chinguetti was beautiful, but I dont feel like writting about it much. just check the pictures, Ill post something else instead in a while... oh yeah, just wanted to say that if you want to go to chinguetti you should go noow. since the killing of a bunch of frenchies in mauritania its a dessert city. me and the ppl that came with me were the only tourists in the city, and besides some CIA spies, I mean peace-corps volunteers, also the only whites (nassar in hassanian arab, a word I start to hear more and more in sentences such as: [View Full Entry]

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there are no words nor images nor smells to describe the train trip. but Ill try... so heres the thing, the train comes to nouadibou from somewhere in the middle of the dessert full of minerals, is emptied in the port, and then goes back. this happens two or three times a day (insh alah!), and of course the train is only cleaned before its loaded with minerazls, which means that by the tilme it gets to nouadibou it has a pretty thick layer of toxic silverish . and so the train leaves from nouadibou port, and sometimes (god onbly knows [View Full Entry]

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el puto culo del mundo. eso es lo que es nouadhibou. para hacer los 350 km que separan marruecos de mauritania estuve 13 horas en una furgonetilla. al entrar solo estabamos una pareja franco/marroqui que estaban haciendo mas o menos el mismo viaje que yo, pero de improviso en el maletero de la fugonetilla entraron otras 9 personas: oops! en fin, muy divertido el viaje; con bombonas de butano sin amarrar del techo de la furgoneta que va por una carreterilla en territorio minado; ofrecimientois de matrimonio; ninos volando de un lado a otro; dos conejos apestando a orina; la abuela [View Full Entry]

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We arrived at the train station early (a small building beside the tracks constitutes the station), to be sure we wouldn't miss the train as we did not know exactly when it left. Our group of four grew steadily as other travellers joined us. Sylvia and Michiel are from Dresden, Germany (he is Dutch though), Marty is a fellow Canadian who is from Alberta, and three Japanese fellows also joined us. Sylvia, Michiel, Peter and I decided to pay for the journey and got passenger car tickets for 1000 UM each (approx. 4 dollars), the others chose to ride for free [View Full Entry]

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We left our hotel in Dakhla, Morocco in a hired car at 7:00 am. We stopped just outside of town to pick up 2 more passengers (thankfully not 4 more! we still haven't recovered from that ride!). Between Dakhla and Nouadhibou (Mauritania), it is about 350 km. We optomistically thought we would arrive in Nouadhibou around noon. We arrived at the Moroccan border at about 12:30 pm and for the first time, we weren't the ones to hold up our vehicle. We had a young Mauritanian fellow in our car (I call him "The Prince" as that was how he seemed [View Full Entry]

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First stop in West Africa and a good place to warm-up before heading south. Vast empty and amazing landscape. [View Full Entry]

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The Moroccan side of the border took us just over 3 hours to get through, lot of bureaucracy we got stopped no less than 3 times within the frontier, police stop, army stop etc. Then after we are through comes 3 km of no mans land full of garbage and abandoned cars, we stopped a moment to help a stranded car in the sands little did we know we will get stuck as well, out the tire mats and we worked hard to dig betsy out and by the time we got to the Mauritanian frontier it was quarter to 3, [View Full Entry]

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Well, after a good few days bush camping (i.e. just camping in the woods or by a huge sand dune etc) we have arrived in Mauritania. Everyone was glad to see a shower as the rolling about on a hyge sand dune seemed to get everyone very sandy... apparently the girls suffered the worst... We had to use the sand boards to get the truck across no mans land between Morocco and Mauritania, which was rather enjoyable.. reminded me of that war film: Ice cold in Alex. We have a few more days pottering around here, going through a nature reserve, [View Full Entry]

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Hey Everyone, I think it’s being about a month or so since I updated my blog. Don’t know if anyone even reads these but I thought that I would still write on the chance that people are. Things have being very hectic the last few weeks. I have being at site for about five weeks, which is to long for me. After about week four, I’m feeling the need to talk to my parents or use the computer. School has being slightly chaotic. My school director left to go to another town and he was not replaced for about two weeks [View Full Entry]

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Faced with four and a half hours of free time on a Saturday afternoon in Saint Louis, what else were we going to do but walk to Mauritania? Our guidebook had a little map with an arrow saying "Mauritania, 3km" so we figured it'd be no problem. Our first problem was that we forgot to figure in all the kilometres that it was going to take to get to the part of the map where the 3km started. In order to get off our island, we had to first walk south, cross a bridge to another island and head north. Eventually [View Full Entry]

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