Mauritania

Sunday 5th Feb
We headed straight to the Mauritanian border along a track which wasn’t shown on the map. The people in a couple of settlements we passed were already starting to looked different in appearance as well as dress that it felt like we’d already reached another country. We only distinguished the border by the line on the GPS with no people or geographical features. Over the border the homes of the nomadic people were different to Mali and Niger with some pieced together with plastic sacks and rubbish whereas the former were made of wood. There was also a lot more rubbish around, like in Tam, Algeria and Libya. Around the wells there were lots of cattle and goats being watered although there didn’t look much for the cattle to feed off – a sahel type landscape of dusty tracks and one type of shrub. We may have seen some evidence of slavery – a woman in darker clothes carrying the water while a couple sat on their donkey cart ahead. Mauritania made slavery illegal only in the 1980’s and amongst the Nomads it still carries on. The colour of people varies quite a lot from lighter more Arabic skin to the darker West African colouring. In a small village fifteen kilometers from Bassikouno, we were surprised to see a police stop. After a quick look at our passports we drove on a short distance for a lunch stop. Whilst stopped for lunch some men rushed past on their camels, not looking altogether friendly, but maybe we looked frightening. The men were wearing boubous – most of the men seem to wear these in Mauritania in various shades of blue. The landscape continued to be pretty flat and dusty with the same landscape. We reached a smaller village after Bassikounu where there were more police. They seemed a bit officious wanting us to pull off the road, but the chance of passing traffic seemed very slim. They asked for cadeau, but Steve thought it was time to hand out the badminton set to the nearby kids, with Steve quickly drawing out the court and instructing and demonstrating, although it was a bit windy.
Monday 6th Feb
While packing up our tents in the morning a Toyoto stopped and the guy pulled over asking for something like frein we struggled to understand but he managed to get us to open the bonnet and indicate that he wanted some brake fluid which John handed over. After an hour’s drive the scenery began to get more interesting with a red escarpment to our right. Four or five large green lorries, that are typical of Mauritania came thundering past us. We reached the tar road at Nema where we had to go and check in with the police and get a stamp in our passport. They wanted to see our car insurance documents and didn’t like them being in English – Arabic or French preferred. They wanted to clearly see that they were valid for Mauritania. This seemed a bit difficult to find on Steve’s insurance, but the policeman was busy on his mobile phone trying to get through to someone. But after a while he seemed to get bored and went off to have our passports stamped. We just got to the bank before closing at one, where we changed our CFA for the Mauritanian Ouguiya, all in notes of one which is worth about two pounds fifty. Then it was time for further work to the car. The welding from Timbuktu had held out, but the suspension now needed welding on the other side at the back. I went off to do the shopping. Nema, although quite a big town for Mauritania, didn’t have a lot of variety in the shops. I bought more tins of tuna, sardines and six packets of biscuits – probably more than I usually buy in a year. Four packets of Biskrem, biscuits with cocoa filling made in Turkey, imported to Algeria, but half a packet tastes as good as pain au chocolat once the choice of food in the shops has got this slim. Four tins of ‘Choice pineapple broken pieces’ from Thailand – seemed a long way to travel but maybe the fishing boats that come to the west coast bring this as cargo on the outward journey. For vegetables there were only onions which fortunately I still quite like. I went to a take away restaurant and had an omlette and salad for me. While waiting a Malian herbal doctor was talking to me. He recognized by skirt as being Malian. He’d lived in Mauritania for 20 years now, had 5 kids here and more back in Mali – polygamy. He laughed at the lack of kids in Europe. He said Mali and Mauritania were very similar which was completely the opposite to the impression I was getting. Mali was more like other West African countries, whereas Mauritania, calling itself an Islamic republic was quite different. The omlette I got was pretty good with a tasty salad – beetroot, lettuce and carrots – more than could be found in the shops today. With the welding complete, more fuel and water taken on, we were ready to start on the route to Oulata by 3. This was the start of an 800km journey along the escarpment. We camped in a small oued (dry!) less than 40km from Oulata.
Tuesday 7th Feb
The route got progressively sandier as we headed towards Oulata and we bottomed out once. Oulata was hidden on the eastern slope of the escarpment and spreading out along the valley. The Spanish and Mauritanian governments have established a project to restore Oulata and includes the architecture, economy, agriculture and tourism. What appears distinctive about Oulata is their highly decorated doors. Mauritanian women wear brightly patterned materials wrapped around them like a sari and shawl to cover the head. We definitely feel like covering up here unlike Mali and Niger. We wandered around to the top of the town with some good views of the valley. Project Oulata was supposed to involve a rubbish collection scheme but walking around the village it looked as if this had ceased. We bought some fresh bread and continued on our route to Tidjikja. While we stopped for lunch a camel train of at least 50 camels moved past in the distance. After lunch we continued following the track but were drifting progressively further from the waypoints and we were between escarpments, so we’d obviously got into the wrong valley. Passed through a village and continued on in an oued and the tracks had disappeared. We got stuck and needed winching out and although we were now beginning to get closer to the next waypoint there was no guarantee we were going to be able to get to it across and escarpment so we retraced our steps. On getting back to the village I guy came over to us, who may have been the school teacher and asked if we were taking the route to Tichit. We said we were and h confirmed we were on the wrong route. He asked for some medicine, so we gave his a strip of paracetemol. Once back on the correct route we continued on quite a sandy piste until we reached a stony Hamada where we saw some big rocks near the escarpment to camp amongst. To the south and west was a wide flat open plain. John went on a hike to the top of the escarpment.
Weds 8th Feb
The day started rather early, before 2 am with the howling wind rocking the tent. Steve and Kathy had to get up and pack up their tent before the wind did, as some of their possessions were already beginning to fly. They then slept in their car. John managed to rescue a cardboard box, but couldn’t catch the washing up bowl. John changed the angle of our tent against the nearby bolder for some better shelter to buffer the wind. Eventually the wind died down a bit and we managed to get some sleep. That was until 5:45 when the wind got up again with more ferocity than the first time. After closing all the tent flaps down we then considered it better to wrap them up and allow the wind to pass through the mosquito nets – a soft engineering approach. But by 6:20 John gave the call to abandon ship. He thought the tent poles might break if we stayed in it, and we weren’t going to be getting any sleep anyway. So we got our earliest start that day just after 8 – John commented that he’d never seen Kathy and Steve pack up so quickly. The wind was still pretty strong and a whitish haze resulted from the blowing sand. Still I felt it was good to see as I guess this is the weather when the desert features are created. The camera opening mechanism was beginning to struggle and the zoom feature finding it a greater struggle. My eyes felt they had a fair bit of sand and dust in them so I could understand how it felt. We passed through areas of apricot barchan (moon crescent shaped) dunes resting on a darker grey stony Hamada. It was possible to drive around some of the dunes, but in denser patches we had to cross them and got stuck a few times and needed winching out. We stopped as we reached a couple of reptiles mating on our route. They scarpered, or at least the more disguised brown (maybe the female) did, but the brightly coloured black and yellow/green one hung around and looked like it was trying to find the female. It didn’t seem too frightened of us, was about 20cm long and as thick as a snake. I suspected that it may have a bite to it. John got closer than I would have done photographing it as the zoom continued to struggle. In the afternoon we passed our first car since Oulata – French tourists with a guide. We made it up a 800m sandy ascent with only two goes needed for a short section near the top. John was very pleased with himself and got back to look back at the route and view and see how Steve faired. We’d passed a man walking up in a smoother more elegant style with his 3 camels. Steve struggled on this ascent – a change as the rest of the trip he’d spent winching us out. Two teenage boys had by this time appeared out of nowhere. One wanted a cigarette. Steve in his final attack of the ascent let out a big belch of black smoke and the boys ducked for cover behind a dune – probably never having seen pollution like this. We gave the boy a couple of cigarettes at the top and continued on. There was a small nomadic campment on the plateau and a guy ran over to us. By sign language he indicated that he wanted medicine so we gave him a strip of paracetemol and some water to go with it and he looked very chuffed. It was windy on top of the plateau and we needed a calm peaceful night to catch up on some sleep, so we continued on to go down the sandy Enji pass descent – a bit easier than an ascent. We headed towards some dunes to the south, but got stuck in some sand and needed winching. John was surprised as he discovered the sand seemed wet. We saw a camel at our intended camp spot, then as we looked a bit harder as they blended in with the horizon, especially while sitting, we noticed there were at least 8 camels. It proved to be a peaceful camp spot for all except the desert rat who was unlucky enough to pop up under Steve and Kathy’s tent spot.
Thursday 9th Feb
We got stuck within 10 metres of leaving our camp spot and needed winching. The second attempt gave quite a thrashing to the car and fortunately my breakfast hadn’t been that large. After negotiating around a few dunes we reached Hamada and passed a crumbling house which look straight out of the Sunday times crumbling property of the week – house in beautiful remote location, but in need of repair, no services and 300km to the tarmac road at Nema. After the Hamada we reached an area of small dunes of whiter sand which looked more like an area of coastal dunes, but continued for miles at the bottom of the escarpment. The piste had disappeared as the route description said it would due to the blowing sand. After we stopped for lunch we found quite a lot of tracks in the area – we hadn’t seen anyone all day. This could be the remnants of this years Dakar rally. Then after passing over a ridge ahead were dark rocks which looked like a mini Akakus, Libya, or Tassili n Hoggar, Algeria (Es Sba rock formations). We went and explored one large lump which had wind created tunnels and caves. Shortly afterwards was a plateau area with the Aratane wells and many Nomads who ran towards the car with little flint axes and stone beaded necklaces and bracelets which they wanted to exchange for goods or money. I just gave away some of my clothes, but there were plenty of others keen to receive goods. At the end of the plateau there was more sand which John got stuck in the sand and let out some pretty strong language which the Nomads hanging around must have got the jist of. We got out after a few attempts, passed several more of the Aratane wells – the water was quite shallow on this plateau at only about 5m down and descended onto the plain. It was getting time to camp and we hid behind the big rock lump known as Guelb Mhassi. It wasn’t very far from the Aratane wells and it wasn’t long before a Nomad had joined us. He was on his way home to his camp further along the road. After a while he continued after received a light for his joint.
Friday 10th Feb
The wind was quite strong at times and seemed to funnel around the base of the Guelb Mhassi, but it was calm enough to get a good nights sleep. There were actually a few drops of rain on the tent as we woke up and it was quite overcast, but the few drops soon dried up. We soon passed a nomad camp and the Guelb Makhrougat large rock formation and got stuck in the sand. An hour or two later we were surprised to see a vehicle heading towards us. An elderly French couple in an old, small truck, were leisurely making their way to Nema. They stopped for a short chat and mentioned that they had lost a piste. This explained why there was no sign of their tracks a short distance down the road. We passed the Touijine wells and what the route described as diatomite field which just looked like dust. Here two Mauritanian vehicles sped towards us and begrudgingly shifted slightly off the piste without breaking speed as they passed. We stopped in a dry oued for lunch and John climbed up the rocks to get a good view of the route and desert. Driving in the afternoon we saw another couple of mating reptiles, but as they saw us they darted down their respective holes in the sand – so they don’t live together. The day continued to be quite grey and overcast, but still very warm. We drove through the village of Akrejit and past the oasis, round some dunes, across a stony Hamada where the salt flats of Tichit spread out to our left. An area of the Hamada also was used as the airport runway. It wasn’t exactly clear which part but it didn’t look like we were in danger of seeing any planes. I hadn’t seen one since Timbuktu. In Tichit, the police needed to write down our passport and car details – on a scrap of paper. They initially asked us if we had a form and it seems the best thing to do here is to have pieces of paper with your passport and car details ready to give to them. We left Tichit passing through the oasis with very white sand between escarpments. It was quite a steep ascent out of Tichit made very difficult by the white soft sand and we had to let our tyres down to get there. Once at the top it looked like small white dunes stretched for miles – difficult to drive in without getting stuck and not easy to hide behind from the piste. There was supposed to be more traffic on the piste from Tichit to Tidjikja. To our right continued the harder apricot sand and a side valley in the escarpment which we went to camp in. John busied himself climbing the rocks and found some caves and rock carvings. We’d filled up with water from the police in Tichit, so I enjoyed washing my hair and having a good wash – the first since the shower in Timbuktu a week ago. Fortunately hair doesn’t get greasy or itchy with all the dust, but it’s difficult to get a comb through it with all the wind.
Saturday 11th Feb
I started the day by climbing up the escarpment. The weather was still hazy and overcast but warm, a kind of eerie white mist. I didn’t find any of the carvings but it was nice to enjoy the view and cool breeze on the top of the escarpment. It wasn’t long before we found 3 German Motorbikes heading towards us with a French couple they’d met up with in a Toyoto behind. The female German motorcyclist switched from perfect French and English as well as German. She seemed to be finding the route quite tough going but they’d made it from Tidjikja to 20km from here in just one day – sounded pretty tough to me holding up a heavy motorbike in sand. There had been a 4th German biker, but his bike had broken and they had to leave him in Nouakchott. The French couple also had a dog which was pursued and frightened back into the car by George. One of the German guys quoted that the Land Rover is always dying but never dead. This was to prove quite true when before 3, the front drivers side spring of Steve’s Land Rover broke. We pulled off the piste for John and Steve to work on a repair job. The spring had also broken in two places and one of the breaks probably happened some time ago. They joined the three pieces of spring together with webbing and jubilee clips and they were both quite proud of their work. They changed both the front shocks and put back the repaired spring.
Sunday 12th Feb
The drive to Tidjikja was going to be slow to give the repaired spring minimal work. However, just after we’d said we drive through lunch to make better progress Johns Drivers side back spring broke on quite unspectacularly flat terrain. It’d broken quite badly – it resulted in 4 pieces so we stopped for John and Steve to work on another webbing and Jubilee clip repair effort which their thinking of patenting! Steve had also broken one of his back springs, although the two pieces of spring had meshed together to sit nicely. After an hour or two we were ready to continue with the remaining 50-70 km to Tidjikja. We arrived in Tidjikja by 5, saw a couple of old Land Rovers there and examined them to see if there were any springs, but they gone along with many other parts. The German woman had recommended a campement in Tidjikja run by a French woman and Mauritanian husband where they’d stayed. We weren’t originally going to stay here, but now with the broken springs and need of repairs we did. We stopped at La Phare du Desert campement – A lighthouse in a desert sounds quite odd to me, but I guess the desert can seem like the sea at times. We asked if there was a French woman in charge there, to which the guy said yes, but I guess they weren’t exactly in a rush to show us what proved to be the next campement down the road. We stayed here and asked if there was a mechanic and staff immediately set about trying to source some Land Rover springs for which two were quickly found for Steve’s Land Rover. John’s car is more difficult due to the unique suspension and he thought he may have to settle for a front spring of a Land Rover Defender or the Steve’s strapped front spring. Our planned route was a 4 day 400km piste to Atar, but with the land rover springs breaking like elastic bands we didn’t really have enough faith in the cars to make it there. John was the most disappointed as the Mauritanian desert had been one of the stretches he was most looking forward to. He was hoping to continue the desert stretch although it looked like we’d have to take a quick detour to Nouakchott to get a spring. Kathy was now reading Chris Scott’s Desert Travels and I thought this should be compulsory reading for the guys as most of his early desert adventures had a problem with the motorbikes or car early on in the trip resulting in early abandonment of the trip. Fortunate for us, Kathy and I were both feeling deserted out and needing to stick to the tar roads meant we would have to head to Nouakchott, the Capital and head up the coast to Western Sahara and Morocco. The Michelin map, 2002, does not show all this route as tarred and we though it may have only been completed in the last year. We decided the best thing to do would be to phone Lucas and Barbara, or Lucas in case Barbara was snoozing in the car, who would now be back in Majorca. They confirmed it was all tar apart from about 10km across the border to Western Sahara and recommended a couple of places to visit. The campement staff confirmed that it was all tar road to Nouakchott. Interestingly enough, this place seemed to be pronounced whakshot. The campement was filling up quite a lot with a French group and four Austrian vehicles. We sat down with an Austrian Couple who had a huge truck and had just come down from Atar. So huge that they said it was underloaded for this trip. But I couldn’t imagine travelling around in something so incongruously large. They mentioned that either the Danish or Norwegian press had published an article that hadn’t put the Prophet Mohammed in a good light. France had also got involved saying that there is free press in Europe, but this hadn’t been taken too well by the Muslim Countries. This had meant that a number of Europeans, possibly Scandinavians had been turned away at the Moroccan border. They’d learnt of this at a campsite run by a Dutch man in Atar. This was a campsite that we’d been warned not to stay at by the English Journalist in Agadez. We ordered food at the campement which came very late for us, after 9, chicken in batter and chips. Steve had a huge plate of spaghetti, a few carrot and some bits of meat which we took while Kathy retired to bed early, not feeling too good and this was food which wasn’t really worth waiting for.
Monday 13th Feb
Over breakfast a couple of Austrian came to ask us what the route was like to Nema. They were unsure about taking the piste and were considering taking the tarmac road and just doing the short stretch to Oulata. They went off briefly while the Austrian woman we’d met last night came back and quite harshly seem to warn us not to put them off otherwise they would not be able to do the trip by themselves alone - in their massive truck. We hadn’t got the impression that they were traveling with anyone else the night before. Obviously all was not well amongst the traveling Austrian group. We sat down with the others in the group and described the route, showed them some photos and downloaded the waypoints we had to their GPSs. They said the Austrian couple just rushed across the desert not stopping allowing time for taking photos and exploring. There were 3 of them – 2 guys, one woman all traveling alone in their own vehicles. The woman described a number of trips she’s made to Libya and Mali and she was obviously a great lover of the desert. She would have been enlightened by a trip to Tam, Algeria to meet Claudia. Kathy and I walked into town to buy some more food supplies. We were accompanied on the way by a couple of young boys. The town seemed pretty quiet and it took us a while to find the more lively market area, where they had more vegetables than onions. The architecture in Mauritania is not too impressive with just block buildings, but with all the women out in the market selling produce in their brightly coloured saris, makes it more interesting. I bought tins of Moroccan sardines, the pineapple from Thailand and 4 packets of the Biskrem biscuits, laughing cow cheese, bananas, onions and courgette/marrows. We went to a material shop where Kathy was persuaded to buy. The material feels quite harsh but we were assured that it softens up – and it looked softer on the women here. We returned to the Campement with the boys accompanying us all the way – something kids in Europe definitely wouldn’t do. Kathy gave them a banana and some biscuits. Back at the campement we met one of the German motorcylists. One of the bearings on his bike had broken on the way to Tichit and that spare part they’d left with the 4th biker back in Nouakchott. He hired a vehicle in Tichit expensively to take him and the bike to Tidjikja. He’d come to see if there was any chance we could take him and it 170 kg bike. John still with a broken rear spring didn’t consider it. Steve, now with two second hand springs fitted considered mounting the bike on the roof of the car as he didn’t think his roof rack would take the weight, but the German guy did not think this would be a good idea. He also described BMW bikes as always dying, but never dead, but he had a KTM bike. Something Kathy and I could pretend to understand a bit after reading Ewan McGreggor’s Long Way round book. We left at Midday to start on the journey to Nouakchott. The drive to be surprisingly scenic across a rocky plateau to an oasis in the valley, climbing up through a large area of dunes to another rocky plateau where there was a spectacular view on the descent of the town of Moudjeria and the dunes advancing across the plain towards it. We reached the main road from Nema and thought we’d begin looking for a camp spot but there were many Nomad encampments along the road and we drove quite a long way until it was just about to get dark and picked a spot on flat savannah scrub some distance from the road.
Tuesday 14th Feb
The day was quite windy with the sand blowing around to create a white haze. We arrived in Nouakchott just after midday and Steve spotted a guy in a white Discovery. We asked him if he knew where we could find spare parts for a Land Rover. He said to follow him and we went right across town to near the airport where there were many garages and we turned into a yard full of old Land Rovers. We tried the rear spring from a discovery but because our car has a 2 inch lift to the suspension, the car sat more skew than with the rear broken spring. Whilst looking at the car while they were looking for another suitable spring, John spotted that the front drivers side spring had broken near the top, so he needed another spring. I wondered what the chances were of the 4th and only remaining spring of making it back home. We left John and went off to find a bank, but the few cashpoint had no visa or international signs and did not accept cards, the banks were closed for the afternoon and the airport only changed cash. John had picked two springs for the front and rear that seemed to fit better at 17 Ouguiya each. We didn’t have the cash to pay for this, but the man in the white Discovery who worked for the Mauritanian tourist board who had stayed in the yard for the couple of hours, said it was no problem – he could pay and we could pay him in Euros. He asked us what the equivalent rate was in Euros and just asked us to pay what we thought was a fair amount. We gave him 120 Euros, just a bit more than the Mauritanian equivalent, having to borrow 60 Euros from Kathy and Steve. We headed to the beach camp site for the night, but on the way the car started to lean a lot to the right, far worse than with the broken springs. I went for a walk along the beach which was crammed full of wooden fishing boats with the men bringing the boats in for the evening and chanting as they heaved the boat up the beach. It was quite a cool breeze with a haze and quite a lot of the fishermen were wearing full yellow waterproofs. The fish market was behind the boats. John had got to work repairing the original front spring and it was dark by the time he started to jack the car up to change it. Meanwhile a blue Land Rover discovery had pulled up at the beach, so Steve went over and asked if there was a Land Rover garage in town, which the guy wrote down a number for. Five minutes later a woman came over offering help – she worked for an oil company in Mauritania, and her driver mentioned that we had problems with the car. She gave us a mobile number to call tomorrow if we needed help and said she would send the driver out in the morning to see if we needed assistance. Once the repaired front spring was back on the car it sat much more level.
Weds 15th Feb
While John worked on putting some protective carpet above the rear spring, Kathy, Steve and I headed for the bank. Only the banks in the Capital did not accept visa, only cash. Also the only cash they accepted was the Euro, Swiss Franc and US Dollar. I had 67 thousand CFA and although a major currency in West Africa, used by two of Mauritania’s neighbours – Senegal and Mali – none of the banks would change it – I had to go to the market to change it. This was the advice I was given by a couple of people. A suited man in the bank said we could follow him to the market money changer. This was my only option of changing money with visa not possible and no Euros left. He got in his car and we followed him. When the traffic queued up, he drove on the left and negotiated around the donkey cart and other cars heading towards us and we followed. The man in the market said he would give me 27.5 thousand Ouguiya for my 67 thousand CFA – I asked if 30 were possible, although not too sure of the rate. He wanted to see my money and once he’d seen the money he offered 28.6 thousand, and I realized later that this was better than the bank rate we’d received in Nema. The man we’d followed from the bank didn’t want any money when I offered him some. We went back to the garage on a small chance the owner might give us some money back for the spring. We asked for 5 of the 17 Ouguiya it cost us and I was pretty sure the labour in putting on the spring wouldn’t have cost more than 5 and I highlighted this might get him another 17 thousand tomorrow. He said he would give us 5 as we’d had a lot of bad luck with the springs. We then headed out of town through some smarter suburbs to take the new road to Nouadhibou, not shown on the map. We could see from the GPS that the road was some distance from the coast so we had to give up on our preferred option of camping by the coast, and camped by some dunes just over 100km from Nouadhibou.