Teepee For My Bunghole

Getting across at the border at Rosso is hectic enough for me to write some detailed info to help others. Remember throughout the process that you have enough time to get to St Louis in the same day so don’t feel rushed at any point except to start early from Nouakchott.

1. In Nouakchott, you need to get a taxi to Gare Rosso which is a standard price of 1000 ougiya. Its quite a long ride so worth the price.
2. At Gare Rosso expect to pay anything from 1400 to 3000 ougiya depending on the seating. I paid 3000 because it was the next car leaving and I wanted to catch up with the Japanese guy I was supposed to meet earlier but was late for. I sat nice and comfortable for a relatively fast trip. I even overtook the squashed up Japanese guy who paid 1400 ougiyah.
3. At border the drop you some distance from the gates and you get people trying to get you to change money on the way. Don’t. Go through the gates with your passport, you might even get a policeman meeting you before the gates to take your passport and you through (so that he can be the policeman to try his luck).
4. Now the Mauritanian police or the one who escorted you will try to get 1000 ougiya off you for ‘administrative purposes’. I just flatly refused to pay and waited till they gave me a stamp – they tried to make me think that between 12 and 3 they are closed and the 1000 would remedy that. Tell them you checked with the embassy beforehand – that worked for other people. I used stubborness rather than brains.
5. In between all this there are people trying to ‘help’ you and other people trying to sell you tickets for baggage on the ferry. Don’t pay anything to anyone.
6. I dunno how the ferry works, but I took a pirogue (small boat) filled with people across for 200 ougiyah. You could probably pay less. Bargain with the guy before getting on. You can always wait for another boat across the Senegal river. Beautiful short trip, by the way
7. On the Senegal side I got pulled straight into an office by the policeman who wanted to charge me 20 Euro to get my entry stamp. I just refused to pay. This time I had enough brains to tell them I checked with the embassy beforehand. They told me the embassy lied to me. I went back to just being stubborn. Then came some dialogue where deportation and the trip back to Mauritania amongst other blatant lies were mentioned. Eventually they just gave me the entry stamp. Don’t leave without this stamp, your passport will be checked later when you leave the town outside the border. Don’t piss these guys off either, they just looked like the type that can get hardcore.
8. Now you can change ougiya to cfa (pronounced safa). The exchange guys will probably be right next to you from the time you got off the boat anyway. Know the rate more or less beforehand.
9. I mostly didn’t give in to the corruption due to a very simple reason: I didn’t have the money. A Peruvian guy went through the day before and was good enough to send me an email with all the charges and details. And being me, I went there with just enough ougiya. I also had a 50 Euro in my pocket but that was if things really went bad.
10. So the exchange guys were boggled that I only had 1000 ougiyah to change. The taxis to St Louis are down the road for the border and I had just enough to get one of the bigger ones.
11. The smaller ones take 7 people (3000 cfa) and the bigger ones (1500 cfa) take eleven people. Included in the price is the 1000 cfa for baggage that is negotiable. I also met up with the Japanese guy and we waited in one of the big taxis. Stupidly we waited for about 4 hours for it to fill up while two smaller ones left already. Eventually we decided to take a smaller one (I lent some cash from him) after a bit of discussion between the smaller and bigger taxi drivers when we changed.
12. The trip to St Louis was about 3 hours and in St Louis we caught a taxi for 400 cfa to get to our auberge – tired, dirty and hungry.

Quite hectic but mostly it just needed some patience in amongst chaos and some confidence in your own position. Very difficult when it’s actual border police trying to screw you.

So tomorrow its off to Senegal and aiming to get to St. Lois. Apparently Senegal will be more expensive so I don’t know how long I’ll hang around there. Anyway, let me sum up some goede [things] on Mauritania.

Its a nice country, I like it here. The people are friendly and happy to just chat if they can and they’re pretty laid back. Back home we know vokol about Mauritania and its main tourists seem to be people driving through to Senegal or Mali usually to sell older cars from Europe. There’s also a lot of of French package tourists who fly in and hire a car and driver to gallivant around the desert. (Don’t you just love that word ‘gallivant’?)

Well more people should be coming here because I liked it a whole lot. It’s a desert buzz with an authentic feel and the travellers I’ve been meeting are an interesting bunch because, let’s face it, if you’re not a package tourist here, you’re on a moersie [big] mission.

It’s also interesting to see the border between the Arabs and Black Africa in action and although I haven’t liked everything I’ve seen, it’s still an interesting melange of cultures.

Generally though, the desert people are fscking fantastic, no matter what their heritage. Mauritania is one of those countries that could help lead in the African Renaissance and is an easy introduction for any traveller to Africa. They seem at the edge of being a great country and it seems to be going in the right direction.

Will I come back? Hell yes! Next time with a GPS, 4X4, sandboard and a surfboard.

Okay, so I’m back from the desert. I went to Atar, Oudane, Chinguitti and Tirjit. I’ll make my posts look like I posted them at the time I was in those places so look back through my posts.

Through a combination of factors, I had no internet or cellphone connection while I was there (mainly because there isn’t any electricity except for Atar) so it a feels a bit like I was cut off for quite a bit. Anyway, check my pictures and I’m off to write posts…

If you had an idea of an oasis in your head when you were a kid, Tirjit is the closest I’ve seen. Set in between mountains, there is a little stream, a shallow natural pool and also a small swimming pool.

I met up with two Swiss German guys who had all the camping equipment so we made our own food. (Actually most of you who know me will know they mostly cooked) In the afternoons we would go down to the tiny village and spend time with the people as we tried to figure out what to make from the almost no variety of products in the little shops.

Apparently there is some Islamic city league that I’m not aware of because Chinguitti is ranked 7th in the world. Positions 5 and 6 are up for grabs but 7th is theirs. I had a great time in Chinguitti staying in the old city, hanging out with people, sleeping on the roof, watching the stars, walking in the desert.

Chinguitti also has some 12 Islamic librairies from the 8th century or so and I went to all of one. Anyway the bra there had a clipping from an South African Muslim Views and hugged me like a brother. Oddly enough it wasn’t that freaky and pretty cool. Great people in Chinguitti. I kept getting invited out for tea and meals. Most touristic village in Mauritania but still has that old school vibe.

To originally get to Oudane I had to wait a day in Atar till someone was going that way and paid for a ride in a crowded double cab bakkie. Since both Oudane and Chinguitii are small places, getting a ride between them was always going to be hard.

First I paid for a ride on the back of a bakkie going to Atar in amongst some goods. It wasn’t too bad except when they went over ditches in the gravel road and I got the wind knocked out of me. Mostly it was exhilirating. I even managed to catch some shut eye. Then they dropped me at the turn to Chinguitti.

Actually they dropped me just passed the turn and then made doubly sure I knew which to take back. To the right was 17 Kilometers over the mountain desert to Chinguitti and to the left was the way back to Oudane and death.

Anyway there was a couple of loose camels watching me and I was too proud to grab at the driver’s knees and plead: “Please don’t leave me here to die”, so I waved goodbye, grabbed my backpack and started walking down the road to Chinguitti.

To tell you the truth, walking through desert with a giant backpack on and 1,5 litres of water under a burning hot sun isn’t that much fun. It’s not that bad either. It’s only the part where you wonder if you’re going to die that gets to you.

Twenty minutes, two hours or two days later (I don’t know which), I was halfway through my water and nowhere near halfway there. I had passed 6 camels, 5 cars and one guy. I suppose I could have tried to jump on a camel but it’s not that easy to jump on a camel with your backpack on. The cars weren’t going in my direction and neither was the guy. He wasn’t that easy to jump onto either.

Then a car came in my direction. He stopped too. A French couple and their guide in a 4X4 truck. There was no place inside. That’s why I arrived in Chinguitti standing on rider board of a 4X4 holding onto a handle through the window wearing my backpack. I would have taken a picture too if losing my grip didn’t mean a harsh taste of gravel.

Seems like every guide and auberge in the country knows Zaida and her great personality. It’s a pity we didn’t have a common language so I could get the full value of her company but she’s a great woman nonetheless. Her auberge is just outside the old city of Oudane.

I did share my room with a wasp but we respected each other’s privacy. He only flew in and around one or twice a day and I made sure to give him his space when he did.

I would take a walk to the “new” city every afternoon to watch the kids play soccer. The younger kids would sometimes try to make conversation. Once I was talking to a kid and by the time I looked up I was surrounded by kids just staring at me. And I’m not even white! Freaked me a bit out but the kids were great, only openly curious. Not like some villages where the only sounds out of kids mouths is “Cadeux. Cadeaux.” [Cadeaux = Present]. Some adults too for that matter.

I went up to Atar in the Express bus which picks you up from your auberge (hostel) and drops you off at an auberge. The bra had a problem with his accellerator cable so we went 70Km the whole way. Luckily the drive is brilliant and the ecosystem changes about 5 or more times on the way up. Various types of semi-desert and desert till you get to Atar which is in the mountains.

There are loads of gendarme stops for reasons I couldn’t figure because whether or not we stopped or whether or not I got asked for my passport, seemed pretty random.

It might sound like I’m niks gewoonte [naive] but I got pretty excited each time I saw camels wondering around. The season for tourists hadn’t started yet so it was mostly me and the driver. He was from Ivory Coast and didn’t speak English but we managed to communicate when he was playing some good music from all over West Africa. Especially Salif Keita.

My cellphone number for Mauritania is:
+222 713 6304

For some reason I have to go the head office to get my SMS setup. Crazy. Apparently they don’t use much SMS locally. I will probably not have time to set it up before I start blazing around this country.

 

Pics of Mauritania are up! Mostly they are of the capital, Nouakchott. I’m still trying to get into the flow of decent photos but these should get us going.