience as for the reportages that I wanted to make about the crossing”, expressed the adventurer, who collaborates with television programmes and produces reportages about his cycling journeys for several printed publications.

At the sports level, the first obstacle to overcome were the Atlas Mountains. A long climb interceded between the bustle of Marrakech and solitude of the desert. Following two days of a long ascension, on the other side of the Tichka Pass appeared the fertile Draa valley, known for its oasis of palm trees and the legendary kashbahs, fortified cities on the banks of the river that sheltered caravaners and traders for centuries.

After Zagora, the oasis begin to be scarce and the river becomes subterranean. M Hamid is the last inhabited place on the banks of the Draa before reaching Algeria. Here the asphalted road ends and the dunes of the Great Western Erg begin to swallow the houses of the old part of the village. As of this point there are only 30 km to the Algerian border, closed since 1994.

The journey continued over several tracks close to the course of the Draa river, whose bed remains dry most of the year, and turns to the west, flowing into the Atlantic Ocean, near Tan Tan, at the doors of Western Sahara, where “the military controls and the atmosphere of occupation is breathed in all the populations, even for one who is only passing through”, lamented Sergio. The bicycle crossing continued along the road that goes to Mauritania between the sea and the mine fields, passing through cities such as Laayoune and Dakhla, where he had to stock up on provisions to be able to cover with full autonomy the long distances that separate the inhabited in this zone.


500 km on biscuits and sardine cans

Reaching Mauritania did not entail major changes as far as landscape, although the route detoured slightly to the interior and the sand storms began. The predominant winds coming from the desert, known as harmattan o irivi, depending on the region, carried sand 24 hours a day. “During one week I had the sensation of travelling inside a cloud of dust, day and night, always chewing sand, that enters through all parts: ears, mouth, eyes... it’s an oppressive sensation that can put an end to any one’s patience”, explained Sergio, who added that “fortunately the wind in this phase came from the side, which helped me advance faster”.

Reaching Nouackchott represented a certain relief and granted him a few days rest. “There I was able to eat a little better. In the last 500 kilometres I had only eaten salt biscuits and cans of sardines”. He also had to overcome a brief crisis of motivation: “I had already crossed the Sahara from north to south, I had reached the Sahel, and the summer was arriving with more heat and more wind from the east, so I entered into a negative spiral that almost made me quit and cancel the original plans of continuing towards Mali, but after resting I reconsidered and recommenced the journey. I had to try it, I felt that the expedition was unfinished”, recalled Sergio.

You have to remember that although the Sahara reaches to the very Atlantic coast, the influence of the ocean moderates the temperatures in a coastal strip that can reach 50 kilometres. “Beyond, the thermal change is complete”, assured the adventurer, who described the first days of the march to the interior of the desert as “the hardest days of the 30,000 km that I’ve covered in the four and half years that the project has lasted. Given the heat and the scorching wind that blew against me, it was a battle lost beforehand. I knew that the Sahara was going to demand a lot of me, all my patience and everything I had learned in the other deserts, and that’s what happened”.

During several days he struggled to acclimatise to the heat. He pedalled about 100 km daily, covering a part of the stage between dawn and 10 in the morning, when he stopped to rest when the heat “became unbearable”, and renewed the march “just before sundown, taking advantage of the first hours of the night to advance by the light of his headlamp a few kilometres before finding a place to plant the tent or, simply, bivouac in the middle of the desert”. The stages were set day to day. “I only tried to advance the maximum possible as long as it was possible, although the conditions were not optimum. If I’ve learned one thing is that do everything you can today, because tomorrow the wind against you can be even worse”.

In this phase of the journey he began to drink water in large amounts: “You don’t realize it and you’re dehydrated”, pointed out the adventurer, who supplied himself with liquids in the abundant wells along the route. “The wells are a source of life and a meeting place. There are always people watering their flocks, collecting water to take to their home or campsite. When I reached an inhabited place, the first thing they offer you is water. At first I was afraid of becoming ill. Later I drank even out of the puddles. I had never felt so integrated in nature. Water indicates from where it comes from and what all life depends on”, explained Sergio.


The challenge: Seven deserts in four years

Crossing the Sahara was the last of seven expeditions on bicycle, in solitary and without assistance, which have taken him to the seven most emblematic deserts on the five continents.

In total, the Challenge sponsored by Top Cable has summed up 30,000 km through some of the most arid regions of the planet. In 2003 he crossed Australia from Darwin to Sydney. In 2004 he covered Patagonia and the Atacama desert. In the spring of 2005 he pedalled across the deserts of the United States and in autumn he crossed the Namib and the Kalahari, in Namibia and Botswana respectively. In 2006 came the turn of the Gobi, between Mongolia and China. The Sahara was planned for the winter of 2007, but a shoulder le obliged him to postpone the march to North Africa until the beginning of April, when the heat and the sand storms make life in the desert even more difficult.


Readying a book and a documentary

Currently, Sergio Fernández is finishing writing a book that will include the seven expeditions, and whose publication is planned for next autumn.

More information about the Top Cable 7 Desert Challenge
at www.topcable.com/7desiertos.