Sander and Alex from Amsterdam to Dakar
7000 kilometers in 23 days with 40 other cars in our 1997 Volvo V40 station wagon dubbed “Kermit” along the way…
Our incentive
A journey from Amsterdam to Dakar, the original route of 7000 kilometers in a car for less than 500 euros. The Amsterdam Dakar Challenge is famous for being doable by any car in any condition by any drivers. As it has always been one of our bucket list items:
“If we are ever gonna do it, it’s going to be us two doing it together.”
After years of lingering and postponing a year due to corona, we enlisted.
Preparations
Get a car for less than 500 euro’s (they’re not checking the receipt), get some spare tires, some extra fuel jerrycans, shed some weight, add a skid plate and you’re ready to go!
We’ve added some roof bars, built a custom roof rack, a wooden box to keep our two jerrycans with surplus gasoline, our two spare rims with tires, antenna, both shovels and our homemade canopy.
Add a custom homemade skid plate and a bolt-on LED head light bar, loose the wheel covers and rear seats and basically the rest of the interior in the back and we thought we were ready… But was it ready enough? Let’s find out!
The start of our journey
After a motivational speech, we said goodbye to our loved ones and started the engine of our green station wagon we learned to call “Kermit” from rather early on.
Some rain. Dry spain.
Europe
3000 kilometers in 3 days, highways only.
Through Europe.
Morocco
Driving through Morocco
Driving through Morocco.
Western Sahara
Driving through sandy dunes.
Mauritania
Sleeping in the desert.
That was great fun.
Senegal
Back to life.
Such a colorful country.
Finish in Dakar
On to Gambia.
Gambia
Selling the car to charity.