One fine day

I wrote this 10 days ago, but the internet ate it - I like the idea, though, so I decided to finish it up. I'm catching up on messages and news in Nouakchott now, so look here for a couple posts soonish. And now, onward!

My life on the road is dense with experiences. There are far, far too many to adequately write up, even when cybercafes are common. One of my worries, then, is that posts will more often be broad than deep. Posts like the last one serve a purpose, to be sure, but they have obvious limits.
With that in mind, then, I think I'll confine this post to describing, in more detail, June 15th, 2009. This wasn't a particularly "typical" day, as it involved a border crossing. It was simply a day that brought a smile to my face, and perhaps a day that can give a sense of the rhythm of life as a solo traveller.


8 AM - I wake up in a little hotel room in Dakhla, Morocco, the last town before the Mauritanian border. For a city 1000 kms from anywhere, it's a surprisingly developed place. There is lots of governnment money here, and a few foreigners either passing through en route to West Africa, or staying to Windsurf. There's even a Best Western. In my little 7 dollar hotel room there is just two twin beds and a closet, with a wood-shuttered window through which I can get a glimpse of the ocean from between the buildings. I'm a little bit bleary-eyed this morning, my neighbour's Rihanna obsession having kept me up later than I would have liked. I roll out of bed, dress, and scoot down the hall to wash up. This done, I head out into the streets to get breakfast.

Morocco is not an early-rising sort of place, and the streets around me are still largely shuttered at 8 30 AM. As in any Moroccan town, though, I can smell that the patisseries are up and running. I stop in at one and pick up a couple pains au chocolat for 30 cents each. Chucked into a paper bag, they accompany me around the corner to one of the many local cafes, where the usual rank of men with newspapers is sitting starting their days. I grab a seat outside, exchange some mumbled greetings with the fellows, and order a cafe au lait. After 30 minutes of munching and sipping and watching the world go by, it's time to hit the road.

(Luck treated me well 2 days previous. Rolling into Dakhla after 27 hours on the bus, I decided to have a look round for rides into Mauritania before committing myself to paying an extortionate 50 dollars for a seat in a shared taxi. It being low season, I hadn't been optimistic, but lo and behold, on walking in to the only place in Dakhla with beer, I had found the only 2 customers, a couple of French fellows headed my way who happily offered me a place. They were staying at a campground outside of town, so it was to this campground that I had to find my way the morning of the 15th.)

With this in mind, I grab my pack from the hotel and flag down a taxi with a free seat (essentially all taxis are shared here). Ten minutes and a dollar later, I find myself sitting in a cracked plastic chair at the campsite. The French folk are nowhere in sight, but the manager tells me they're expecting me. Eventually, one pops up on his way to the shower and says hello. I wait around for a while, petting what must be the world's most lackadaisical cat, until the French fellow appears again, this time driving what must have once been a fish delivery van in its French past life. He takes off into town to get gas. Soon after that, Frenchman 2 - Jacqui! - appears in a beat up Renault wagon and stops to chat. The Renault is crammed with garage sale bric-a-brac: air conditioners, bikes, radios, food processors and such. Jacqui tells me that his friend and he plan to drive it all across to Senegal, where they will sell everything - including the cars, the bikes, even their suitcases - before flying home. There is a small group of French traders who regularly do such trips, as you can actually make a solid profit on an old used car if you're willing to drag it that far.

Although shooting the breeze in the sun is nice, it is now getting towards noon, and with a long drive ahead, it's past time to go - but Frenchman 1 has disappeared! To my rescue come Helodie and Antoine, a French couple about my age, also staying at the campground. They're off to Niger in their 1986 Peugot hatchback, and they gladly clear a space for me in the back seat. By 12 30, we bid goodbye to Jacqui and hit the road. After a quick stop at the police checkpoint outside of town (this being disputed territory), we hit the open road - a smoothly paved 2 lane highway that shoots 365 kms through the desert to the border.

Antoine and Helodie are very French. We make the border quickly, barrelling down the empty road at 130 kph, windows down, Edith Piaf blasting from the stereo as my hosts chain-smoke stinky roll-your-owns and we all stare out at huge white sand dunes to our left and the Atlantic to our right. We stop once to spend our last Moroccan change on chocolate and coffee at a gas station, where some travellers coming the other way sell me a bit of Mauritanian cash; enough, I think, to get me from the border to town.

Arriving at the border, it's bureaucracy time! The police first must radio our port of entry to confirm our identities. This takes about 30 mins, as we sit in the shade and shoot the shit with jolly and bored border guards. As it turns out, they have no doctor on base, so when they discover Helodie is one, she is drafted into making a quick diagnosis of one man's stomach troubles, which involves him engaging us all in a long narrative about his gastrointestinal history.
Approval having come through from the police, it's customs' turn. The customs fellow is much more interested in flirting with Helodie than inspecting her car, so that goes quickly. Finally, we hand over our passports to the Gendarmerie (the RCMP equivalent) and are motioned on our way. This gives us the privelege of driving 200 metres to another Gendarmerie post, where we wait for 30 more minutes. Finally, we are ushered out of Morocco.

Leaving Morocco also means leaving the paved road. Although the highways on both sides of the border are in good shape, the 4 kms of no-man's-land between them has no road at all, only a rough track surrounded by car carcasses. Our trusty Peugot bottoms out hard a couple times in the 20 minutes it takes us to cross this. On the other side, we are met with another series of offices to scurry between. First is the customs shack, where the fellows are far more interested in buying the car than inspecting it. Next comes passport control, passed with a smile. Finally, we buy some mandatory insurance for the car and are on our way. I had bought my visa in Morocco, which was good, as Helodie and Antione are a shade to honest with their plans and are only granted a transit visa that they must extend.

We roar out from the border back onto paved road. About 5 kms on, we come to the intersection where a gendarmerie post marks the branch of the road that heads to Nouakchott (where the French folk are headed) and Nouadhibou, where I am going, 30 kms the other way. I say a quick goodbye and good luck, grab my pack from the car, wave my arm in the air, and within 30 seconds a banged up old Mercedes shared taxi stops for me. I begin to feel properly African as I see the live goat lashed dubiously to the trunk. They have a free seat, so I hop in the front - that makes it the driver, myself, another fellow, and my pack in the front, and another 4 in the back. We roar off down the road, chatting amiably in French as the folk in the cab welcome me to Mauritania.

After a couple police checkpoints, we pull into a dusty lot that is the Nouadhibou "station". After a day of sitting, I decide to stretch my legs and walk to my auberge - I see a sign pointing to the centre ville, ask to confirm it, and head off down the main drag. The walk is pleasant, in the fading sun at 6:30 PM. The town is noticeably poorer than Morocco, with its main components being low, concrete buildings, drifting sand, and lots of goats. It's also loads friendlier, with everyone smiling, waving, or shaking my hand as I go by. I walk on. And on. And on. By the time I've walked for 45 minutes, I begin to think it wasn't the greatest idea, but by now, I'm stubbourn about finishing, and I walk on. Finally, in the last light of the day I reach the central town, ask some friendly folk, and find my way to the illustrious Camping Abba.

The auberge is largely set up for overland drivers, with a large lot for parking and camping that sits empty, surrounded by whitewashed walls and some few rooms and shared spaces. There aren't many guests, so they give me a 3-bed room to myself for the price of a dorm. I think it helps when I tell them I walked - turns out I had just schlepped about 8.5 kms with my pack on my back! The hotel staff are amused. My room isn't much, just a few beds, a tiny window, and paint peeling off the walls, but it suits me just fine. I drop my backpack, wash up, and shoot the breeze with the folks there for a while, until I notice that I'm utterly starving.

I promptly set off back into the centre looking for an open restaurant. The streetlights are broken, and it is not in every African city that I would happily trundle in darkness, but this is Mauritania, one of the safest places on earth, and I don't have a worry. As I'm starving, I decide to stop at the first place I see, which is a 24 hour restaurant on the main drag. The lady running the place laughs when I ask whether they're serving food, says "of course!" and tells me the menu. It's pricey, for the area - a meal is 2000 oughiyas, or about $6, but I'm too tired to go hunting around for cheaper. I settle on the fish (this is a port), and the lady asks me whether I want fish eggs? Of course, I say, being a fan of the things in sushi form. It's good that I do - when I get my meal, it emerges as an enourmous plate of fried fish, with a sort of hockey-puck cake of eggs that was utterly lovely. With salad (fresh veggies are a rare thing in my life these days), bread, and fries, I was laughing. I pass my meal chatting amiably about Islam with some folks in the restaurant as we watch inane Moroccan soap operas.

With a full belly, I wander out onto the street again and over to the fruit stalls, which are lit by bulbs on strings hanging over their wares. I see with joy that I've come far enough south to be in cheap mango territory, and spend $1.50 on 2 kilos of deliciousness. After a long trundle back in the darkness, I tuck into a huge mango and read a chapter or two of "Wuthering Heights" (classics are all I can afford to buy!) until, at about 10:30, my head gets droopy and I hit the pillow.

Such was a day.
Peace
Josh