Day 17 walk into Nouadhibou

Mauritania is very different to places we’ve been to so far, not least because there are unexploded landmines noted by the FCDO when you step off the main road we’ll be using. The advice, unsurprisingly, is to avoid landmines, especially, as with the dunes, they move location. It suddenly feels a lot less developed even than a region called Western Sahara.

The water shortage last night continued this morning with a ban on washing clothes, but we’d already thrown ours in half a bucket of water so it was too late to stop us. After watching the sunrise for a bit, we hung our clothes up and then a group of us walked into town. There was a hunt for currency exchange and a SIM card and to cut a long story short, we failed to successfully change  money in Nouadhibou and finding a SIM card only took about 30 minutes less than the 6.5 hour border crossing into Mauritania.

The length of the trip into town was in part because, being British, it is of course perfectly sensible to walk 14km into town under a 30 degrees C, midday, burning Saharan sun.

We also admired the local goats, of which there are legion. I use this word deliberately for two reasons: 1.  Mark believes they are evil as they have weird shaped pupils and 2. There were ****ing hundreds of them, everywhere you looked.

Then we got really excited at the sight of THE iron ore train. This one even had a random camel in front of it, near the rear passenger carriage.

Nouadhibou itself is intense and lived up to all my expectations. Local markets have no local food as, you know, Sahara, so everything is imported. This means that markets have very basic fruit and veg that is very old and fly covered and/or non-perishable goods. In 30 degrees C heat, fresh meat is the ultimate contradiction in terms.

The markets spill out onto roads where cars held together by a wing and a prayer clatter past, often belching thick white fumes from their exhausts. Taxis are green and are everywhere, but no better maintained.

This guy was our favourite taxi driver for three reasons:

1. He only charged us 100 Mauritanian Ougiya (pronounced oogies) which is less than £2 to go down to the port when we were ready to melt.
2. He found us in town later on and charged us nearly £4 less than our tour leader’s taxi to get back to the campsite
3. He let 8 of us travel in his car, which was a normal, small sedan car, except for the fact that the rear and front passenger door don’t shut properly. Between giggling, we did try and take a photo of 8 of us in a car meant for 4, but it turns out there’s nowhere you can get a good angle for this kind of photo when all the space is used up with arms and legs.

Our last stop for the day in town was the port where we were not disappointed to see the thousands of boats for which the harbour is famous. You can see these boats from space there are so many of them. This means that all around the port are dubious looking fish markets that are as attractive as the meat stalls alongside the ubiquitous rubbish and goats.

You’re not allowed to take photos of the boats for reasons that are somewhat unclear. It was either the military customs building that is part of the port or the “authorisation” to take photos was a bribe we weren’t prepared to pay. We dutifully just deleted all our photos for the official looking Capitanaire when the error of our ways was pointed out to us.

The last two images for today may have been retrieved from the bin of my Google photos, who can tell….

PS what today has NOT featured is reliable WiFi and this is likely to be the case for a couple of days yet. Apologies for the delay in service, bear with me……