Salut! Mauritania is of course not as unfriendly or dangerous as every Moroccan told me, though poverty is worse than I ever saw before. I spend a small relaxed week in Mauritanians capital Nouakchott at some French NGO-involved couchsurfers. Here, the Malian embassy turned out to cheap and efficient in giving me a visa. Then I got on the road again to meet the desert and I can assure you that I succeeded.
You probably know already I like the unorganized non-commercial way of traveling. This got me into a solo-hike from Chinguetti to Ouadane. According to my information, because of a relatively large amount of rain, there was plenty of vegetation and nomads with their dromedaires on the "road". Besides, there was a big group of tourists about to depart for the same trip the same day. I started one hour before the tourists and got a 10 km hitchhike, in retrospect unluckily beyond the last waterpoint. 25 km from this waterpoint and 38 km from home I still met only lost dromedaires without any nomads at all. In the meanwhile, the piste had disappeared for 95 percent. It would be around 20 km to the next oase, but I took these coordinates from a local map and was not 100% sure of it's accuracy. I knew that I wass able to reach this point, but if the oase would be somewhere else out of sight I would probably be dependant on a rescue-operation. With one liter of water left I decided to backtrack my GPS-waypoints and return to basis. After 5 km's of backtracking it got too dark to continue and I made camp. This night in the desert I could not stop dreaming of asking for water and icecold cokes in non-existing villages. When the light returned I got on my way for the last 20 km to the waterpoint. Fysically and mentally still going strong enough to not having to worry about my life, but still quiet tired and enormously thursty I was eventually picked up by a car. Probably having lost around 4 liters of water It took me some time to recover. But, I learned a lot and those were again two amazing days of my life which made me very happy :) A la prochaine, Geert
Hi Geert!
ReplyDeleteGood to hear from you, and happy to know that your are fine!
Take care about yourself and take more water in the next try!! :-P
Not following the commercial way of traveling is nice, but maybe you have to consider this again... because it looks that in the desert there is only one way to follow from oasis to oasis... and that way probably is followed by both, locals and tourists. :-)
Warmest reagards from your plenty of water born country.
Enrique
It was a pity you didnt get to Weddane.It is situated inside the crater produced by a meteorite which impacted there.Enjoy Senegal.
ReplyDeleteDon't miss : l'ile de Goree.
Are you planning to reach Casamance region after crossing Gambia?If not just head Eastwards towards Mali, it is much more interesting than Senegal.
Good luck.
Daniel