Mauritania

Thursday, October 19, 2023

That's where we stand now. In line at the Moroccan/Mauritanian border. We assembled our camp early and set off at 8 a.m., only to stand in a very slowly getting shorter line since 9:20.

The procedure on the Moroccan side, although unnecessarily long, was finally completed after just under 4 hours, including queuing. Passport control, exit papers, car scan and drug check included.

The first thing you notice between the Moroccan and Mauritanian areas: the mountains of uncontrolled garbage. So quickly cross the border and head towards the hotel. Think.

None of us would have expected that border control on the Mauritanian side would once again reach the absolute peak of arbitrary utopia. Our passport was probably scanned, photographed and typed over and over again in this small station more often than ever before. Fortunately, we were able to take out car insurance (which probably won't be effective in the event of damage anyway) and have everything confirmed again by a very bored customs officer before a police officer finally gave us a fee of 9 for a small amount of pocket money, even after typing and recording absolutely arbitrary jobs again hours in total.

So we are finally (and already in the dark) on the way to Nouakchott and ask ourselves what is most frightening about our first impression of Mauritanian: the incredibly senseless bureaucracy, the bribery and corruption or the slaves that are openly kept in the police station? The poverty that we experience through begging children becomes almost irrelevant here for a moment.

At least we arrive at the hotel safely at 12:30, only to find out that they don't know anything about our booking. But at least they still have two rooms. After a few discussions, Chris and Dominik go looking for a hotel. At night, in an African country you don't know, with practically no internet. How to do it like that. We finally ended up at 2 a.m. in an almost luxurious hotel, which was the only one that still had rooms available after three absolute failures.

Conclusion of the day: Online bookings are just smoke and mirrors in some countries.