9. Mauritania

(Day 70-77, 6.225km cycled)

The Gates to Hell

Now, things were going to change abruptly, that much I realized right away on the first meters towards Mauritania. The road in the 2km no man's land was virtually non-existent, so ravaged I wondered how any normal truck could pass through. Trash was abundant, thousands of empty water bottles thrown into the sand. And even the signs warning of mines looked like they had never been renewed after the initial placing. The stretch was completely lifeless and deserted.

1. First inpression

2. "Danger Mines"

At the border post, I noticed a change in pace. The police were moving slowly, acting as if work was at their convenience rather than their duty. Before my departure towards the border, Abdu had warned me about corrupt police officers and I should "Not give my passport to anybody but the police''. Border traffickers or "assistants" as they called themselves were immediately on my heels upon arrival, telling me I needed to give them my passport so they could get me the stamps I needed. They simply outright lie to you to get a middle-man fee for doing the border process for you. I kindly but firmly denied their offers and did the process myself. The immigration officer insisted I pay for the issuance of the visa in Euros instead of Dirham but unluckily I only had Dirham at hand. He was so kind as to "cut me a deal" with one of the traffickers that would "exchange" my Dirham to Euros. A deal I had to accept and a deal in which I have never seen a Euro actually being exchanged. Was it a bribe? No. Did the officer receive part of the exchange fee I had to pay to the trafficker? Most likely.

With a feeling of being tricked, yet, with my visa in my passport, I left, just to be stopped immediately by police because I needed another, confirmatory stamp from the police office.

The police office was even slower than the immigration office, where traffickers would frequently cut the line to prioritize the passports of their paying customers.

Here was a room, filled with roughly 10 young black guys all waiting impatiently for their stamp. In this room I had to hand my passport over to the police, who placed it in front of him on the table that was swarmed with impatient guys. A horror scenario as the police couldn't care less if, let's say, my passport would end up in somebody's pocket in all that bustle in the small room. Soon the officer has had enough of the pushing and ordered everybody out of the room. Surely not short after that, the room was half full with people blocking the view on my passport again.

In all that chaos, where I was increasingly worried about my passport simply disappearing, a trafficker started talking to me. I mostly tried to avoid him because I knew he just wanted my business, aka my money. At some point, this guy, just strides into the officers room, grabs my passport and walks over to another office. In shock, I follow him, closely surveying him.

In that next office, which had no window, documents were collecting unsorted on a flimsy desk, the chief police officer was having an afternoon nap on the floor. Yet the trafficker, seemingly familiar with the chief, had no fear of waking him up and shoving my passport in his hands, trying to expedite my approval. Luckily for me, the chief asked me a couple questions and after my passport passed through another 3 officers hands, I received my stamp.

I got lucky, the trafficker simply seemed to be bored and decided to help the German. All he wanted in return was to video-call his friend, hold my German passport in the camera and jokingly tout that he had received German citizenship. It was a payment I gladly made.

The whole border process left me confused and stressed. I had to effectively shadow-bribe immigration, felt that officials were much more capable and willing to exploit their position, and realized that drinking tea was now more important than working.

But with my stamps in my passports I was ready to head to Nouadhibou, 40km away.

3. Mauritania Border Post

Well, kind of ready. The realization hit me, that I had not exchanged any money, had no idea of the exchange rate and also I had no internet to confirm navigation or look up things like the exchange rate. I was "in the dark" with not even enough money to buy water on the way, until I had reached Nouadhibou. A strange feeling, heading into a new country so unprepared.

I arrived after 1.5 hours of cycling and after getting almost killed by a truck driver that had to overtake a motorbike while coming at me at full speed, waving his hands for me to get off the road, in a city that was unlike anything I had ever seen. Every building looked unfinished, like money had ran out half way through the building process and people occupied the skeleton of a house anyway. The dirt and rubbish everywhere was unprecedented, even to Spanish and Moroccan standards. Cars were rolling coffins, beat up, with crooked axis, frankenstein creations of a hundred different parts that all belonged to different donor cars. I am sure that every car in Europe that is deemed "unsafe to drive" or an "unrecoverable damage" ends up here.

The sidewalks were occupied by many street vendors and shops who had good for display on the sidewalk. People in long robes and turbans heading down the street or discussing loudly with onenofnthe many vendors.

Add to that the traffic: an abundance of donkey-drawn carts, free roaming sheep, cows, camels, goats or chicken and of course me, the only person on my bicycle. The chaos was perfect.

4. Iron-ore train tracks

5. Iron-ore train outside Nouadhibou

6. Nouadhibou in the distance

7. Rolling coffin

8. Fuel efficient transport

9. Nouadhibou at day

10. Waste management truck

At the first bank I found I withdrew an unknown amount of a currency called Ouguiya (a word I still can't pronounce). With that money I went straight to a sim card vendor that quoted me a price so high I knew it must be a rip off. What I didn't know was he was quoting a price in the "old currency" which had been changed already 6 years ago but just how Germans will still quote anything in D-Mark, in Mauritania, some people quote a price that is a thousand times the actual price. Confusing.

Luckily I now had a sim-card that was actually reasonably priced and shortly after I found a "cheap" hotel to spend the night. The room was filthy, the carpet looked like it had never been washed ever, yet like multiple children had been conceived AND born on it.

But I had arrived. After all this stressful, confusing and new impressions, I knew I had arrived in the reality that was Africa and should be my home for the next coming months. Inevitably the words from Henri "After the Sahara, you reach the border of Mauritania, the gates to hell." echoed in my head.

I was yet unsure if he was referring to the unbearable desert heat or to the country as a whole. Maybe it was up to me to decide how to interpret these words.

11. The "magic"-carpet

12. Hotel hygiene (bathroom)

13. Beautiful decorations

Sand

I couldn't wait to get out of this dirty, ugly city and so the next day, I was on my way towards Nouakchott, the countries' capital, taking the N1 national road that winds its way through the desert for 440 km. The wind should have been on my side yet I was met with unexpected headwinds straight away, a blow to my confidence. I also had to stop at police checkpoints more or less frequently and hand over a passport copy. The police were always kind and happy to see the blonde cyclist wear a turban, just like all the locals. Call that integration or what?

I was riding through a desert that didn't differ too much from the desert in the Western Sahara/Southern Morocco at first sight. Lots of sand left and right, but not as many rocks and stones in between. There were also actually more trees, acacia trees, yet still a rather seldom sight. And abandoned settlements of shacks that were made from wood and tin sheet metal.

14. Average desert view

However, one major difference that was becoming more evident by the minute as I rode was that the sand was not only on the ground, it was also in the air. It was in the air in the form of clouds on the horizon, slowly growing larger and coming closer as I rode. First I deemed it "normal clouds" but then again, what are "normal clouds" in a desert? Certainly, rain clouds would have also been an extremely uncommon sight. So the presence of rain/storm clouds confused me until I eventually realized I was about to be hit by a massive sandstorm. The view of the storm rolling in was so amazing, yet frightening, I stopped at a lonely, poorly built brick building that was an alimentary shop.

I asked the unbothered owner, who was laying on the floor and drinking tea if I should stay or continue riding. With a little laughter, the comfortable, short brown man dressed in a white robe, the kaftan that 90% of the population wears, said it would be wise to stay. As I watched the clouds come closer and closer like a wall closing in, the shopkeeper ordered his son to close his shop's windows and doors while he finished his tea and in seemingly slow motion fashion grabbed a pair of eye-protection goggles like you will find in a chemical laboratories. Ready and prepared, it was time, the clouds had reached us.

15. Clouds on the horizon (and pristine road conditions)

16. Coming closer

17. ...and closer

18. They're here.

The sand encompassed everything, blocking the sun and turning everything first yellow-brown and then into an unreal orange tint. It was the most surreal experience I had ever had. Like wearing orange sunglasses that you can not take off. The winds were strong but unlike a rainstorm where the drops cause chaotic loud noise, amplifying the extreme conditions, here the sand was silent, not making a single sound, unfelt on the skin. The sand was so fine, it would settle in every crack, every nudge and every corner. While the shop owner was wearing his protective goggles with good reason, my sunglasses were no match for the fine sand and I constantly had sand irritating my eyes. I felt it in my mouth and heard the sand scratch on my teeth when talking.

As the storm raged on, my hopes that I could continue cycling the same day were diminishing. The final nail in the coffin was a call the shopkeeper received that was the police checking where I had found shelter from the storm. They must have called every shop on the national road (which was easy since there was one maybe only every 50km) to find out where I was. They then demanded I stay there for the night because with the storm it was too dangerous to continue.

19. Yellow-brown

20. Full orange tint

21. Bicycle bracing the conditions

22. Inside the shop

The shopkeeper and his son were very poor, like almost all people I met and saw living next to the national road, and were sleeping in a nomadic style tent behind the shop. Because of this I didn't ask to eat with them, fearing they might have not enough food to spare. I resorted to eating some cans of tuna I had in my bags. Of course, with a side of sand in the tuna.

The storm eased but continued regardless and as I laid in my tent to go to sleep. I felt the sand flutter down, through the mesh of my tent, and onto my face.

As I woke up the next morning, I, and with it everything in my tent, was covered in a fine layer of sand. From there on, all the way to Nouadhibou, sand would be everywhere. It was in my pants, in my food, and of course, in my tent. And there was no way to get rid of it. Still, to this day, the desert travels with me.

Wanting to Cry

The storm subsided after two days from when it had begun. There wasn't so much sand in the air anymore and the orange filter had gone too but clouds continued to overshadow the land and hide the sun. This was to my advantage, because temperatures never exceeded 40°C, in an area where temperatures often reach up to 50°C. On the downside, the residue of the storm had me ride with heavy headwinds, something I was not used to anymore because of the constant, generous tailwinds throughout the last 700km or so. Since the desert in Mauritania was so sparsely populated and had a very much hostile nature, camping was no option for me and I had no choice but to continue cycling against the wind for 100km until I reached Chami, a city that is nothing more than a stopover location for all travelers between the two large towns. Chami was underwhelming. Thats all I can say about it.

I could feel that the people living in Mauritania along the N1 road were more desperate than in Morocco. Their poverty was evident and the environment they were living in was, what can only be described as, technically uninhabitable. There was no running water, no electricity and no stable supply of food anywhere outside the bigger cities. I don't understand what work these people have other than herding camels, or running a small alimentary shop because in the desert there is nothing but a few sparsely distributed acacia trees and sand. The people I met were working either as a shopkeeper or as a labor for some kind of raw material mine in the middle of nowhere.

All of this affected how people interacted with me. People had lost their warm hearted welcoming kind and appeared indifferent, colder and tired. Hospitability did not come from the heart and was mostly practiced as to follow religious dogmas. With that, my skepticism towards the people rose too. On the other hand, it is not like I met many people on the way anyway. And to my positive surprise, the desert was so inhospitable, stray dogs had disappeared altogether.

Food consisted of a heavy load of carbs, mixing bread with pasta and rice. Restaurants would serve a huge portion of pasta with a minimal touch of tomato sauce, a side of rice and a condiment of bread. Sometimes you could have a spoonful mayonnaise on the side for some variety. For breakfast, people ate bread, plain, with butter or a chocolate spread. This choice of food gave me the feeling as if there was no national traditional cuisine at all and as if supply of food had only recently been stable.

Yet keep in mind that this is only the experience I had and that I might be completely wrong.

At day 3 of cycling through Mauretania, things came crashing down on me and my mood was at an all time low.

I was constantly struggling against the wind, cycling dull landscapes under grey triste skies. The cheering-on honks of passing busses made me more frustrated than give me any energy. The people I met were cold and distant, the food I ate was heavy and bland and the people I loved were too far away. I was sick and tired of cycling.

It was the first time I wanted to sit down and cry. I wanted to give up and would have traded any further day cycling for a day spent on a couch in front of Netflix immediately.

I was lonely, something that is damn hard to admit on a solo-journey, exhausted and uninspired. Nobody to share the pain with, nobody to build each other back up with.

As hard as it was, I had to suck it all up and continue. No stopping because times are sometimes harder.

23. Rising desert sun

24. Alimentary shop

25. Makeshift house? Or storage? Idk.

26. Carb-fest

27. Desert road

28. 285km from Nouadhibou, 185km to Nouakchott

29. Sand and bushes

30. Sand dunes closer to the ocean

The 4th and 5th day cycling did build me back up a little. I saw crabs on the road when I reached the ocean again, something I found so funny that it cheered me up a lot! Crabs are such silly creatures. Simple but it did the trick. I also helped two motorcyclists that I met at a depleted gas station who also had no idea of the exchange rate and spoke no French, which gave me courage to see people who are even less prepared for the ride. And lastly, I met Henrik with his Landrover who was already back on its way home after reaching Dakar.

I think the crabs did the most in cheering me up.

Upon my arrival in Nouakchott, I was greeted by a contact of the association, Mr. Diallo. He showed me around the city for the next two days. After a long and exhausting stretch of cycling I was happy to get a day or two of rest and also a kind and funny person to talk to.

Nouakchott was an odd capital city that lacked proper roads pretty much anywhere you went and the contrast between poor and wealthy was too evident. People living a European standard of life live right next to a shack with a family of 4 that's built entirely out of scraps of driftwood, plastic tarp and maybe had a tin roof.

31. Sleeping in an Herbergement. Comfy matresses

32. Fishing boats

33. Evidence of crabs!

34. Gishing village near Nouakchott

35. Fishing village

36. View from a balcony in Nouakchott. Wasted neighborhood with makeshift houses.

For clarification, I don't believe Mauritania's are any less kind or hospitable than, lets say, Morocco. The people living on the long road between Nouadhibou and Nouakchott are living in extremely hostile conditions, barely surviving. It is understandable that interactions with these humans that presumably have plenty of internal conflict, existential anxiety and perhaps lack of social contact, are by nature more stiff than with those that have a secure lifestyle.

In Chami, I met 3 business men and a son on their way to Nouakchott. All 4 of them were very open, from what I could tell, kind hearted and engaged me in a genuine interest driven discussion. After hearing about my ambition to cycle to Togo, the business men were impressed and one retaliated at his son, that he just prefers to sleep 10 hours and play fifa all day. The son then drilled me with questions on why I would do such a project rather than just taking the plane as it's so much easier and comfortable. Why would somebody deliberately choose to suffer? It is a good question. Anyway, at the end, the business men shared some chocolate and a joghurt with me and were on their way.

This and the kind people I met in Nouakchott stand in stark contrast to what the people in the midlands outside the large cities are like.

Yellow turns Green

From Nouakchott it was 200km to the Senegalese border. In these two days, everything started to change. Because the rainy season was just concluding in the area, the desert started to become greener wiyh every meter I went south. Acacia trees were growing more frequently, the sand was getting covered by some sort of greenery and at times, I was passing through areas with lush green fields of grass, completely covering the sand dunes. Families were herding cows and cultivating crops. The desert was truly turning from yellow to green, a change in tone that I had been impatiently awaiting. Since entering into Spain, life had become increasingly dry and scarce to the point where I was passing through areas that had virtually no life in them whatsoever and now I had passed the peak and life started to re-appear.

The people changed too. Skin tones became darker and kids were not distant, cold and shy anymore. They jumped, screamed and waved in joy when seeing me pass on my bicycle. I was chased down by a group of 15 or so kids that had a bicycle gathering at the side of the road and started chasing me as soon as they spotted me riding past.

These changes in liveliness in both nature and people lifted my mood by a lot. I knew Senegal was just around the corner and with it, Saint Louis, where I had scouted out a wonderful campground for all the overlanders and travelers on their way from Europe to Dakar - The Zebrabar.

Close to the river Sénégal, I was riding through abundant greenery left and right and lush, vast fields of rice. It was as if an arboretum had exploded and scattered its plants everywhere I rode.

In this green new world, I arrived at the Senegalese border, the Rosso crossing that was so notorious for bribery, rip-offs and the malicious targeting of tourists.

But this time I came prepared.