Our final days in Mauritania were all about getting to the capital, getting things done, and leaving there for the Senegal border.
We left the campspot in Terjit via a rough rocky track and on reaching the top there was a worrying metallic crunchy sound. At the main road we felt a strong pull to the left. When Jeremy checked he saw the stabiliser bar was damaged and coming apart. Ivy had been through a lot recently. We had a long drive ahead on a main road towards the capital Nouakchott and wouldn’t risk doing it in this state. Some days you just have to pivot.
(De)stabilising bar.
Luckily we’d just regained a phone signal and could research the problem online and get advice on doing our own temporary fix if needed (thanks Nico!). The map showed a small village nearby and Jeremy walked there to see if there was a mechanic. A beaten-up car soon appeared and Jeremy and another guy hopped out. “The mechanic had to borrow a battery from another car just to get us here!”
The mechanic hammered, dismantled, pondered, and managed to get the bar re-positioned enough for us to drive to the village and get it welded in place. Someone stopped to ask if we were okay and if we wanted to use their house for some shade. All over Mauritania and Morocco we have noticed that people in rural areas, and particularly in the desert, always stop to check on you if they see you pulled in at the side of the road. The remoteness and extreme conditions bring out a strong sense of solidarity.
And a couple of hours after it all began, we were off!
The lack of social life and booze in Mauritania did mean we looked for other drinks to keep life interesting, haha! Who knew there was such a thing as weirdly delicious melon milk?
We slept at the cleanest, quietest gas station we’ve ever seen and made it to Nouakchott the next day. This place on the street helps illustrate why we didn’t buy any raw meat to cook with while in the country. And to be honest, this is not that bad! Some camel meat we saw was fully encrusted with flies.
We battled the crazy traffic to get some shopping done before retreating to a place where we could park up at the beach.
It was a public holiday for Mauritanian Independence Day the following day so we stayed put and had a rest. It was a slightly odd place, but brilliant to be on the velvety sand and to have a swim.
Just along from the campspot was the city’s famous ‘port de pêche’ and fish market. There’s not a jetty in sight – the fishermen manually drag their full nets and phenomenally heavy pirogues onto the beach. One man leads a chant to coordinate and motivate each heaving motion.
The fishing sector accounts for up to 50% of Mauritania’s exports.
And we think we’ve got rust problems…
We’d padded along the beach in our bare feet, thinking the port might be quiet on a holiday, but it was packed. As we carefully picked our way through the market, a woman selling fish shouted “hey, madame, don’t you have any shoes?”
The broken stabiliser bar notwithstanding, we’d already planned to get a health check for Ivy’s suspension in Nouakchott. We went to a mechanic and they diagnosed we needed a new silent bloc/bushing and a few other small bits. They didn’t have the parts to do a full fix on the stabiliser bar, so we ordered those parts in Europe, to be brought over later. The workshop outsourced us to a Malian truck mechanic on the outskirts of the city. It was a poor suburb. The rubbish was awful. Finding it was a challenge as street names rarely exist (at one point he was directing us there via a Whatsapp video call with the phone propped on the dashboard).
There was no actual workshop so we were parked in the street all day, next to someone’s house. The neighbour put a mat on the ground for us to sit on, and made us tea. Jeremy kept disappearing for hours with the mechanic on his motorbike, as they had to go to another workshop to have the bushing specially made to fit Ivy. I sat there until after dark, worrying like hell. By this point we only had one phone between us because the SIM cards kept failing. They finally reappeared and worked on the truck until late at night.
It was a stressful day. In among all this we ended up running late for an arrangement we had to meet someone who had possession of possibly the most important and valuable document any overlander needs – the Carnet de Passage, which is basically a passport for the vehicle to cross borders. We needed it before going to Senegal. It had been acquired in Brussels and then brought to Mauritania by an acquaintance of an acquaintance of a colleague of Jeremy’s. I had to get a cab alone back into the city and find this random house, grab the document from a complete stranger, quick hug and a merci beaucoup and then back into the cab.
Fear not, there was fun as well. For weeks, Jeremy had been researching whether we could catch a footie match in the city. The fixtures don’t get confirmed until the day before. We managed to make it to a premier league game between AS Douanes (customs officers) v Inter Nouakchott. The crowd reached about 120 people tops!
VIDEO: When football and religion collide… the call to prayer was louder than the tiny crowd. [SOUND UP]
We took a long walk home through the city at night.
We left the city and headed for the Senegal border. Driving in the right direction or on the right side of the road sometimes seems to be optional in Nouakchott.
As you approach the border between Mauritania and Senegal you have to pass through Diawling National Park, a haven of birdlife and other wildlife. The journey is a dichotomy of calm and serenity (beautiful scenery and birds absolutely everywhere) and sweaty horrified stress (the worst road we have seen to date).
The birdlife was amazing! I could only snap from the car as the road was so awful with few places to pull over and we were running out of daylight to get to the police checkpoint before the border, where we wanted to spend the night.
Blue-cheeked bee-eaters.
Pied kingfisher.
VIDEO: Apart from the generally terrible road, we kept having to switch between an upper and lower track, via a horribly steep bank. At one point we had to back up about 400m to find a less tippy place to climb it, after we saw a stricken car stuck on the bank up ahead and getting dragged out by another car.
I think this is a black-crowned crane, which is listed as a vulnerable species (happy to be corrected!).
Yellow-billed stork.
We also saw loads of warthogs dashing across the road. Only managed to get this blurry snap.
It was a hell of a sweaty few hours. Hard to believe this is the route to an international border. There’s plenty more of that to come though. We found a nice quiet spot in the trees and got ready for an early border crossing into Senegal. The Mauritania leg was only three weeks, but what a three weeks! It was incredible, but even the great parts took quite a lot out of us (including 4-5kg in weight each). And it’s not exactly a long time to go without booze; not even a whole dry November. But I don’t mind admitting we were very much ready to sink a cold beer.
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Fab update 😎 They did well at the football stadium with the seat colours to make it appear that there were people there! x
Love it
Some proper driving challenges there 😳
I hope 2025 is going well in THE Gambia 🤪