Mauritania, April 2023

Forward

About a year and a half before this trip happened, I'd seen a video of people hopping the world's longest train -a freight train cutting through the Sahara desert- and was interested in it ever since then as a "someday adventure". After looking further into the country I decided to make a trip out of it that led to the story you see here! As you read this, keep in mind that this was done with the following circumstances:

1. I was traveling alone (hard to convince others to join) in a country where slavery is still common.
2. I did not have a working cell phone (issues buying SIM card in airport and no options after that)
3. I did not have working credit or debit cards (seriously fuck you Chase bank, your "automated security system", and your phone agents blowing me off when I try to warn about my upcoming travels)

I'd like to thank Namoud from Camping Inimi in Atar for helping coordinate a portion of this trip. If you're interested a trip like this you can contact him on Whatsapp or at trekkingsahara@gmail.com.

Day 1

The first thing you notice when boarding your flight to Nouakchott, is that you are one of only about three people who don't look like a local. The entire plane is filled with people speaking French and Arabic, mostly Arabic. I expected mostly French and had made French phrase cheat sheets, so it threw me off at first. Landing and walking off the plane, you're hit with a much more humid air than you'd expect. The capital city is on the coast and you can feel it for sure. Visa processing is very standard, but the people out here treat lines very strangely. People will literally walk in front of you if you do not actively block or stop them from doing so. This happened on multiple occasions, in multiple lines. When we landed it was still night time. After walking out past security with my visa, I went to the nearest ATM I found to withdraw more money, just in case. Lo and behold the machine gave me error messages; I had called my bank twice to give a travel warning and get reassurance this wouldn't happen. Both times they assured me there will be no issues. Thank God I brought emergency US dollars stashed in my pack just in case.

Walking out of the airport, it really hit me how much of a fish out of water I was. It was still night, there's almost no one around, and every person I look at returns a look to me wondering what I'm doing here. Asking around for a taxi, I found one who knew of the destination I was going to! A middle-aged Mauritanian man in traditional garbs with a face carved by the elements named Zachariah. Conversation with him was difficult with my limited French, but it got by on the basics. I get dropped off at Salima Voyage for a minibus to take me to Atar. Everyone stared at me as I expected, being literally the only tourist there. Nobody around spoke English, I really was expecting one or two people to know based on videos and other accounts I read online. A lot of miming, map pointing, and Google translate later I got a ticket for the bus and loaded up. Everywhere around is so different from anywhere I've ever been. The car ride took multiple hours and it was everything I could do to not fall asleep. Every time I did, I'd accidentally lean into the man sitting next to me who didn't enjoy smiling. Reaching Atar, the wind had picked up significantly. Dust was kicked up into your eyes and on your face constantly. A simple hiking hat didn't stop all the dust and dirt. Eventually I got help from someone to lead me through town to a store that sold tuareg head wraps. You see a lot of locals wear them, they're fairly iconic of the region. And bought one for 150 MRU. After this I got a shared taxi to my auberge. In the shared taxi was someone else from the minibus; two women in head to toe coverings except for eyes. They had massive amounts of rice, water, and general supplies. We stopped by their house and I helped everyone unload the taxi that was brimming full. Next the driver dropped me off and I met my initial contact, Namoud. He runs Camping Inimi, and is the contact I was put in touch with by a German couple, who I reached out to on a motorcycle forum I'm on. Namoud was awesome. I recommend you reach out to him if you are thinking about visiting Mauritania and doing any inland sightseeing/tourism. He organized the guides and plan for me over email. Very friendly people! We spoke in english; the first time all day I had that luxury. He showed me around the premise and then we had coffee. I rested afterwards for a few hours, paid for everything, then helped collect water from their well for later purification. At this point it was almost evening and Namoud invited me down the road to his family's home to have dinner with them. Squash soup, porridge, very sweet crepes, mixed dates, and goat's milk; the goat's milk was incredible. I wanted badly to get photos of dinner but in the moment it never felt right. It was a fairly intimate and generous offer to allow me in and it just felt weird taking photos at that moment (the photo above was second dinner). We later returned to the camping site, and slept on matts on the ground for a couple hours. Around 10:00 p.m. everyone woke up again and had a second dinner. It's apparently Ramadan so everyone fasts during the day and at night, speakers high in the local mosque's towers play prayers through the town. After one more round of coffee, we all went to bed.

Day 2

When I woke up I went out of the cabin to get some food and met a handful of new locals sitting in the shaded area who greeted me, as well as my guide! This was my first time meeting him and his name is Nema. Today Nema and I were going to drive to Chinguetti to start the hike. These locals apparently were coming along for the ride back to their homes in Chinguetti. The longer I'm here the more I'm realizing I should've included Arabic in the key phrases cheat sheet I made for the trip. As we drove out, we were stopped at three different security checkpoints where my passport needed to be presented each time. Nothing happened ever, there was never any frustration to our journey, but it was bizarre to see so many military/government checkpoints. It was only one road with no branches from it. When we got to the town, Nema and I got out of the car while the others continued on to wherever their homes were in town. Our gear was still in the truck bed and I figured we'd come back for it soon.

We walked through some of the more historic sections of town. All the buildings were made of stacked dark brown rock what were flat and sandstone like. There were no paved roads in town- there had been no paved roads for the last 40-ish miles to get there. We visited a local library and a caretaker explained in a brief history of the town and the library. Chinguetti is a town of religious significance and is over a thousand years old. There were multiple couple-hundred-year-old books shown, but only copied photos of the books that were many hundreds of years old. They would wear special gloves to not directly touch the pages anymore. We walked by a womans door that was open and Nema ushered me in. When I got in I realized it was a souvenir shop with painted wood slabs on the walls, bowls filled with hand braided fiber bracelets, and various local crafts scattered on the remaining table space. I'm not much of a physical souvenirs guy but there was an interesting map of the region for sale there. They were asking a lot for it, and haggling only got a change in currencies but not a drop in the overall cost. By the time I bought it, there were four other women that had walked in and sat in the door away, all bringing small bowls filled with their own souvenirs ushering me to buy them. I've never been a big fan of pushy sellers for anything in general and they were very persistent that I buy something, but I was politely stern about "no more". On the outskirt of town we stopped in another building, but this time it was Nema's family. We had some tea, spoke incredibly broken English, and I did my best to explain where I was from; Nema's family were genuinely lovely people. We walked further to the outskirts of town, and then Nema said "okay" and we just started walking out of town. Oh, we're starting to hike right now apparently! We were walking for about 10 minutes out of town with his dad before his dad said goodbye and turned back around. Just after that I saw a man guiding two camels, walking along the dunes one ridgeline ahead of us. Nema pointed at him telling me that was the other guide we would walk with. We hurried up to catch and sure enough all of our gear was there mounted to the camels already. We said hellos while continuing to walk. His name is Salima, and would be responsible for leading the camels and loading/unloading cargo on them. The first couple hours were filled with dunes and some flat sections of what looked to be dried seafloor. We stopped around 2pm for a break to beat the heat of the day and had lunch under a big tree. After lunch we hiked up the largest ridgeline yet. It was incredibly steep, all things considered and climbed higher than all the dunes before this one.

Crossing over the top you could look out to the next valley of smaller dunes and an oasis. If you look far enough you could see north-to-south stretching dune ridgelines that climb very tall, with relative valleys between them filled with smaller dunes for a while. The oasis was surprisingly empty. There were palm frond huts around the perimeter of it but no one was there at that moment. We pulled some water from the well and then kept going. After crossing a few more of the larger north-south dune ridgelines we ended the day at the western base of one of them and set up our tents for the night. Dinner was a mix of soups, rehydrated goat milk, Mauritanian shots of tea, and noodles. It all tasted pretty good, but was really hard to eat after exerting all day. My body would want watered down Gatorade and maybe milk for something heavy, but we had water and heavy noodles, mostly. I knew I needed to eat but it was just hard to put it down your throat. Overall good day!

Day 3

I woke up in the tent about 10 minutes before we were supposed to get up 6:00 a.m. first signs of dawn were in the air as the sky was fading to thin shades of blue on the horizon. We had a breakfast of crepes lightly spread with cheese and strawberry jelly, and coffee. After packing up reloading the camels with cargo we continued on. We crossed a few more ridgelines but this time there was some plant life! The dunes climbed just as high but on more shallow grade and speckled with these longer Saharan grass plants. After a couple hours of walking through this we came across a nomad family in their large tent structure. When we approached I saw their tent was a few wooden poles in the ground and stitched fabrics and tarps to make the structure. In front of it was a camel getting a haircut and vocalizing its displeasure of it, like a cat getting a bath. My guides exchanged a few words with the nomads, they offered us some goat milk but I didn't drink it just due to a mistranslation on my part. I wasn't sure if it was being offered to me or just an explanation of what it was. We kept walking and eventually stopped for lunch under a tree as the grasslands flattened out.

We stopped during the hottest part of the day and the winds picked up. A fine burnt red sand would blow across the ground and if you weren't careful it would thinly coat your food if you didn't guard against it. After eating we slept for about 2 hours beneath the tree and waited for the hottest part of the day to be done. Even in the hottest part of the day it never felt more than about 87 or 90F. I was really worried about the heat because of online weather reports of 110F, but it never felt nearly that bad. We kept walking after our rest but this was incredibly hard for me. I don't think I've eaten a lot on this trip so far because it was just hard to get food in your system when you're physically exerting. I was feeling super fatigued the second half of this day. Towards the end it was hard to keep my heart right below 95 BPM and all I was doing was walking in the sand on relatively flat ground. By the time we stopped for the day I felt so shot that I laid down and would have certainly fallen asleep if my muscles didn't cramp every couple minutes that I sat on them. Exceptionally brutal physical exertion today but incredibly interesting landscape. It's very easy to get into your own head while walking, almost like you're in a trance. You'll be toying with some mundane thought experiment or idea and by the time you look up again you've traveled almost half a mile.

Day 4

Although I woke up with tightness in one of my calves, overall I was feeling way better than yesterday. We had another breakfast of crepes then packed up our cargo onto the camels and continued on. After leaving the small rolling dunes section we climbed slightly uphill till a relative plateau. The plateau continued for about a mile until it dropped off again back towards the valley, and gave way to a great view of the valley and distant mountain ranges.

Those mountain ridges in that video are Mt. Zarga and what we would climb. We continued on and passed by the remains of a camel. Continuing further we eventually reached the mountain before lunch. Nema told me that the two of us would climb the mountain while our camels went around it. All day so far I've been feeling pretty gassed from yesterday so scaling the sandy face of the mountain was actually really hard and exasperating. The view from the top however was worth it. I was so tired I only got a couple shots. I wish I had better angles but this will have to do. After a rest at the peak we descended down the north ridgeline of this range and met our camels halfway down in a small alcove sheltered by a large boulder above us for shade.

We had lunch here, more Mauritanian couscous with canned fish and carrots. Unfortunately the wind picked up just as we started eating and blew a bunch of sand into our food. Oh well, you really just have to ignore the grit. All the food typically has some degree of grit because the sand gets literally everywhere. You get used to not bringing your top and bottom rows of teeth together fully and ignore it when you do hear a sandy crunch. We rested here longer than normal. This afternoon was a little hotter than most so we waited it out accordingly. It's been hard to write these logs not because they're difficult but because I never feel like I have a chance; even during these longer rests were I have nothing to do but sit and stare at the landscape. They don't feel opportune! "Just be in the moment" I tell myself and it makes me want to procrastinate writing these to just experience being out here right now.

We eventually did continue and descended into a valley below, heading West Northwest. The landscape is very flat with a soft reddish brown powdery dirt and low lying Savannah thorny shrubs. I took this next photo about halfway between our afternoon rest spot and where we stopped for the evening. After multiple hours of walking through this we were starting to come up on the next mountain range. This is when we walked through another group family nomad camp. It seemed like three or four nomad families all living together. There were about seven children all of equal age running between a few of the tents and when they saw us they all stared intently. As we continued we came upon a desert well and used it to water the camels and fill some of our own water. We doused our arms and heads with it and it felt amazing. It pulled all the sweat out of my shirt and collected it into squiggly salt lines running down my sleeves where the water dried. Only a few more minutes of walking past the well, we set up our tent for the night in a dry river bed. I'm finding the ants in Africa are significantly more curious than back home. They will go literally anywhere and walk over literally anything in search of food.

Day 5

Today we hiked up the ridgeline we slept underneath. I don't know what's up there yet but if I am where I think I am, I saw a lot of dark regions that way on Google Earth beforehand. Heading up the ridge showed a wide view of the valley cross through the day before. The mountain in the back right is where we stopped for lunch the previous day. Reaching the top revealed we were on another plateau and this one lasted much longer than the last. It took a couple hours to walk across it. Ater descending into another smaller, more rocky valley afterwards, we took another long lunch break. This area had many wild animals in it. Many birds would fly in and inspect us from the branches above our heads in curiosity. There were even a few wild goats roaming around us too. After lunch we ascended back out of this smaller valley on the other side of it but this time the landscape was incredibly rocky with black ferrous boulders everywhere. This region felt very hot; the rocks would reflect the sun like a mirror at the right angle and heat the air around you. Walking through it would sometimes be easy if the rocks were smooth and large enough, but many times it would just be trying to walk between them every step. Much more cumbersome to walk around as well both for us and the camels. Lucky for us, there was a whole valley worth of this shit that we were about to cross to (/s). We stopped in another shaded sandy region after clearing this field of hot rocks. I don't have any pics or video but that night was so windy. The wind would blow our tents like crazy and wake us all up multiple times in the night.

Day 6

Eating the heavier foods each meal is getting easier as the trek progresses. I still couldn't tie down all the cargo to the camels the exact way the guides wanted it, but I knew the order in which to hand the cargo to them at this point by now. We spent the next 3 hours walking through the remaining fields of black rocks. Eventually we reached a sloping cliffside that gave visage to a small village called M'Harith. M'Harith this is a long thin village along a dry riverbed with many palm trees fed by pumping from underground wells beneath the dry river bed. After we descended the sloping cliff side and walked along the riverbed to the south for some time we stopped at a section with a walled off fence made of dried palm fronds. Inside this section was a few resting areas and some freshly wet sand for cooling. We stayed here for a long time, maybe even 5 hours. After we left we walked up the sloping cliff side to the west, opposite of the one we descended. The landscape now was a sandy floor with mixed trees, bushes, and two black mountain ranges on both sides holding it all in. We walk through this for a little longer before setting up camp in another dry riverbed. There wasn't much walking today, which further says that we were almost there. Even though it's been challenging at times I am sad to see the end of the trek approaching

Day 7

I can't believe how windy it was last night. If I was not inside it, my tent would have blown all the way across the valley. We ate breakfast quickly inside the larger tent and packed up only one camel. The rest of the cargo was left in the sand, presumably to be picked up by Salima on his return the same day. We walk through the valley and things started looking familiar. I'd looked up this area on Google Earth ahead of time and I was recognizing some features; I knew we were super close at this point. Before I knew it, we were at the downward sloping entrance to Terjit. As we send it down, it became a job of hauling cargo down the rocky ledges and clambering down ourselves. Then just like that, we were there. I barely had time to look over the place before Salima started saying goodbyes and taking off. I took one final photo with him before he left to ride the camels back to Chinguetti. Nema and I walked around the area and put our stuff down at one of the several matted areas underneath shade canvases. Terjit really is beautiful. It's an oasis sandwiched in a crevasse between to cliff faces. Towards the top where the cliff walls meet and this crevasse starts is a wading pool. The main water first collects before flowing down in a stream winding through the grounds throughout the area a near totally filled ceiling of palm fronds cover the soft sandy floor between both cliff faces. Water dribbles out of the lower half of the cliffs and forms stalagmites.

We lounged about for hours. I occasionally would get up and walk around the premises barefoot and just try to burn the scenery into memory while I could. I thought about catching up on these rough draft notes but again it just felt hard to do chores after all the work it took to reach this place. We had one final lunch before proceeding to relax longer, maybe several hours until another man came and joined us. We said hi, Nema exchanged a few minutes of chat with him, and then he looked me and said "we go". Just like that we were packing out and loading up the man's old Benz with the cooking and camping cargo we brought down.

We drove back to Atar and besides the occasional passport check nothing special happened. Here's a sneaky photo of one of the military checkpoints writing down my passport number while laughing on the phone with someone about something unrelated.

Day 8

Today's rest day to burn the extra day I gave myself and wait for the other tourist to arrive to ride the train with. I learned that a few other tourists were coming through the campsite and planning to ride the train too and I thought it would be nice to have some company so I decided to wait my extra day out for them here. In the morning I helped tend to the campsite garden by cutting the khat crop to be sold at market. Khat is a stimulant like coffee where you chew on the leaves to get the effect. I know it's fairly common in other parts of the world but I didn't expect to see it here. Very slow afternoon of laying in shaded areas and listening to music. In the afternoon I took a shared taxi into town and exchanged some more money. I walked around the marketplace areas and bought some miscellaneous drinks and snacks to eat back at the campsite. I took a shared taxi back and continued resting the whole day. Later in the day, he received a call from the tourists I was waiting for saying that their flight from Tunis to Nouakchott was canceled and were given a new one, 24hrs later. This means I no longer had time to wait for them and I also didn't take the mini bus to Zourat today, so I'll have to take a bus to Choum tomorrow. Really unfortunate events all in a few hours, I feel like I failed myself by not taking the original chance to go to Zourat. Zourat is the very end of the line, while Choum is ~75% of the way there. Around 10pm a French tourist came by in an overlanding Jeep and joined us for second dinner. He told stories about his time in Senegal, The Gambia, and Guinea Bissau. We all ripped apart pieces of baguette bread and used it to scoop up rice and camel meat from a communal plate while continuing to share travel stories in mixtures of English and French, and it was all very good.

If you're wondering, camel meat tastes good. The fat is incredibly chewy; probably the chewiest fat of any animal I've eaten. The meat is somewhere similar to beef but it has a richer, more oily quality to it. It doesn't melt in your mouth, but when you decisively bite into it, it gives way and the flavor is rewarding.

Day 9

Today I rode to Choum to catch the train. Namoud knew someone going to Choum already to deliver fuel to generators there, so I joined him and was to help where I could. The man came by around 11am and we headed out shortly after. I took a few final pics and videos as we left town, and then a few more of the landscapes and oddities we passed by. Choum is an incredibly small village built around the railroad; The main buildings along the road are mostly concrete, but all others are built of mud/concrete bricks. When we reached Choum we pumped the 600 liters of fuel into the generator over about an hour. At first it was a slow drain out the bottom like in the picture, then a young military man came by and lent us an electric pump to put in the top of the container. Once all the fuel was pumped we headed back to the center of the village and I was dropped off and shown into a room where I could lay out of the sun and wait till evening. There were 2 teenage boys already there watching what sounded like a very over-the-top local action drama show. ... It's 5:00 p.m. and I'm getting anxious. I know the train has not passed through yet, I was told it would come through sometime around 8:00, but there's been more activity picking up around the area. People are getting busy and I don't know exactly what for. The other people laying down in the rest area have since left and I'm figuring out how ready I should be right now. I'm packed up and going to wait by the train tracks for the rest of the day. Then, some children came by between the ages of 5 and 10 and started talking to me. None of them spoke english, but like most interactions in the country so far it was still possible to have super basic conversations. They were very keen on taking photos, and would endlessly say "Monsieur, photo!!" and pose a million different ways. I must have taken over a hundred photos of them by the end of it. One or two of them would consistently ask for money, to which I'd adamantly tell them no and then be met with a "c'mon maaan!" type of reaction.

After a few more hours of waiting, I looked out across the railroad tracks to the east and saw a bright light off in the distance. As the light started getting slightly brighter, I knew it was the train and the kids gasped and started yelling at me that the train was here and to get ready. After so many hours of waiting, it would be here within 30 minutes and I'd only have a couple minutes to get on and be ready. As the train pulled into the station I saw a handful of locals already riding from Zourat. Atop the hoppers was a collection of large bags of dry goods and several dozen goats! Behind the hopper with goats were a few people who jumped off the train as it came to a stop and started bucket brigading/human chaining up more supplies waiting on the ground into the adjacent hoppers. Everyone was in full speed and I climbed the side of an empty hopper myself. I sat down, pulled out my N95 mask and ski goggles. And started stuffing my backpack into the trash bag I brought. The kids were making one final attempt to ask for money, but that metaphorical train had completely left the station while I was preparing for this literal one. This train I'm on was the reason I'm in this country, and it was actually happening. After only a few minutes sitting atop the hopper, I can hear the locomotive spinning up again. After another minute I heard an incredibly loud and distant metallic banging noise, and it really quickly moved towards me. It was the sound of strain on all the interlocking hoppers as the locomotive started pulling them all. When it reached mine it was almost deafening and the jolt nearly sent me falling backwards on my back. As the train pulled out of town, I took a few more photos and then put on the mask and goggles. We were on our way, and I had made it on.

After some time the train reached full speed and you could see the fine dust being blown off the raw ore into the desert.

Day 10

Laying atop the ore piles on my back facing upright feels very eerie. You feel the wind rush by, the cart rock side to side (sometimes violently), and you look up at the full moon with a whizzing haze of the ore dust above and around you. If you shined your flashlight forward or backwards on the train you'd see a cone of light from your phone illuminating the dust flying by in the air and nothing else around but the material you were on. The faintest of blue light bounces off the desert around you from the moon, and you can occasionally make out a black blob in the desert shaped of a Savannah tree. The desert at night was much colder on the train than expected. I'd slept in the desert for many days in a row on this trip and it was always very comfortable, but this train is just so cold; I was wearing a down jacket and was still very cold. I set my backpack upright as a windbreak and huddled behind it but that wasn't enough. Eventually I caved and pulled out my sleeping bag figuring I'll wash it at home and that finally did the trick. I slept surprisingly well when I was asleep. You know that feeling of waking up slightly confused? It was extra significant this night because you'd start to wake and remember where you really were in that moment. The final time I woke up was to the train slowing down on the north end of Nouadhibou. I quickly packed all my things and prepared to jump off. After jumping off I was surprised how quick it all happened. Because the train arrived in Choum early it also arrived in Nouadhibou early and I was hoping to see the sunrise while on the train. The train really does go at its own schedule. I met some traveling Brits later today at the hostel who said the train was 14 hours late for them, so go figure. This was the first chance I had at a hot shower since the day before my trip started, and I significantly needed it now. My jacket normally is cherry red, and the pants are beige. The only reason my face was so clean is because the snowboard goggles and mask. The shower was near religious; It was a near continuous flow of black water snaking down the drain the entire time. I must have washed my hair with that bar of soap 4 times before it even felt acceptably rid of soot. I had been saving one final pair of clean pants and underwear for this, and it was such a relief. After cleaning I dawned the tuareg again and headed out to Port Artisanal. I was going to walk without it, until the group brits told me they were tailed yesterday walking around. I asked what they were wearing and "just some shorts and our football jerseys"; I think I'll try and blend in more. Port Artisanal is a short 2km walk from the Auberge Sahara, it's an old school fisherman's harbor that seems to have outgrown its size. If you look at Port Artisanal from Google Earth you see the extent of overcrowded fishing boats in the water. Here's what it looks like on the ground. As you walk around you smell fish in everything; fresh caught fish by the dozens in nets, piles of dry crushed up fish flake/powder for cooking, fish guts tossed back into the water with some landing in the dirt, etc.. Most of the people are either sitting along the seawall talking to each other or carting supplies/fish on the road in wagons and carts.

Western Sahara is now de facto Morocco

This isn't a political stance, it's just what it is and what I've seen.

Prior to this trip I knew literally nothing about Western Sahara other than it was usually marked as "no data" on all statistical maps. I thought this approximately meant that no one lived in the region, but that's not true! Major cities are there and a people that I'm now possibly interested in seeing one day. If I had another week I would've crossed the DMZ border north into there to see it. The region used to be a Spanish colony up until about the early '70s, after that Mauritania and Morocco vied for control but Mauritania has since backed off, Now it has been between Morocco and a rebel political group started by Moroccan college students basically since then. However if you go there today it's all de facto Morocco. Whatever ground the rebel group used to have is basically all gone and the entire region is more or less part of Morocco now. All Mauritanians ask "are you going to Morocco?" And mean literally everything above their border. Travelers headed south from Dakhla all say they hear West Saharan locals say things like "welcome to Morocco" even though the official UN recognized border is hundreds of miles north. Moroccan flags fly throughout basically all towns now and the government of Morocco is doing a lot to win favor in the region. Western Saharans don't pay any Moroccan taxes but Morocco has heavily improved the region's infrastructure, public services, and general quality of life. If you look at the border of Mauritania and Western Sahara on Google Maps you'll see it's solid, but the line in the north that divides it from Morocco, it's much more faint and only dashed. Looking it up after returning, it seems like the UN takes a stance that western sahara should have right to sovereignty, but right now I highly doubt that will happen (not to say this is good or bad).

Day 11

There wasn't too much to report on the last day other than a brief walk to the airport and a long wait there. I decided to walk without wearing my head wrap today, but I soon regretted that. In the first few blocks of walking a man started yelling at me, saying he had some question. Sorry dude, there is not a single question in the world I know that you would be asking me unless it's about myself. It may have been genuine, but in the moment it kind of felt like a strategy to close a physical distance gap and even if it wasn't I was so close to successfully finishing my trip I didn't want to find out. After another two blocks I saw a rock violently bounced across the ground in front of me coming from the right. When I looked over to its origin I saw a group of seven or so teenagers across the road picking up a few more rocks to to throw. I sped walk around a corner before more came, and immediately pulled my head wrap and sunglasses out of my bag. After I put that on and got out of the area, I was able to walk the remaining mile and a half to the airport with zero issues. I was worried Mauritanian Airlines would be late because I heard stories about other domestic African airlines not being timely, but luckily that wasn't the case. We headed out and I was able to take one final picture of the town as the plane turned south towards the capitol city again.

Final Thoughts

This was an amazing trip that I'm glad I took; my first time in Africa but certainly not the last. Even though most people cannot point to the country on a map or even guess the right continent, it has a lot to offer the more adventurous traveler. The trek through the desert was much more of a highlight than I was expecting and I'm grateful for the kind people I met along the way.

• Several hundred USD emergency cash
• Patagonia sun hoodies (godsend)
• sunscreen + prescription sunglasses
• toilet paper
• Sleeping bag

• Electrolyte tablets
• Credit/debit cards from trustworthy bank
• Arabic added to French phrases cheatsheet + Google Translate for offline definitions
• Some familiar energy bars