23 November – Nouadhibou to Diama Bridge, Mauritania. 17,513 km
I needed to get Mauritanian insurance for the lorry and the kind campsite owner set up someone to come in and draw up the paperwork. I had been told it should be €20 and so balked when the guy wanted €25. I suggested that it was a little high and that I should be paying €20 so he dropped his price – it seems incredible that one can negotiate such things... I did feel a little guilty afterwards as I realised the person who told me the price earlier was driving a much smaller car and insurance is priced on engine size, oh well!
Once all the paperwork was completed we were free to explore the city. There isn’t that much to explore! We wandered up the main street dodging goats, women with bowls of stuff on their heads, children demanding ‘bon bon’ and men wheeling carts laden with bread with the odd beggar thrown in for good measure! We did want to find the park office as we thought we may visit and wanted a map, however, no-one seemed to know anything about where it was and some didn’t even seem to know that there was a 200 km long park very near to the city! We asked and asked but each time received varying instructions so eventually we gave up.
Back at the campsite there was a man selling trousers, shirts and artwork so I went over to take a look. His name was Barry and, after him going back to his shop several times for different sizes and colours, I bought a lovely pair of trousers which he rushed off and altered for me in under an hour! I gave him some of the football cards I have a presents for people who go out of their way for us and he was so delighted he asked us back to his house! Off we went out into the main street, round the back of a shop, over the big pile of rubble where they were digging up the path, round the huge puddle of festering water next to the place where everyone urinates and down an alleyway. We entered a courtyard and were shown into a room which Barry shares with his cousin. Two mattresses on the floor, a couple of battered suitcases, a small table with a hifi and another with a small TV were all the possessions in the room. All the cooking and washing were completed in the courtyard which is shared by four other rooms containing several families. He was keen to show us his many family photos but our French is so bad that we didn’t understand much of what he said. I did gather that he had two sisters and a brother and that his father died when he was about 10.... also that he is from Guinea and not Mauritania. He would love to go back to Guinea and will when he can afford it (although I got the feeling if he could keep going north into Europe he would take that option). He was very keen to give us his mother’s phone number in case we made it into Guinea but he had sold his phone the night before as he didn’t have enough money to buy food. We tried his sim card in our phone but it wouldn’t work – he come round the next day with another phone and gave us the numbers. On the way back to the campsite we stopped for bread and bought him two baguettes so that he would have something to eat that night although probably nothing to put in them.
Barry helped us find the park office and we went the following morning on our way out of the city. It was very strange as we were ushered into an office with a man behind the desk. He smiled at us and ensured we had seats and we sat and looked at each other for a bit. I asked again about park tickets and he told us to wait. Eventually it was obvious nothing was going to happen so I asked in a slightly different way – suddenly we were taken to another office and there was a man who spoke English who was the man who sold tickets!! Don’t know what waiting in the other office had been about. The park guy was reluctant to sell us tickets and said that we would be better to get them from the park entrance! He showed us a map but wouldn’t let us buy it! And he didn’t have any leaflets we could take away either so we left feeling that perhaps we’d give the park a miss!
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We met this Belgium Unimog on the road - they kindly stopped to ask if we were ok... we were having a cuppa! |
This goat is either very stupid or very brave hanging around outside the butchers!!
Click on any image to enlarge |
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The view out of the windscreen .... endless sand and nothing else except the brand new road south. |
Van pushing is an Olympic sport in Mauritania - as is loading up the roof! |
We spent the night at the only service station on the 470km road between Nouadhibou and Nouakchott |
We drove south on a rather boring road to Nouakchott with very distant sand dunes and swirls of sand blowing across the road making it look like water, this was the Sahara for real. We stopped that night about 250 km south of Nouadhibou at a service station rather strangely called ‘Gare du Nord’ (station of the north) (20,03.10N:15,55.29W). As it was only about 4pm we went out for a wander about and climbed the sand dune behind the car park. The sand was amazing and totally different to any sand I’d played in before. The sand in the UK is dank, cold and lumpy but this was fine particles and almost soft. It was wonderful under our bare feet with the warm sand pouring over our toes as we scrambled up the dune. Once on the ridge I had great fun pushing the sand down the steep side of the dune causing ripples and avalanches. The sand swirled over the ridge like perfect surfing waves, the finer particles being thrown far over the top to build up the other side of the ridge.
Back on the road the following morning saw us driving the 220 km south to Nouakchott and after driving round the city for a while trying to find a campsite that could accommodate us we were fortunate to bump into French family we’d met on the road several times. They are driving a large vintage Renault van down to Burkina Faso (along with nearly all the French we’d met – do they know something we don’t?) and they mentioned a campsite we hadn’t heard of so we followed them. It turned out to be a haven within the city centre... complete with resident tortoise! (Auberge Menata 18,05.59N: 15,58.63W off Avenue Général du Gaulle).
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The auberge tortoise was brilliant! He would just push big rocks out of the way to get to small yummy leaves. I fed him an apple and he followed me around like a dog for ages afterwards... which was a bit scary! I asked one of the local guys if it had a name and he said it was "Gangsta" - we never did find out if it was male or female... we didn't like to look too closely!! |
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We found the Mali Embassy and applied for our visas – these were granted within 2 hours at a reasonable cost of €25 each... a process that would have taken 2 days in Dakar! They are dated 15 December (we had to provide a date for entering Mali) so we cannot enter until after that date, which is a little strange as all the other visas I’ve had allow entry from the date of application for (normally) 3 months. We met a Glaswegian camel herder who had had his camels and campsite stolen from him one day so was now living in the capital teaching English with a Scottish twang to Mauritanian children! Jumping into a taxi, we went to see the colourful fish market at the beach west of the city. The brightly coloured pirogues set out early each morning and return laden with their catch around 5pm. The beach is packed with people. Men run up the beach with dripping boxes on their heads filled to the brim with all kinds of fish. Boys steady the pirogues in the water until the boats are empty then all the men haul these large wooden vessels up the beach to above the tide line. Women swathed in flamboyant cloth gut, clean and sort the fish into buckets, some going to the market, others to be dried on lines like strange tinsel and the rest onto lorries ready to be air freighted to European dining tables.
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Pirogues and people on the beach at Nouakchott.Click on any image to enlarge |
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After lying around the Auberge for three days the guilt of not moving on pushed as southwards again. Another 200 km towards the border at Rosso was mostly unexciting with the odd police check thrown in to keep us on our toes. We noticed that the nearer we got to the border the more the police asked for ‘cadeau’ (gift) but as we approached each stop we got into the habit of hiding all items including our sunglasses so they couldn’t see anything worth having (or that wasn’t bolted down as part of the cab!).We managed to get through all of them slowly and only gave away one pen... although he then asked for three more AND the lids!! Turning onto the piste just before the border at Rosso (16,30.73N: 15,48.74W) saw us trundle very slowly towards the border at Diama Bridge rather than run the gauntlet with the fierce guards, touts and crooked custom officials. There is a piste of 100 km which is not in the best of conditions and very corrugated. We drove around 60km towards the border before it started getting dark so we arrived at the village of Keur Massene (16,33.26N: 16,14.32W) having read on the Hubb that there was a campsite there – there isn’t! We ended up arguing with someone for 10 minutes about if we could camp the night and in the end just parked up and set up the roof tent! Our advice to anyone following this route is not to bother going into the village 3 km north of the piste but just to pull off carefully to one side and camp by the piste edge (careful though as it’s very soft in places!).
Paying for travelling through the park cost 2,000 Ouguiya (€6) for the two of us – having got him down from a ridiculous €20 starting point!! (16,18.60N: 16,23.68) and we paid 3,000 Ouguiya for both the police and customs bringing the total so far to 8,000 Ouguiya (about €25) – but surprisingly neither the police or customs wanted more than the going rate or gifts.
The man controlling the barrier on the bridge was given 400 CFA (under €1) and seemed to accept this as ok payment – even giving us a receipt! Then the battle with the Senegal officials began! We were charged €10 each for the privilege of obtaining a stamp in our passports – as we do not need visas this is very steep for just an entry stamp. We sat in his office for over half an hour saying that we wouldn’t pay so much but he kept telling us to go back to Rosso and try our luck there! He had a point so we paid! Everyone we have since spoken to have paid the same amount so at least he’s consistent. The customs man asked if I had vehicle insurance and I tried to fob him off by showing him my green card for Morocco... he wasn’t having any of it and sent me to see a woman behind his office! We chatted to this lovely woman while she sold us a policy covering the whole of West Africa for 3 months for €90 – we’d been quoted €220 for the same insurance in Nouakchott. Once back in the customs office the man said my carnet was not valid for Senegal any more... that’s when the problems started! I argued that Paul at the RAC would be very cross with me if I didn’t use the carnet and that I would be in big trouble for entering Senegal without it. He wasn’t budging over this point and eventually we had to buy a local carnet for 2,500 CFA (about €6) which is valid for only 10 days and then we have to find a customs official to renew it for us – supposedly for free... like anything in Africa is done for free!! Paul at the RAC hadn’t heard that Senegal wasn’t accepting carnets and the Senegalese embassy was still advising people to get one!
We were not asked for any gifts or bribes and the whole process took about 2 hours which seems remarkably quick for an African border! We drove into Senegal towards St Louis ... join us next time in Senegal.
