Crossing to Mauritania
Hi BoBers,
Ramadan means that my usual, bourgeois habit of eating mostly at restaurants isn’t possible anymore. Even more difficult is that people tend to gather late into the night, wake up early to eat, and then rest again until midday or later. And so, when I reached the last store for 120km in the morning it was closed. With my visa nearly expired, I couldn’t wait until evening, so I had to take a detour to a local fishing village, pushing my bike through sand around huge dunes that had formed over the road that nobody could afford to remove. The village was rough and clearly a place for work. Dense with the smell of engine oil, sweat and fish. Tiny dorms filled with men dreaming of their distant families. It’s times like these that I’m overwhelmed with gratitude for my many privileges.
I was invited to my first Iftar - the meal for breaking the fast - by two soldiers guarding a phone tower. No photos unfortunately because I wasn’t technically supposed to be there. That night, I slept under the stars, at peace in the desert.
The riding was tough and the landscape desolate and harsh. For the first time in my life I have a sunburnt lower lip. The border crossing was ten times more stressful though. Like many Aussies, I also have a UK passport, which I used for Morocco. This passport is nearly expired, so I needed to transition to my Australian passport at the border, which has never been a problem for me. This slight deviation from protocol led to me crossing no-mans-land three times in the blazing sun, begging imigration of both sides to let me through on my Australian passport. Both needed a stamp from the other side first. Stalemate. The only thing the Moroccans offered was to give me a visa on my nearly-expired UK passport, the least legal option of all. If I was unlucky, I would need to cross back into Morocco, ride or hitchhike ~350km to Dakhla, fly to the canary islands and then to Nouadhibou.
Finally, after being very demure, patient and polite, the Mauritanians relented. The ride to Nouadhibou was glorious with a 30km/h tailwind - like riding a racing-cloud. The city and traffic is chaotic and I imagine only a taste of what’s to come.
J&BoB
