Day 190
The border opens at 9AM Moroccan time, not Mauritanian time as advertised. I’m at the front with the Spanish motorcyclists and get through the multiple passport checks, searches and sniffer dogs fairly quickly to be the first vehicle of the day crossing the no-mans land. Several kilometres of massively potholed gravel in what resembles a landfill site, the motor vehicles coming the other way are having as hard a time as I am.
On the Mauritanian side I have to shuttle between several offices accumulating slips of paper before eventually getting the visa. The guy who does the biometrics is not at his desk yet and I have to go into his house to find him. At one office Luca appears, having spent the night at the petrol station in Guarguarate. I swap my Dirhams for Ougiyas with one of the money changers as there’s no bank for 200 km, and Luca buys several packs of Camel cigarettes for €1 each, which turn out to be fakes. He declines to buy a SIM card as the price sounds ridiculous, but we later discover that many people quote prices in old ougiyas, which adds a zero on.
In total it’s taken just over two hours to get through the border. We head to the first town, Boulenoire, or as google maps has it, Bon Lanouar, about 60 km away. Leo messages that he’s had his bike fixed and should meet us there in a couple of hours. The desert is different this side, there are spots with trees and other vegetation, and places where people live out here. The headwind is strong and the sun hot, so after several stops I reach Boulenoir at about three.
There are shops in huts along the main road, and on approaching the most likely looking one for a cold drink I’m welcomed by the owner, Maloud, like an old friend. He insists I sit with him in the shade of the awning and take tea and we communicate in a mixture of French, English and Spanish. There’s also a couple of Californian hitch-hikers in the shade of the next hut, and Maloud gets someone to make food for us all. Luca arrives about an hour later, just as the Californians get a ride to Nouakchott.
The iOverlander app shows just two places to stay here, an Auberge described as dilapidated and beyond filthy and a hotel which is out of Luca’s budget, but also described as extremely basic. Maloud tells us there’s a camp site not on the map and a bunch of children appear to show us the way. This turns out to be a small compound full of palm trees, a set of traditional square tents, some with sides, all with sleep mats, and even a swimming pool (which admittedly looks pretty toxic). Luca negotiates the price down from 300 to 200 ougiya, about £4 each.
We head out for supplies and Maloud calls us over to tell us Leo is on the highway about 5 km out. Sure enough, he arrives shortly after with a Belgian couple in tow and we all head back to the camp together. Dinner is offered, which comes as a big platter that we all eat directly from, sitting on the floor.
I sleep well, but I seem to have rolled up against my mosquito net in the night as I have a bunch of bites on my shoulder where it was up against the netting.
Day 191
Boulenoir – Chami
We are offered breakfast — baguette, omelette, Nescafe, Mauritanian bread. We’re told the price is still 1000 for the five of us, but we agree between ourselves to double this to cover all the food we’ve had.
Heading out the landscape becomes more like classic Sahara as in the pictures, sand dunes and lots of camels, some roaming free, others herded or kept within catching distance by having their front legs tied.
Villages are few and far between, but there are occasional tiny shops, and one petrol station (no petrol available, there are only diesel cars here) which has some food which only Leo eats. Luca prefers to cycle at his own pace and wild camp, the other four of us push on to Chami at 150 km away. The wind turns against us and there’s even some rain, we arrive at Chami just before dark feeling pretty tired. I choose to stay in the hotel for 1500 MRU (€30) while the others decide to sleep on the floor of the restaurant after it closes. Apparently this is normal.
Day 192
Chami – Tiwilit/Toualit
Leo has gut problems, presumably from the petrol station food. This was a major issue in the night as the lock for the restaurant door was chairs propped against the lock, and the lavatory was outside. Nonetheless he’s ready to set off at first light and we make fair progress with a light tail wind. The Belgians catch us up at our breakfast stop — we’ve luckily arrived just after the bread delivery, they don’t usually take much bread and it’s gone very soon after delivery. We have baguette with a tin of sardines emptied into it. No coffee.
There are regular police checkpoints where, unlike in Morocco, they stop all cyclists. They ask for a “fiche” which is a photocopy of passport details and itinerary, without which you have to go to the office and fill in all the information. With a fiche they just collect it and wish you bon voyage. At the third one, Leo decides he’s had enough already and asks the driver of the Hilux behind us for a lift. His truck is empty so agrees to take Leo and his bike to the next stop, roughly 100 km from here.
I ride with the Belgians for a while but press on when they stop for lunch and a snooze. The landscape has lost its charm and is now more like cycling through an endless quarry, complete with plastic rubbish strewn everywhere. The rest of the ride is fairly tedious but I get to Tiwilit in good time with 155 km for the day. The auberge here is like a little village of square huts and we take one each. The Belgians don’t arrive until well after dark but had decided to carry on rather than camp.
Day 193
Tiwilit – Nouakchott
I say goodbye to the Belgians as they are staying with friends in Nouakchott, which is only 90 km so they’re leaving after breakfast.
Nouakchott, which means “place of the winds”, is Mauritania’s capital. It’s a sprawling city with no real centre, and it’s chaos. Cars, lorries and donkey carts driving in all directions, road or pavement, deep sand all over the place, people everywhere between. Leo has broken more spokes on the way and goes off to find a mechanic. Later we take a taxi (shared but thankfully not as packed as most) out to the fish market where the boats have recently dropped their catch.
Day 194
Nouakchott – Tiguent
There are two possible border crossings into Senegal, Rosso and Diama. Rosso is a little further but on tarmac roads up to the ferry. There are reports that the border guards there can be very difficult and insist on payments for various extra bits of paper, though mostly this seems to apply to motor vehicles. The Diama route includes 40 km of unmade road which can get muddy after rain. We seek advice and the consensus is overwhelmingly to go to Diamer: it’s through the national park, it’s more direct, and recent photos show it’s dry.
It takes a while to get out of the capital, after which the landscape is totally different. The desert has finished and there are trees and grass everywhere, and the villages are clearly more affluent. We make great progress on perfectly smooth roads.
The day’s target is Tiguent, the last town in Mauritania, and we arrive there in time for lunch and a cup of touba coffee. We decide that instead of stopping here and taking a day to get to Rosso, we will carry on towards Diama and see how far we get, then camp. However, just outside town another spoke breaks on Leo’s bike and we turn back. After the “fix” I check the wheel and it’s not been tensioned. Leo says the previous repair was similar, this might explain the new breakages. I spend some time putting reasonable tension in the rest of the spokes and truing as best I can. Fingers crossed.
Day 195
Tiguent – St Louis
We set off early with no specific destination, just see how far we get. An hour or two in, Leo gets a flat. We are thankful this is no longer the desert and there is shade to be found. He’s running Marathon Plus so the hole is presumably the result of the “mechanic” yesterday using screwdrivers and flattened nails to get the tyre back on. Leo produces some cutlery to use as tyre levers — I can’t help much with this as my tyres don’t need levers so I only have the single short lever on my multitool. But I do get to demonstrate how to get a tyre back on without tools.
Shortly after that there’s another bang from a spoke breaking. Now I show how to change a non-drive side spoke without removing the wheel or tyre. Thankfully there are no more bike problems for the rest of the day.
We get coffee where the road forks for Rosso or Dawling National Park. Like in Eastern Europe, nescafé is considered posh coffee and that’s what we’re offered. We head into the park and, as expected, the road quickly deteriorates to packed sand and baked mud, deeply rutted in parts. We’re passed by a number of Portuguese motorcyclists, apparently there’s a Portugal-Dakar rally expected to arrive in the next day or so. Apart from that we spend the next few hours in the company of warthogs, great egrets, lots of different wading birds and some long-horn cattle. The road is tough to ride and the sun here is intense. It’s a different kind of heat than in Turkey or Europe, there it was very hot air like being in an oven, here it’s much more radiant heat.
Eventually we reach the Senegal border. As on the way in, the Mauritanians make everyone wait around for ages for no particular reason. On the Senegal side it’s much more efficient. It’s now 5PM and about 25 km to Saint Louis, but with no other options we decide to press on and arrive in the city shortly after dark. It’s a complete contrast to Mauritania, everyone is out doing things, there’s music playing, people running and cycling. Leo has a couch surfing arrangement, I find a hotel.
