Expedition to Nouadhibou

---

I said in my last post that it would be a 6 hour journey to the border. Some hope! More like 30! But I am now finally in Mauritania, after an interesting expedition.



The Mauritanians have proved to be very friendly and helpful, throughout the journey.



The journey began when I checked out of my hotel in Dahkla , just before 9am on the 22nd of December. There were 3 other travellers waiting in the square outside my hotel. All 3 were French.



Soon after 9am a number of Mauritanians started to arrive and greeted all of us. Except that the young French woman was surprised to find that the men wouldn't shake her hand. I was somewhat surprised that she didn't know that Mauritanian men are not supposed to touch women. I didn't say anything to her. Although one of the other travellers later read out a passage from my Lonely Planet book which explained the situation.



We got into a pick up and were driven a few miles to be then put in another van with no windows. After sitting there for 20 minutes they then transferred us to a very old Range Rover. There were 10 of us in all sharing this vehicle - most of the passengers were Mauritanians travelling home.



In the vehicle the Mauritanians were very chatty. One of them asked me about Tony Blair. What was it about him and Bush? It was wrong to invade a country without UN support. I made it clear that I agreed with him. He asked me jokingly if I could help him to get a visa so he could go to Britain to talk to Tony Blair! Also, could I make it clear to Tony Blair not to invade Mauritania! If I was to stand for election in Britain, he would want Britain to be friends with Mauritania.



Myself and one other traveller had I PODS - these turned into collective music centres during the trip, each I POD being listened to by 2 people at a time - each of the earpieces being used by different people. The I pods were not the only shared item, any food or drink was shared around.



The reason that the trip took 2 days is because the border closes early. So, we stopped off at a service station for the night. It was a petrol station, shop, restaurant and hotel. It was about 2 hours drive from the border.



The French young couple didn't want to pay for a night in the hotel. The Mauritanians said that it was no problem as there was a free room for travellers to stay in. It meant sleeping on the floor on mats with a large number of people. I had no intention of sleeping that way if I didn't have to, so made it clear that I was happy to pay to stay in the hotel.



One of the other travellers also said they might use the hotel if they could share a double room. But the baulked at the price of 150 Dirhams for 2 or 100 dirhams for 1 person. I booked the room for myself. Later that evening, after talking with various Mauritanians, the person who decided not to share a room changed their mind. They realised that the collective free room would be noisy and smelly, and being tired they wanted a good nights sleep.



Not only had the Mauritanians pointed out free accommodation but they also offered to share their food. We declined.



The meal we had though was still very cheap. There was some meat hanging up in an open shop window to one side of the service area. The idea was that you bought the meat, choosing your own cut and then took it to the restaurant to be cooked. So, we bought some meat for 35 Dirhams, and took it to the restaurant who cooked it for us for 5 Dirhams, in with a load of vegetables in a Tagine for four people.



We left the service station at about 8 am. It took us a couple of hours to get to the border. It then seemed to take forever to get through the border formalities with a small queue of bizare vehicles building up. Battered cars and vans, and a very new and expensive motorbike.



Having got through the border formalities at the Moroccan side we entered the no man's land between the 2 border post. This area is several kilometres. The road in this international zone becomes very pitted. As we were travelling in this no mans zone; where every so often you would see apparently abandoned car corpses, the most talkative Moroccan pointed to some men in the distance, saying the were Bangladeshi's'.



When we drove up to them, the car stopped and the Mauritanians gave food and water to the people standing beside the road in the international zone.



Our hosts explained that these people were stuck in the zone between the border posts, because they had no Visa to enter Mauritania, and no visa to return to Morocco. So, these people are living off gifts from passers by, in a stateless zone, in the middle of the Sahara Desert. An area by the way heavily mined because of the war with the Polisario some years ago.



We eventually got through the border posts; the French travellers with us had to buy Visas at the border. It cost them 500 Dirhams, as opposed to the 200 I had paid in Casablanca.



The Land Rover set us down at a service station outside Nouadhibou. One of the Mauritanians then arranged for a ride in the most clapped out taxi you have ever seen. It looked like a scrapped car, and I thought the doors were going to fall off. In the journey to the town , he nearly ran a pedestrian over ;stalled the car, so we thought were going to have to walk. The same Mauritanian helped us find accommodation and didn't ask anything for all the extra help he gave us. The man was a star.



Nouadhibou may be a dirt poor, dust blown slum, but the people are made of gold.

---