From Nouadhibou to Atar

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This was one of the best stretches of the journey - taking the empty iron ore train from the coast at Nouadhibou to the desert outpost at Choum, and then travelling by pickup over the escarpment into Atar.

We waited all day for the train to pass by the station outside Nouadhibou, and then it was all rush to pile foodstuffs, oil barrels, furniture, animals etc into the open wagons. We ended up in a wagon full of wooden doors travelling to Zouerate. It was 9pm by the time the train headed into the desert. We went to sleep on the floor of the wagon, to the sound of the train shuddering into the night. In the morning we woke to open desert and big black hills looming over the landscape. The train was so long I couldn’t make out the front of it, hundreds of wagons ahead of us. We pulled into Choum around midday, and eventually got on an overladed Hilux which drove us through the desert and over a rocky escarpment where the rocks looked like they might begin to melt at any moment and on to the date groves that surround Atar. I got some really beatiful views back over the land we had covered, as I was clinging on to the very back of the pickup most of the way!

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Photos

Waiting for the Train
In a sandstorm

On the Iron Ore Train
Windy