Blogs from Mauritania, Africa - page 8

I am no longer a website owner, and am now a mere blogger. You may recall my excitement over my new website only a month ago, but it is now, tragically, gone. The address was staff.washington.edu/ti2ger92, and it was plenty of free space for me to use. The problem, though, was right there in the address. Indeed, I used to be a very productive staff member at the University of Washington, but I no longer am. As soon as our Computing services saw some activity on the website, they informed me that they were going to shut it down, making me web-homeless again. I did some searching around the internet, found a Moroccan Peace Corps volunteer had decided to post here, at travelblogs.org, and found that I too liked the features. So, I decided to ... read more

A lot of banter in several languages was going on between the six of us. Two of the three Moroccan women were in the back with Gianni, Julian, Brendan and myself. Having been firmly shut in by a bar across the back door of the van we couldn't see much at all and were trying to talk above the noise level of the engine. Occasionally Gianni would peer out of the dirty rear windows and tell us that there were camels out there .. I started reading my first guide book on Mauritania which Brendan had thoughtfully brought along. First things first; the import of alcohol was strictly prohibited into the Islamic Republic of Mauritania - did that include Bombay Sapphire? Would anyone take away my prized possession that I bought on the Algeciras-Tangiers ferry?? Secondly, ... read more

It's been six days since I was able to get anywhere near an internet cafe - in that time a lot has happened. I am going to write this blog in diary format, day by day as I wrote the entries in my notebook. Some amazing things have happened in that time, including a bush taxi leaving for a 3 hour journey across the desert without putting any petrol in. It ran out of petrol after half an hour. So, we were stuck in the middle of nowhere. What was the driver thinking of! Did he expect the taxi to run on thin air, or was he expecting to beg the petrol from passing traffic? Anyway, more of that incident later. I will now use the diary format. 28th DECEMBER Guess what? The train didn't arrive ... read more

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 ... read more

Have at last found a cyber cafe with a decent connection - in Noukchott, the capital of Mauritania. We arrived in Mauritania nearly a week ago, after a fairly uneventful last few days in Morocco. Our French friend, Christophe, met up with his friends in Dahkla, where we camped for two nights before setting off for the border crossing into Mauritania. En route we made some new friends - a couple of German travellers - Dietmar & Cisco in a large old bus and a couple of guys from Finland in a Landrover Defender. We camped with them in the dunes 60km from the border - and joy of joys they had beer & whisky - our first alchohol since Spain! The border crossing was pretty uneventful - I don't know what I expected really - ... read more