RAMBLING THROUGH MAURITANIA
The Mauritanian portion of the trip starts in Dakhla, Western Sahara. Ethan and I had spent the past few days surfing and staying with Bashir, Ali, and Hamed who Ethan had met in Tamraght. Dakhla itself is a little peninsula city where the desert meets the sea, surrounded by nothingness. The guys had grown up here becoming professional windsurfers at the highest level and are now building a surf retreat all out of wood in the middle of the desert, at a fishing and surf spot their fathers used to take them. Dakhla and Western Sahara as a whole was insignificant in the absurd aside from some reckless dogs and a situation where we found ourselves in the middle of a teenage brawl, fit with all the makeshift weapons- rocks, broken glass, knives, and wood planks needed to inflict harm upon the enemy. As we weren’t the target, we kind of just looked on in shock as some of the kids approached us, happy to be meeting Americans. It seemed more like a neighborhood beef than a subtle conflict between the Sahrawis and Moroccans. Some shopkeepers ushered us along and out of harm's way.
After a few days, we left the guys and walked the mile or two to the bus stop in the predawn hours. We were surprised to see a foreigner waiting as well since it had been some time since we’d seen any in Dakhla proper. This stranger would soon become a close friend throughout the entirety of the Mauritanian leg. Brian is a firefighter in Oregon, living out of his van and making the most out of the outdoors in his free time. He had last come straight from Egypt into Dakhla International Airport with the intention of riding the Iron Ore Train, as were we. We drove for hours down the Trans Saharan Highway stopping for frequent checkpoints manned by the Moroccan police. At the border we went through the easy Moroccan side with one too many passport checks and onto the no man's land between Morocco and Mauritania. The 200 meter unpaved desert between the two countries led to a free for all for the semi trucks trying to bypass the offroading portion through whichever route they found most feasible. We got into a new van with a fixer of sorts, our Moroccan bus staying on the Moroccan side.
After exchanging our dirham for ougiya, we spoke to one Mauritanian policeman for a while, after being sent backyards to another out building where we would speak to another cop. This one decided to play a joke on us, shutting us in the room for a moment, locking the door and opening it back up shortly with cackles of laughter between the fixer and himself. None of us liked that but after the fact we can acknowledge the humour in it. From that cop we went to more cops in another building where he outlayed for them each and every place we would be visiting during our stay. Of course we wouldn’t stick to this 100% but they just like to keep tabs on you here. From there we went to get our visas in a separate building where we waited in a line for what seemed like forever. When it was our turn, they pulled out a dusty old fingerprint and photo taker and called us up one by one. I was surprised to receive Brian's passport and for him to receive mine, but in an attempt to speed things up, we decided to just play along with our newfound roles. For this time, I would assume the identity of a guy I just met this morning for the sake of hurrying the process along. In hindsight it was probably not the smartest idea, but after harassing us for way more than the visa on arrival was said to be, we made off with our fixer cruising through the open Sahara and en route to Nouakchott, a city similarly positioned as Dakhla on a peninsula jutting out from the Sahara.
On our way we drove by the Iron Ore Train as the sun set over the Sahara. After spending hours at a border crossing, a dirty iron ore train being a sight for our sore eyes tells you a little bit about our expectations for Mauritania. We pulled into Nouakchott and got a taxi to our hostel. The first thing I noticed was how run down it was compared to Western Sahara. Donkey carts and beat up cars ruled the roads, kids rolled tires around the streets, and the buildings, even in this city were mud hut styled and seemingly half buried beneath the sand and dirt. We were surprised our hostel owner was an Australian guy hostel sitting for a buddy while awaiting construction permits for his own business in Dakhla. Staging a 10 hour drive and a country away for a prospective business tells you just how few and far between these Saharan cities are. After all, it was only recently that 90 percent of Mauritania was nomadic, now only a few percent are with swaths of people moving to these obscure desert ‘cities’ funded by Chinese wealth and meager infrastructure projects. The figures from this shift of nomadic to settled people are similar for Western Sahara.
The next day, we bumbled around the city, getting acquainted with our newfound temporary home, and stocking up on our train rations. These consisted of some brand new white cheches (head scarves) for the dust and wind, djellabas (the pointy hooded robes worn in North Africa), Twenty litres of water between the three of us (definite overkill), and some ramen, corn nuts, cheese, and bread. We didn’t want to get sick on the train so we opted not to eat much, but close to when we’d have to take a taxi to the outskirts of the city to catch it, we grew hungry and figured 20 hours on the train would only worsen it. A rare Mauritanian English speaker showed us to a spot where we could order tacos, the Mauritanian lingo for french fries, cheese, and miscellaneous meat in a tortilla. It tasted like no meat I’d ever eaten so I tossed it for good measure.
The taxi to the train was like GTA, speeding in and out of cars, donkey carts, and people, in a vehicle that looked and sounded like it would fall apart at any moment. On arrival at the train station, we approached a group of guys sitting in wait with djellabas and cheche on. It wasn’t until I heard the California accent under that head scarf that I realized this was not Mauritanian but our next friend along the journey, Darren, from San Diego, rocking the ore train by his lonesome. He was happy to have us there and our conversation was fun with the anticipation of this train that we could allegedly hop on and off for free, of which would arrive anytime between 3 and 9 pm. Our hopes were quickly cut short when a policeman ran up on us in an unmarked vehicle. We thought we were slick in our local garb but we had it all wrong, wearing chinese made djellabas and our cheches wrapped wrong, we stuck out more than we had thought. We were crammed into the back of this sedan and taken to the police station 100 meters away. Ethan as our token french speaker, having learned enough during a short stint in France, took the lead and deduced that we just needed to bribe him. There was still uncertainty but he wouldn’t let us fork the cash in the office so we assumed something fishy was up. He told us to go back to the tracks and stay in his sight. We waited some time and finally he came back, his sedan full of non uniformed people. This made it even tougher when he told us to one by one get in the back and pay him when all seats were already taken. I opened my wallet to pay him and he mistook it for a camera, aggressively telling me to stop filming this bribe. I insisted it was just a wallet and after we each paid up the equivalent of 8 USD, he told us to wait here and not make a scene, and to keep our heads down when the train starts passing through towns out in the desert. A brief hiccup and our plan was on. Hours in wait, scarves over our faces and lying on the mix of sand and rock, we finally heard the train coming and saw the steam puffing out from afar. It pulled up to the station and everyone started scrambling. We’re all trying to pick the cart with the best view and least amount of dust while the locals are pulling flatbeds up to the side and loading food, water, livestock, and people into the empty cars.
The Iron ore train traverses the northern border of Mauritania bringing iron ore to and from the mines in Zouerate to Noakchott on the coast. For hundreds of miles, the train will snake through the desert without a man-made thing in sight except for the endless tracks and occasional rail road town, few and far between. The locals ride the trains to get two and from their homes in the desert as well as to work in the mines. The train also acts as an easy way to bring resources and supplies out to these remote desert cities and towns and accounts for a quarter of the country’s GDP.
We made our home in the belly of this emptied rail cart picking corners and sides best blocked from the wind. As we cruised out of town and into the unknown of the vast Sahara, we watched the sun set over the direction of the Atlantic, unable to see the ocean past the towering dunes but we knew it was there, and that where we were headed, there would be no refreshing ocean and nothing to surf. Because the train came so late today we only had an hour or so of sun before it all fell dark. The moon was bright and you could still see far in all directions. The most open space I'd ever laid my eyes on. The wind was pushing up sand and dust along the side of the train creating a wall of it and sandblasting you if it really picked up. We huddled towards the front of the cart, somewhat out of the wind and ate our dinner, ramen chips. I put too much seasoning on mine and the dust and spice irritated my nose. Soon we decided to try our luck at sleeping. Darren had bought a small mat and a blanket in town as well as a produce sack to keep his backpack free of iron ore. Brian and I weren't so lucky though Ethan had packed a sleeping bag. I quickly realized how under prepared I was for the desert. They say there’s no bad weather with the right clothing but I had none of it. My thick wool djellaba was something to enjoy but the floor of the metal cart was losing heat quickly and we really didn’t have much of a windblock. I had bouts of rest for short periods but each time I would be woken up, not by the intense jerking and bumpiness of 2 miles of train cars at max speed, jostling around, but instead by the train stopping on two occasions in nowhere towns to load and offload people and supplies. Hilux’s would ominously drive alongside the carts and we would never know if it was just locals making a pickup or cops looking for an unsuspecting tourist to solicit a bribe from. At these points we would hesitantly climb off the cart and take a piss before we got moving again. There's no waiting for bathroom breaks on this train and it was always a stressful piss not knowing if you'd be able to finish the job before hearing the machine gun like noise of hundreds of cars suddenly connecting with each other, a sign that the train is now in motion and you better hold onto something so you don’t get knocked off your feet. It began kind of scary hearing that noise and getting knocked down a few times but we learned that it was about 3-4 seconds between when we would hear the noise far ahead and when our specific car would gain its tension and jolt fast. It became a game to stay standing without holding on.
The funniest moment of the night was when dreary eyed, we pulled into Choum and Darren got out to take a shit. He pulled his djellaba up and squatted about 30 feet from the train, farther than I would have strayed but we all need our privacy right? In the dark I could see he wasn’t back yet and even I was getting angsty despite my spot safely in the cart being secured. All of a sudden that ominous sound of the carts connecting rang loud through the quiet of a desert railroad town at night and I could tell Darren was in fight or flight. To finish the shit or be left in Choum for who knows how long. He was actually quick enough to reach the train before our cart connected with the others and intuitively, from all our games and playing, knew not to grab on until our cart was moving. If he were to be climbing the ladder 12 feet above the tracks when that jolt hit he could easily have fallen. With restraint he waited and finally jumped back in the cart. We were so glad to have him back but I felt bad his shit was cut short. Better to shit in the desert than in our living space though.
Funny enough, Darren would later find himself stranded in this town, Choum on his way back to the coast. We split upon arrival in Zouerate but he boarded a returning train solo. The carts decoupled as he was fast asleep, and while everyone was ushered to the front half of the train to continue traveling. When he woke up he was stranded all alone in the Sahara with just himself and the back half of the train. Out here, the only thing to do is to follow the tracks and he walked ten miles to the nearest road and hitchhiked the remaining twenty to Choum. Here he waited for half a week while the train was repaired and resumed service. Darren had a rough go with the ore train, but these are what make the best memories after all..
I woke up after sunrise to Brian enjoying the view. I realized I wasn’t so cold anymore with the sun quickly heating the desert sand. The night previous was one the coldest I'd ever slept in,, and all for a lack of clothing. Coming from Boston I don’t mind the cold but this time around I was ill prepared. I slept inhaling iron ore dust despite my cheche being over my face and wearing the broken ski goggles Ethan and I fixed with seemingly the only roll of tape existent in Dhakla. Our faces were black with ore and our bodies dried and caked in the stuff. We passed dunes and nomadic camel herders and goat herders and beautiful mountains. Before we knew it, we were out of the flats and coming through a narrow mountain ravine with Zouerate on the other side.
We gave some locals our waters as we had drunk about half a liter between the 3 of us, leaving 19 ½ to spare. We hopped in a taxi and dealt with more checkpoints. Sleepy and dirty, the hot sun was baking us in this beat up car and I almost wished I could feel the cold of the night before, the cold I was so intent on finding any escape from. Our driver dropped us at hotel mama and we took up two rooms. I showered and beat my clothes and all my possessions to get the iron ore dust away. It sparkles in the light and has a red coloration. It’s impossible to get all of it out so eventually we gave up and headed out for lunch. We popped into a run down restaurant and had camel shawarma. My first of many camels to come and I enjoyed it at this particular spot. In Zouerate we drank a lot of juices and ate a lot of tacos.
Brian was planning on splitting from us and heading out solo to see the Pelican 16 plane crash 20 miles into the desert. Luckily he fell asleep before he could embark on this journey as we later learned that the Pelican crash is actually over the border into Western Sahara and there's a chance of being shot by militant groups operating in this most remote region of Western Sahara, far from the grips of Moroccan Authority. Along with this danger it’s also a marathon’s distance into the Saharan Desert after pulling an all nighter on a cargo train the night before. We did some thrifting and had some rest and relaxation in the city, if that's what you could call it and headed to Atar via bus the following afternoon.
We stopped twice for prayer, the first time we got to enjoy a hilux full of baby camels that pulled up. I was surprised how loud and annoying they were, though pretty adorable. The second prayer time after sunset we stopped on the side of the road near Choum and were able to enjoy the sunset with a backdrop of Desert plateaus. The rest of the journey was in the dark. Throughout the night we almost hit many animals, mostly camels and donkeys. For some reason the drivers here will turn their lights off if there's a risk of hitting something. Maybe it is to put the matter in gods hands inshallah or maybe to not scare the animal or disorient it with the light. Either way, it seems pretty stupid if you ask me. At one point we almost clocked a camel and the at the last second the driver turned the lights off and pulled off the road. By the time the lights were back on, we had arrived at a police checkpoint (which there were many of) but either way it was still odd to almost hit a camel with the lights off and then have the sliding door of the bus slammed open and a guy demanding your passport. We had printed 20 extra copies of our passport for these frequent checkpoints, in place to monitor travelers whereabouts.
When we topped out over the winding road on the steepest pass, we saw Atar in the night, a sea of lights with a backdrop of the dark desert. We pulled in at a late hour but the town was bustling. The Mauritanians seemed to stay up late into the night and sleep in a bit, starting around midday and try to avoid the heat. We walked to a taco shop to order our rations of fries, chicken, and a craft single stuffed into a tortilla. A guy approached us to tell us that there were Americans in Atar on the military base. He said it giddily like it was a town secret he was letting slip. It’s public knowledge US troops partake in training operations for the Mauritanian military but it wasn’t something we were aware of so it felt cool in the moment. We started the long walk to the campsite we were planning on sleeping at and passed by the military base. No sign of Americans, just some Mauritanian guards posted out front. We did find out it was a base for the Mauritanian Airborne.
Upon walking further a hilux stopped next to us with two guys in the front asking what we're doing, where we’re going. After hearing we were headed to a camp the driver who we’d later learn was Mr. Rubias, invited us to get in the truck to stay at his hotel. After a quick discussion over whether we should get in the bed of this stranger’s truck and stay with him, we decided to go for it and we all threw our bags in the back and climbed ourselves in. He took us not far past the high concertina topped walls of the base to a dark compound. We entered the gates and it opened up to a large courtyard with three buildings on the edges, one of which somewhat resembled a hotel. Mr. Rubias fumbled through a bucket of keys and showed us to a room. Everything from blankets to towels were still in the packaging and we would find out we were the first ever guests to stay at Mr. Rubias hotel. We asked him how much it would be to stay and he said it doesn’t matter what we want to pay. It seemed a little suspect but we were running with it. Mr. Rubias knocked on the door a few minutes later and gave us some rubies he had mined from the Sahara. He put it up to the light of a phone to show us the vibrant colors. He left us to get settled in and again a few minutes later came back to the door with a spliff asking if we wanted to smoke. Mauritania as an Islamic state has very strict laws on drugs and alcohol so we of course decided to keep running with this experience and smoke with the guys. One spliff turned to two and so on, drinking back to back cups of tea, and getting acquainted with each other.
The tea in Mauritania is poured as a small strong and bitter shot with a heavy layer of foam on the top as opposed to Northern Morocco where the tea is sweeter and the cup is filled to about ¾ of the way. The foam is meant to keep the desert dust out of the tea and help to avoid burning yourself when drinking it. Mr. Rubias cooked the tea over a propane tank stove in this separate hotel room with its own packed blankets and furnishings. We didn’t really know if they lived in the hotel or in one of the other buildings on the compound but we were able to communicate more than others we had met in the country because Mr. Rubias spoke Spanish and with all our high school Spanish combined, we could make sense of it and craft our shabby responses. We learned the other guy was his cousin who we couldn’t speak with much because of the language barrier and that Mr. Rubias goes to the Sahara to mine for rubies and sapphires and brings them to Europe to sell. He has a Spanish passport so he splits his time between Ibiza and Mauritania. It was clear he has money compared to the majority of Mauritanians but the whole ordeal was still a bit of a mystery to us. He showed us a bunch of cool gems and stone tools he found as well as some disappearing coin magic tricks. At the end of the night in universal stoner fashion, they asked if we wanted to go into town and get pizza. Enjoying the relative safety and privacy of the compound while smoking in a country with strict drug laws, we opted in probably our first logical decision of the night to stay back and get some rest. By the time we settled into bed for the night we were all pretty shocked at the absurdity of it all.
In the morning, we went back to the room it seemed like Mr. Rubias and his cousin were, at least for the time being living in, and had some bread, cheese, and tea. We told them we were going to town to walk around and he asked if we wanted to see camels. He said he’d have the camels in the compound for us at six pm so with that we set off for the day excited about what we’d find in Atar.
As we walked in town we watched a tiny car with a trailer of sandbags roped to the hitch, disconnect and slam into a dirt pile at a construction site. We walked over and helped the 15 or so construction guys and driver of the vehicle to flip the trailer back over and reattach it. It took a little bit but we all succeeded and made note of how many side quests Atar already had to offer us. In town we found a bustling market with endless dates and fishmongers selling their fly-covered fish from the Atlantic that would have had to be driven pretty damn far from the ocean to be sitting in the hot desert sun of Atar. We went into the butcher hall which had a floor caked with blood and carcasses and guys going all out beheading camels, goats, and chickens with an ax head welded to a metal pipe. It looked like a weapon you’d be more likely to find in a zombie movie than this market in Atar. Guys were cooking fatty chunks of camel in tin boxes and trash was abundant. Trash in Mauritania in general is a huge problem with very little rubbish bins to be found anywhere. We would always put our trash in whatever cardboard box we found that also had some trash in it to at least consolidate where it was being dumped but it seemed counterproductive watching the locals litter whatever they had in hand at the drop of a dime. The goats feed on the trash in the streets and seem to not so infrequently die from something harmful in it. Goat carcasses were common in these desert towns and the goats would then resort to eating their fallen comrades in this vicious cycle of trash eating.
Amidst the first dark clouds and slight rain we had seen in weeks, we began to walk back to Mr. Rubias. At six Ethan came and grabbed me off the roof and told me that the camel had arrived in the compound but that it was on a plate. My expectation was that a friend of Mr. Rubias would bring his camels to the compound for a show and tell but in Mauritania there should be no expectations. We sat on the floor picking ants out of the morning’s now stale bread and dipped it into the bowl of camel resembling a dish of more bones and fat than the camel we had previously eaten. It was boiled as opposed to some of the ground and seasoned camel we had eaten thus far into the trip. Ethan was good at powering through some of these rougher meals cooked for us so as not to show disrespect but at the end of the day, none of us wanted to get food poisoning just to show respect. I stomached a small piece with a chewy rubbery texture before I was done and Brian had to run to our room with it in his mouth to go spit it out. All in all it was pretty fun and Mr. Rubias was amused rather than disrespected that we didn’t really like it. He kept spirits up by grabbing his hunting gun, a small rifle, and telling us to take pictures with it wearing our headscarves, joking all the while about being Al Qaeda. To appease our expectations that we were to see camels today, he asked if we wanted him to take us to the camels. We got in his truck and met his wife who we had known nothing about the past day, or even that he had a wife at all. As we came into town we saw our first Americans, soldiers in a three car convoy driving matte desert tan SUVs. We gave a wave as we drove by but in peak professionalism they didn’t bat an eye nor acknowledge us. Outside town we arrived at a bunch of random camels and briefly walked up to and observed them. We had been seeing them all around anyways so it wasn’t anything new for us though we appreciated the hospitality of Mr. Rubias. He said he was going to drop us off on the side of the road to drink tea and that he’d be back for us in 45 minutes. Again we rolled with the punches and sat down on the ground drinking tea but almost three hours later we wondered if he’d ever come back for us. Just when we were beginning to give up and start walking, he pulled up in a new car without his wife and with new friends we had yet to meet, passing around a spliff. We got some food on the way back and settled in for the night at our private hotel.
In the morning we decided we would try to hitchhike to Terjit, a desert town and Oasis an hour deeper into the desert than we already were. We walked a good way into town, unable to get picked up by anyone. We walked in the other direction for about a mile or so and with the sun baking us we decided to sit under a tree on the outskirts of Atar. We saw the US soldiers drive by in a big flatbed with black trash bags in the back. They didn’t so much as glance at us before continuing down the road into the desert. After some unsuccessful thumbing, with people expecting some form of payment for their taxi service we got a few guys to take us 30 minutes to the next police checkpoint. On the way we saw the soldiers coming back to Atar with all the trash bags still in the back. At this checkpoint our documents were checked and instead of waiting, we just started walking. The wind was ripping into us with sand and pebbles snapping. Huge plateaus loomed overhead. The topography of the desert was a stark contrast from what we experienced on the train. The ground in some parts looked like the rock had been completely shattered, layering massive flakes of stone above and below each other. This new road looked far less traveled so we decided to just pay for someone to take us to Terjit which was a 10 minute drive but a much farther walk with all our bags in the wind. They dropped us off at a checkpoint outside town where again we had our documents checked.
We walked into town looking at a gully of palm trees and water beneath towering plateaus on either side with steep chossy cliffs. We watched as a pickup truck with about 10 kids in the bed standing, sitting, or just hanging on drove by joyfully screaming as kids do. We found an auberge campsite where we would sleep and the second we laid down on our mats, we were all fast asleep though it was only the afternoon. We listened to the cool breeze rustling the leaves of the trees, a sound we had not heard in some time for lack of trees. When we woke up we went to the Oasis, climbed some rocks, took a short walk up the backside into the dry river bed and finished just as it was getting dark in the shallow thigh deep pool that is the Terjit Oasis. There were plenty of bats and frogs around.
The next morning we met a Mauritanian guy named Sidi who splits his time between uber driving in Boston and running tours in Mauritania. He met his wife, a Maine woman who was working at the embassy and he’ll soon be moving the family out to Mauritania. We bonded over Dunkin orders and he told us of a club we could go to in Nouakchott. He was also the one who warned us about the pelican 16 crash and mentioned that the train may not be running right now because a youtuber posted a video of himself doing a backflip on it. Word spread fast in the region and it was looking like the train was shut down. He helped give us a ride back to the police checkpoint and I left him with two of the books I’d already finished that I figured he could find a good home for. He gave us some water for the road and was on his way. We waited not too long before the policeman at the checkpoint stopped a car and forced him to take us to the next checkpoint. Does it still count as hitchhiking if the police are forcing someone to drive you? We arrived at the next checkpoint and tried to stalk some camels unsuccessfully before again we were instructed to get in the back of this guy's Helix. He ended up being the minister of tourism and gave us a list of phone numbers if things went south. After a short pit stop in Atar were we purchased arrowheads, camel bone one hitters, and a meteor from the old man who had been quite persistent at us checking out his antiquities, we found a paid “taxi” to take us to Chinguetti the spiritual capital of Mauritania. The bed was full of supplies so we had 8 people inside this cab. Tight quarters on a mostly dirt road going through the steepest mountain pass yet. The pass tops out onto a plateau where the dirt road continues for about an hour until arrival in Chinguetti, once a stop on the Timbuktu caravan route, and renowned for its two ancient libraries, as well as a stone mosque that is the second oldest in continuous use, anywhere in the muslim world.
We dropped our things in our hotel, basically a mud hut with a rickety green door and began to walk through the town which is split between a dried up river bed. We were soon approached by a mob of kids who we played soccer and ran races with. They took us to the outskirts and we played tic tac toe on the sand dunes and ran around some more. It felt good to play like a kid again. We passed back over the river bed and started looking for food. Restaurant Ahmed caught our eye, a clothing shack that didn’t look like a restaurant at all. We got some hibiscus juice and Ahmed asked us what we wanted. No menu or anything but we opted for chicken and couscous. He proceeded to go run home and cook the food at his house leaving the shop to us and brought back a massive tray of food.
Soon enough an old wizard looking fellow with a long beard, djellaba, and crocs came around the corner and started talking with Ahmed in Arabic. He looked pretty white but then again a lot of Mauritanians do so I just assumed that was the case. Eventually he just turned to us and started speaking English. Come to find out he's a British convert (revert) to Islam who lives in this remote town, has forty goats and grows most of the food he eats. He studied at Oxford and worked an engineering job until he moved here six years ago. He’s the epitome of a character, taking up the name Zoobayr, slightly nuts though logical and wise. He had some criticisms of how the locals practice Islam, challenging their piety. He says the tribes in the town use amulets for good faith instead of putting all of their faith in god. He also says they usually only take up one wife though four are permitted. At the time he was not on good terms with his wife and was looking for his three extras granted by Allah. She did a very bad thing, he said though we don’t know what. Though he talked wise, he wasn’t the best guy. He denounced slavery being a thing in Mauritania though at least 2 percent of the country is enslaved. He showed sympathy for the Al Qaeda aligned terrorists that killed French tourists some years ago and recently escaped from prison in Nouakchott which ended in a shootout. He called the Mauritanians lazy, sleeping in late and sitting around all day. He was a very opinionated guy though you have to take things he said with a grain of salt.
An odd instance happened today where we weren’t the only foreigners in this town. The mayor of Chinguetti, a friend of Zubayr, had found two Germans and a Yemeni Italian woman broken down on the side of the road 6 hours away. He offered for them to stay in his town, not knowing how far in the middle of nowhere this place is. Zoobayr perked up at the sound of a Yemeni wife who speaks English. They arrived at our get together at Ahmed's and ate dinner. Zoobayr spent the time chatting up this Yemeni Italian woman who was not religious at all and probably 50 years younger. We ran into her later in Zouerate and she talked about how uncomfortable Zoobayr made them with some of his radical comments and attempt at making her his wife. They left in a hurry after a short cup of tea after dinner and we continued to chat with Zoobayr who explained some odd things about the country of Mauritania. One weird fact is that the government schedules elections around the week of high school exams so they can turn down the network for the country and people won’t be able to talk about the election. They say it’s so the students can’t cheat but the real reason lies in plain sight. A few people in town will run internet cafes and people will pay to use the wifi during these times. A lot of businessmen and politicians in Mauritania have residences in Chinguetti for its history and religious status. Zoobayr, considered wealthy, lives next to these nicer houses in a nice house of his own. He showed us around town for a little, walking by the massive generators Gaddafi had gifted the town and soon we were off to bed.
When we woke up, Ahmed wanted to give us a tour so he took us to the old mosque and one of the ancient libraries, a unesco world heritage site. One of the korans was written in blood, likely from a goat. After this brief tour he offered to make us lunch so we sat back down at Restaurant Ahmed while he scoured the whole town for supplies. He went one way to get eggs, bringing them back and then running back again to get a chicken, and repeating this process for about an hour until he started actually cooking the meal. Kids were in the square attempting to ride on the back of a goat with its front legs tied together. Soon we had food in our stomach and Zoobayr had arrived, telling us more stories and giving us some fruit. He arranged for a friend of his to take us out of town in the bed of his hilux. He said goodbye to Zoobayr and got into this truck. The ride was so much nicer lying out in the bed of a Hilux. It always is with how crowded the Mauritanians pack their vehicles with people. We always opted to sit in the bed but sometimes the drivers would think it would be disrespectful to not be in the cab with them and they would make us sit inside. This ride was beautiful, wearing our headscarves and feeling the cool wind on us as we winded through the plateau and eventually down the mountain pass, avoiding shepherds and their herds as we went.
We left immediately upon arrival back in Atar, to head to Zouerate. Brian and Ethan sat in the back of the bus with two Indian guys who had been in the bus for 10 hours already since Nouakchott. I was squished between the driver and shotgun, sitting on a pillow on the center console. Two goats were tied to the roof. I tried to relieve Brian and Ethan in the back by turning on the AC but repeatedly the driver would angrily slap my hand and turn it back off. Everytime he would leave the car for a checkpoint I would test my luck and turn it back on for a brief fleeting moment. Eventually, he just kicked me to the back once a seat cleared up. We stayed in Zouerat for a night at a hotel with rats. We randomly ran into the Yemeni woman and the German guys again where we discussed Zoobayr briefly and they went on their way to find a hotel without rats. The next morning we got some supplies for the train, a tea set mainly and some donuts and we headed to the tracks to wait. It seemed like the train was in fact running.
We started this leg of the train home with a few more foreigners than on the way to the interior. We met Monika, a Czech Boston woman doing it solo and a family of overlanders sending their wife/mom off to do the train solo. People seem to like the filled carts better than empty carts so they can see the view from on top of the ore and lie on it to rest. Though dirtier, doing it this way is much more comfortable. Ourselves along with every other foreigner there got slightly scammed by some local guys, having to pay a small amount of money for them to take us to the iron ore train on a smaller passenger car. In hindsight they drove us about 100 feet and we could’ve just walked it. At the moment we wanted to do anything we could do to get on that train so we just followed instructions. They crammed Ethan and about 15 others in a tiny steamy loft up a sketchy ladder in the top of the passenger car but Brian and I managed to not make the cut and stayed on the first level. We were so anxious to get on this one because of the rumours that they had already closed the train for tourists. We also knew they paused it for a week or so due to the decoupling incident our friend survived. We made it fine this time, passing the graveyard of train cars, the mangled hulks of metal resulting from high speed derailment, and a small portion of the iron ore mine sitting under a constant cloud of hazy red dust. We saw the biggest camel herds we had seen yet and dug little seats into the ore, hanging our bare feet off the side and feeling the warm wind on our dust covered everything. We had bought a tea set and a propane tank to have unlimited mint tea on the journey offering it up to the two locals who hopped in our car. We’re not sure if they were just being nice but they said it wasn’t bad tea. We had some practice up until this point. When the sun set I saw the craziest stars I’d ever seen. This night was moonless compared to the full moon we had on our first trip. We slept a little better this time around being able to sleep on the ore and by the time the sun rose, we were already coming into Nouadhibou. We arrived covered in the reddish black dust, sweating into our djellabas and head scarves from the already glaring 8 am sun. With Monika we took a taxi directly to the ocean, immediately taking our clothes off and jumping into the clear blue water. It may forever be the most refreshing swim of my life. We bathed in the cool water facing a backdrop of the hazy Saharan dunes we had just come from. Happy to have done the train twice, we were also pleased to be done with it amidst all the uncertainty of the train being closed. It seemed like we lucked out just fine as less than a week later the word was out that the Iron Ore Train was officially closed for all foreigners. People are still riding it but I believe the bribes are now in the thousands of euros.
We spent the day and night at a hostel called Villa Maguela, where we took the boat to a sandbar in the middle of the bay, went fishing, read books, and Ethan gave me a haircut. For dinner Tish made some amazing camel bolognese and we ate like a big family and hung out with the dogs. In the morning they helped drive us to the city to get on a bus to Nouakchott. We waited for some time and eventually were on our way. The drive was grueling. It took way longer than I expected on monotonous roads with little to see aside from open desert. The truck stops were shit holes and not the most appealing to wander around and stretch the legs. We arrived at night driving by the luxurious new US embassy. The state department says we have little interest in the country but this thing was crazy looking. We were trying to party and go to the club like Sidi talked about. The alcohol was expensive. Reddit recommended buying liquor from a Chinese convenience store which we tried but even beers alone were supposed to be 50 euros a piece even if we found them. Better yet we were instructed by reddit to befriend the marines at the embassy and try to drink with them. We didn’t end up doing that due to how poorly our waves were received by the soldiers in Atar. Because the only club in the country, Monotel, was kind of a section of the French embassy, we hoped it would just be a lawless zone where Islam was forgotten and drinks flowed free. We paid 25 euros to get in which was probably the most expensive thing we paid for in the country. In the lobby I saw a framed certificate from the US Department of State thanking the hotel a few years back for hosting a conference on interrogation of terrorism suspects. When we got into the club it looked like a James Bond movie. A big pool in a hotel courtyard with white table cloths and dapperly dressed waiters. We quickly found out that even Monotel is dry, though it was kind of packed already. People were dancing hard and we had our hand at it a little and chain smoked cigarettes. It wasn’t at all what we were expecting but it was cool being in a sober club in an Islamic state. Though it wasn't permitted to jump in, there was a pool and so we decided to be the only ones to go for a swim. They tried to make us pay to swim but we ended up evading and getting to swim for free. It was an odd sober clubbing night and by the time we were back at our hostel, the morning call to prayer was already sounding.
We woke up late and took a taxi to the beach where all the fishermen unload their catch. It was crazy to see them haul the colorful big wooden boats out of the surf. We tried to get the coast guard to let us take pictures from their lookout post but they wouldn’t let us. I got some gnarly insect bites here on my feet and ankles likely from the fish carcasses and guts in the sand. The smell was atrocious. We went to a seedy clothing market and sweatshop area after this and did some shopping. The next morning early, Brian was flying out to go to Switzerland for a few days layover and then back to Oregon. In the same week he had boots on the Saharan sand and also crampons on Matterhorn. It was tough to see him go, the few weeks we had all spent together were unexpected and intense, with all of us experiencing some of the most absurd culture shock we have ever had and always looking out for one another when things got weird.
Ethan and I found a taxi that would take us on to Senegal where we would stay for a week and then fly back to Morocco. We paid a little extra for the guy not to put a hundred people in the back of this little sedan. The occupants consisted of a goat in the trunk wrapped in a sack in case of piss or shit, Ethan and I in the backseat, our driver a Mauritanian guy, and Awa a woman from the Gambia who spoke good English. She was going back to The Gambia after getting art supplies for her business. She helped us a lot along the drive, a ten hour journey from Nouakchott to the Diama National Park land border crossing. She translated when our driver was speaking and we talked about life, stopping for prayer at sunset on the side of the highway where I found the remains of a dead dog, and and for tea along the way. The goat in the trunk was inches away from our heads, making a lot of noise. When we got into the national park, we were on bumping dirt roads that would be completely covered in the wet season. We were now out of the desert and starting to see green and vast marshland. We stopped once to help a driver get out of the mud, our driver handing him a tiny piece of rope that we were not expecting to hold up so well.
Late at night we arrived by the border but it wasn’t open till eight am. Out of the blue it was established we would sleep at the family house of our driver. All this happened very fast but before we knew it we were leaving the goat in the car and walking through a swampy village to the open air house his family lives in. The bathroom was a wooden shed leaning over the muddy river. The insect bites on my feet were really bugging me and this swampland seemed like the place where we’d get bit up more. We sat down on the carpet and had some tea and zrig, fermented camel milk with water. Ethan finished my Zrig for me because I have trouble stomaching the stuff. We sat and talked for a while, and eventually they put a big mosquito net up and separated Awa into the female room because she couldn’t sleep with us. We slept well and at 6 am we were abruptly woken up by our driver who was yelling way more than he needed to. We grabbed our stuff and walked through the village, hazy in the morning light. We got in the car, the goat was fine still, and drove about 15 minutes to the border crossing. It wasn’t open yet so we sat on the ground and watched as our goat, our homie for the whole road trip was handed off to a guy already hacking a goat into pieces to be cooked over an open flame, fueled by trash for a delectable lunch. We now knew the fate of the cute goat and it was a tough one. The border opened and Awa was a godsend. It was supposed to be a difficult border crossing but with her help and language she streamlined the process. We were in and out in about 15 minutes. We all took a taxi into St Louis Senegal where we thanked her for all her help and she went on her way. The Mauritania leg was officially over and were happy to be done with the gnarly border crossings yet sad to have left. Everything about the country was so odd, so bizarre, I'd never before been anywhere like it. It’s still my favorite country I've ever been to. If you're a sucker for friendly strangers, unmatched hospitality, and a bit of the absurd, Mauritania may be the place for you. Go into it with little planning and see for yourself all it has to offer.
