Mauritania.
In my final year at university we had a world map on our toilet wall. Always one to find new ways to avoid writing essays, I used to spend quite a lot of time in there memorising capital cities. Judging by the expansive geographical knowledge of my housemates, I wasn’t the only one. Nouakchott was always a toughie – none of us knew how to pronounce it and I still need the spellchecker to write it down. Mauritania is enormous, with bizarre, dead-straight borders, and usually coloured in yellow – almost pure desert. Always wanted to go there, but never thought I would.
Nouakchott itself is unspectacular. It didn’t exist 50 years ago and is a sprawling expanse of low rise buildings emerging from the desert. The lowest point (metaphorically) is the strip between the city and the sea, which is a giant rubbish dump. On the plus side, it has a great lively fish market, and the city itself is leafy, quiet and super safe. The airport is hilarious. The airline delays that are so frequent that you can rely on them and there is nothing to do there. To avoid wasting precious hours, for a small fee, a guy will check you in and stamp you out at immigration while you are on the other side of the city! Amusing, but pretty worrying really, and one of the reasons why this story didn’t surprise me too much... BBC NEWS Africa Air Mauritania hijack ends safely
However, I was headed up to the Parc National du Banc d’Arguin, up in the North, apparently one of the best bird watching sites in the world. The route there is via a superb paved, smooth road all the way, surrounded by sand dunes on one side and flatter sand on the other leading to the coast, with the odd tent here and there along the way. They might do a nice line in mint tea, but surely this is one of the most difficult places in the world to live your life?
The Park appears without signposting, although the office back from the road painted in brightly coloured birds is a good sign. Then we follow a ‘road’ for a couple of hours before reaching the sea. I couldn’t see that we were following any particular route, but we reached our final destination so we must have been.
There are a couple of research camps and a couple of basic campsites spread throughout the park. I say ‘basic’ – there are several ready made tents which sleep around 6 people and you can order delicious food from the villages (yellow mullet is the local thing - really good, especially after a day bouncing up and down in a 4x4). But that is where the luxury stops. The campsite we stayed in is one of the best, but even they’ve not yet got around to building the toilet facilities. Picture an amusing scene at 7am when everyone on the site is searching for their own dune….
The tourist business is limited, but those who do come all this way make the effort for the birds. Millions of migratory birds spend their winter here, or at least stop here on the way somewhere else. Pelicans, flamingos and spoonbills are among the big attractions but actually just the sheer numbers of little wading birds takes your breath away. The pictures don’t really do it justice because we were quite far off. The birds gather on the islands off the coast and you take a sailing boat to get there. The famous desert winds were not performing that day though and by about 2pm it became evident that we were going backwards! Still, noone was complaining – we were close enough to get great views through the binoculars and a group of dolphins (no idea of the collective noun for dolphins?!? A school of dolphins? A giggle of dolphins??) entertained us with some gymnastics around the boat while we ate fresh fish and rice cooked on the boat.
Inland there ain’t much but sand and camels. Warm camel milk is supposed to be the dogs bananas but negotiations with some camel shepherds were to prove fruitless in this regard. Two toothless rugged chaps who spend weeks in the desert at a time with only water and camel milk for nourishment had learned one very important word in French: ‘Biscuit’. Perfectly understandable considering what they normally have to live on but this was our last day and there was not a hob nob left between us. No Biscuit: No Milk. Had to make do with some camel cheese from the shop in Noaukchott – not bad, sort of camembert-y (funny colour though…)
Before the main road, the best way to and from the park was via the beach at low tide. We took this journey on the way back (environmentally allllllllll wrong – and we are supposed to be in conservation!) and it turns out to be quite a main road. Trucks full of fish dealers were flying by, but it was particularly busy on that day because the Dakar Rally had just finished so teams of brightly coloured 4x4s were heading home in the opposite direction. Felt a bit sorry for a Hungarian team we passed who were still heading towards Dakar, but I guess it is all about the taking part…
Another place I always wanted to go to was Cape Verde – a group of islands sticking out of the Atlantic off the West African coast. Apparently it is not really the ‘green cape’ at all, rather it’s a rocky landscape beaten by the ocean winds.
Anyway, I’m off there in April, so mission accomplished. What now for random places in the world to visit? Best sort out a trip to Vladivostock …
