4x4itania

After a couple hours sleep we got up to explore the town of Atar, it isn’t much more than a few sandy roads, a roundabout, a mosque and some small shops and restaurants so after this day we decided to keep moving. Bab Sahara, the auberge we stayed at, is owned by a Dutch man named Joost, who has been running his business for 20 years now. His friend Leonie was also visiting from Holland so we arranged to have a 4x4 pick up us up in the morning and between the three of us we got a very reasonable price for a two day excursion. We started off crossing the high plateaus, passing by some cave paintings believed to be 5000 years old before arriving in the ancient town of Ouadane. This was once an important caravan town in the middle of the Sahara but has now declined to a tiny settlement that makes Atar look like a metropolis. Still it was very interesting to walk around the ruins of the old town and imagine what it would have been like in its heydays. The next morning Lamine our driver took us out of the city and we abandoned the traditional roads for the desert dunes. It was a beautiful drive, and I couldn’t believe how Lamine was navigating us through the sand without a GPS or to my untrained eye any discernable landmarks. The landscape was surprisingly diverse as the giant rolling dunes turned into flat rocky and bushy terrain, the occasional oasis and at one point an entire field of seashells, proving this was all once part of the ocean, an inconceivable thought today.

Just as I was complementing Lamine’s navigational skills, it turned out we were actually lost, he kept scouring the horizon for any kind of sign but the dunes had changed and he couldn’t recognize where we were any more in the vast emptiness. We drove around for a while before a young nomadic boy appeared out of nowhere with his herd of goats, he pointed us in the right direction and we were back on track to Chinguetti. Like Ouadane, Chinguetti was once an important town for travelers and traders but similarly it has also fallen out of favour over time and now a ghost town lies here while the sand dunes are starting to encroach and take over.

We visited the ancient library and its charming caretaker Saif who was happy to show us some of the antique and impressive Islamic works, as this used to be a much needed stopping point for making the pilgrimage to Mecca. After this we drove back to Atar where we once more spent the night at Bab Sahara before catching a minibus the following morning to the country’s capital Nouakchott. Almost one third of the Mauritanian population live in this fairly new city which was no more than a village when it was chosen to be the capital 60 years ago. Designed to accommodate 15 000 people it is now home to over a million. There didn’t seem to be all that much to do or see here so after walking around the dirty, dusty streets and markets for a day we decided to head towards the Senegalese border.

We got a taxi to the “bus station” but there were no buses around, only personal cars, so we negotiated with a driver and waited for his old battered Mercedes to fill up. When we left, the back seat had four grownups and a child whilst Tre and I shared the cramped front seat for the leisurely 3 ½ hour drive to the border town of Rosso. Here we got relentlessly hassled by all kinds of people trying to trick us out of money, before finally getting our passports stamped and got on the free ferry across the Senegal River. On the Senegalese side there was more hassling but we got stamped in without any problems and walked for a few kilometres to find a bus station with an actual bus. We had to wait for this to fill up as well, but after about three hours of waiting patiently we set off and drove for a few more hours to finally get to the city of Saint Louis.

MauriTrainia

Tre and I got up early to meet our grumpy taxi driver Cher and set off for the border. We crossed over the Moroccan side and then had our lives in Cher’s hands as we passed through the road-less few kilometres of no-man’s-land, where you really have to know which dunes to cross and tracks to follow, as you can easily get stuck in the sand and the area still has landmines spread around. It was like driving through a cemetery of abandoned cars which have just been left there to disintegrate. We made it over to the Mauritanian side where they now issued visas at the border, meaning I wouldn’t have needed to arrange that in Rabat, but there is just so little information on this to be found, and when found it is very contradicting. Once we arrived at the outskirts of the small town of Nouâdhibou, Cher was grumpier than ever and decided to drop us off. This was an issue as we had none of the local currency Ouguiya, but we found a taxi driver who was willing to drive us in to the centre where we could exchange some Moroccan Dirham pay him and find a place to stay.

When I first started mentioning this trip to friends back home, the first place I knew I’d be visiting after Morocco was Mauritania (or I guess Western Sahara as well if you consider that a country) a place that most people would look at me sheepishly asking “Is that a country?” Well I can tell you all now that yes it is. It is actually a pretty big country, the 28th largest in the world by area but also one of the least densely populated countries in the world as the Sahara takes up 75% of the country’s surface. A more concerning fact about the country is that it was one of the last in the world to abolish slavery, and although it is now illegal, somewhere between 4 and 20 percent of the 3.4 million population are slaves to this day. We spent one day walking around the sleepy coastal town, seeing the ship graveyard, eating a kilo of barbecued goat meat and buying two necessary items for our upcoming trip, sunglasses and a headscarf.

We had both heard and read about this famous iron ore train, one of the longest trains in the world stretching a staggering 2.5 kilometres from the locomotive to the last car. It isn’t a passenger train per say, but you can just climb aboard and get a free ride if you like. It doesn’t really have a fixed schedule, so we sat by the train tracks waiting for three hours in the blistering sun, but once it arrived there was no missing it. It stop’s only for a few minutes so we quickly climbed into one of the last carts and made ourselves as comfortable as possible. As we were travelling from the coast towards the mine it doesn’t have any cargo, but if you do the trip in the reverse direction you would have to sit on top of the mounds of loaded iron ore. It was all very exciting, sitting in this empty bucket, under the sun watching the desert chug by, but we were very glad we had our sunglasses and headscarves to somewhat protect us from all the sand and ore particles whipping your face.

Once the sun had set, you could squint and see the amazing starry sky, however it was freezing cold and although we wrapped up in as many layers as we could there was no way I could sleep. And maybe that was lucky, because after about nine hours of rocking around, the train came to a screeching halt, it was pitch black but I could see some figures running and shouting by the tracks. It seemed we had arrived in Choum the place we wanted to get off, knowing the train wouldn’t stay still for long, we threw our bags down and jumped off the cart. Here young men were pulling at us from every direction as we held onto our bags with iron grips. For a while it was slightly unnerving and scary, we were groggy from the long trip and covered in dust from head to toe. In all the confusing chaos of people pushing and yelling in a mixture of different languages we got dragged into a van, which we found out was heading for the nearest town Atar. This was luckily where we wanted to go, and a few hours later we arrived, it was still dark outside but we managed to find an “auberge” where we could wash the worst of the dust off our faces and finally crash in a much needed bed!

Summaroc

After Casablanca I decided to follow the coast down and after 8 hours on a bus I arrived in the small town of Essaouira. Here I found a very quaint fishing port with a mandatory old medina. It is also famous for it’s surfing and kitesurfing, but the weather didn’t permit for any beach-life during my four day visit. Instead I spent my days hanging out, drinking tea, playing cards at the relaxed hostel and wandering within the town walls and harbour when it wasn’t raining. Snacking in Morocco has been excellent throughout, and Essaouira was no different, with an array of different sandwiches always on offer, fresh oysters and the incredible and cheap pastry that I have been spoilt with since entering this country.

Before leaving Sweden I had applied for a new credit card without international fees, this card didn’t arrive until after I had left, but luckily two neighbours Iréne and Peter, from back home were going on a short trip to Marrakech and they were kind enough to bring it with them. So I got a bus back to the big city, met them in the morning for a cup of coffee and could finally get my card. The weather in these parts of Morocco was pretty dismal, so I decided to cover some ground and got on a 25 hour bus south to the city Dakhla. The long journey took me through some pretty boring landscape, to my left was endless flat, dry and rocky terrain and to my right much of the same except when the road was close enough to the coast to catch some views of the Atlantic Ocean.

It also took me through the complicated and disputed territory of Western Sahara, seen by many as an independent nation, Morocco continues to occupy the land which they have been doing since the 1970’s. I didn’t notice much of a difference, and crossed the “border” at night without even noticing, there were a couple of police checkpoints where I was the only person on the bus to be checked, some confusion arose as when asked for my profession I responded “Waiter” which was misinterpreted as “Writer” and apparently they don’t take kindly to journalists in this area, but the confusion was cleared up and I now know to use the French word “Serveur” instead. We finally arrived in Dakhla before sunset without any real complications. I had intended on staying a couple days in this Western Saharan port town, but on arrival realised there really wasn’t much to do or see. There was an uninspiring centre-ville, more kitesurfing and the Dakhla Golf Club which seemed to be one giant bunker, none of this tickled my fancy so the following morning an American guy called Tre, who was staying at the same crappy hotel, and I decided to get into a shared taxi and leave the Kingdom of Morocco heading for the Islamic Republic of Mauritania.

A Tale Of Two Cities

Capital Punishment
Ok, so that might be a bit harsh of a title, but it was the first pun that came to mind. I got the train from Tangier and arrived in Morocco’s capital Rabat just as it was getting dark. Stepping out of the train station I noticed it really was a modern city, with clean, wide, palm lined avenues and fancy buildings. One of the reasons I knew I would have to visit Rabat was to arrange my visa for future travel, so the next morning I got up bright and early and caught a taxi to the Mauritanian embassy. I had heard some nightmare stories of how difficult it could be, which was why I wanted to arrive early in the week and give myself as much time as possible. When I got there a half Moroccan half Mauritanian man named Zeine greeted me outside the gates, he told me I needed two passport sized photos and a copy of my passport. Zeine didn’t work for the embassy, but has made a profession of helping bewildered tourists and I appreciated his entrepreneurship so gladly accepted his help. He took me to sort out all the requirements, and while I went into a local bank to complete the 690 dirham (roughly €70) visa payment, he even filled out my application form which was all in Arabic and French. He never asked for asked for any money, but I was more than happy to give him a 50 dirham tip, hoping this would suffice for his assistance, and he seemed pleased with it. The following day I went back to the embassy and after an hour or so of waiting I could pick up my completed visa, it really wasn’t as complicated as I had feared. When I wasn’t handling bureaucratic issues I was walking around the city, and although it was nice, there was just something lacking, it didn’t have that charm or character that I had gotten used to in the past couple of weeks, the medina wasn’t as chaotic, the alleys were wide enough to fit two cars and after a few days I decided to keep moving.

Of All the Gin Joints…
It was only an hour’s train ride south to Casablanca, the city made famous by the 1942 movie (which I have never seen) is by far the largest in the country with a population of nearly four million and the economic capital. Walking from the station to my hostel I immediately found what I was missing in Rabat, even though its a big modern city as well, the neighborhood where I stayed behind the Casa Port was oozing with personality and gave me flashbacks of Latin America with its small plazas and yellow Spanish Colonial architecture. I spent three days falling in love with the big city, the different neighbourhoods the mixture of modern buildings, French boulevards, the old medina, souqs and giant mosques along with the nice weather made for perfect long walks. Unfortunately most of the oceanfront is currently under renovation, but once the beach promenade is finished in a couple of years, Casablanca will have even more of a reason to visit.

Feztive Towns

The nine hour drive took me through ever-changing scenery, starting in the rolling reddish dunes of the Sahara, then past rocky, arid landscapes with the occasional palm filled oasis and adjoining small settlements, over the Middle Atlas Mountains, through the snowy alp like city of Ifrane with a pine forest that looked more at home in Sweden than Morocco if it hadn’t have been for the troops of monkeys playing in it, before finally arriving in Fez. The medina in Fez was if possible even more of a maze than the one in Marrakech, and really is the stereotypical, chaotic hustle and bustle with all the sounds, colours and smells that I had expected.

It is the largest medina in the world and I spent a few days wandering around the twisting lanes, constantly getting lost and climbing to rooftop terraces offering great views of the city and its iconic leather tanneries.Here they still practice the same methods, with all natural dyes and softeners, which they have been using for over a thousand years to prepare their leather hides. I really enjoyed Fez, but it does get intense and you are rarely left alone, with people trying to sell you stuff or scam into giving them money, so after these hectic days I needed a respite, I got on a bus to the small town of Chefchaouen, and I really couldn’t have picked a better spot to relax.

The town has to be up there with the most picturesque I have ever seen, perched in a valley surrounded by jagged mountain peaks, almost all the buildings are painted in different shades of pastel blue, creating an almost ridiculously postcard perfect community with a peaceful ambience. I stayed three days, catching my breath, chilling at the hostel and walking around the blue Andalusian houses and cobblestoned alleys, before deciding to catch another bus heading north once more.

This bus took me to Tangier which on first impression wasn't great, gone were the quiet days of Chefchaouen and I was back in the cauldron getting hassled again. On a clear day you can see the European continent from here but the following morning was anything but that, it was really cold, windy and cloudy, so after strolling around for a couple of hours I decided to cut my losses, leave Tangier and finally start heading south!