Nouakchott

Arrived in Nouakchott after a 6 hour ride in a small car with a soldier and some older funny men.
Learned more about the history of Mauritania by reading my history section in the Lonely Planet I have been carrying around.
This country is Desert almost completely so far.
I hear it gets a bit more interesting on the border with Senegal.

I have been thinking more about my last two major kind of adventures: The Iron-ore train and the camel ride.

The train ride was exciting as I already noted.
One of the best parts about it was being near the back of the train.
Everytime the train started or stopped the train would expand or contract the 1cm or so. But the train is over 2km long, so you can hear it starting and stopping for about 10 seconds before your carriage moved. It kind of has a clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk sound that speeds up the closer it gets to you, then there is a big jolt and you are moving forward again.

It is also interesting to use the toilet on this train: climb over the side and have one are remaining in and pee. AND hope it doesn't decide to stop or start while you are going.

You get huge balls of mud in the corners of your eyes and you pick out chunks of iron-ore from your ears for days afterwards. Kind of annoying.

This train ride also proves to me that I can sleep through anything, as I still managed to sleep for about 4 or 5 hours through the night of starting and stopping and dust everywhere.
Fun.

Camel ride and Atar:

Atar constantly had temperatures in the middle of the day as high as 47 degrees Celsius.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solifugae

ran into quite a few of these at night. Really big and fast.

And it was really nice to enjoy the oasis setting with fresh dates. It is the date harvesting season, so I got to try them super fresh. Never would have thought the taste difference would be so large.


Nouakchott:

Really another kind of crappy desert city, but at least this one has fridges. NO MORE HOT WATER!

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Part of trip: Spain to Nigeria and Home Again

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