We entered Mauritania from Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara on the 6th of February, 2025. We took a bus through the Berm (aka the Moroccan Western Sahara Wall) from Dakhla to Nouadhibou. At the Guerguerat border crossing, we used our Mauritanian eVisa to enter.
The Guerguerat Border in Short
- In winter, there’s a one-hour time shift between Morocco and Mauritania. In Mauritania (UTC), it’s one hour later than in Morocco (UTC+1). Unless it’s a few weeks before Ramadan, when Morocco also moves to UTC, until about a week after Ramadan, when it switches back to UTC+1
- Depending on the time zone Morocco is in, both border crossings open at 9:00, or Morocco opens at 8:00
- Morocco closes its border for entry into Morocco at around 17:00
- Mauritania closes its border for entry into Mauritania preferably at 17:00, but if you’ve already started the process, they will continue working (very slowly and making things unnecessarily complicated) until you’re through
- There’s no more visa on arrival in Mauritania, so you’ll need to apply for an eVisa several days in advance
- Bring enough cash (Moroccan Dirhams/Euros, not US$), water, snacks, a hat, cigarettes, and patience
- If having doable reception in Mauritania is important to you, buy your Mauritel black market SIM card at the border. It’s expensive, but less of a pain in the ass than trying to get it in town
- Join the Mauritania Backpackers WhatsApp group chat to get up-to-date info
- This is the only current border crossing between Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara and Mauritania, although a new one between Smara (close to Laayoune) and Bir Moghrein might open in the future
Map of Border, Berm, and Bus Stations
Use the menu to make points of interest (dis)appear.
Booking the Supratours Bus from Dakhla to Nouadhibou
On Saturday, the 1st of February, we took a taxi to one of the three Supratours bus stations in Dakhla to buy tickets to Nouadhibou. The lack of info about the eVisa process to Mauritania led us to assume we needed proof of entry and maybe even departure. So we went in, and I asked successfully for two bus tickets to Nouadhibou in Arabic. My language skills felt like they’d peaked at that moment.
For the 6th of February, departing Dakhla at 8:00 costs 290 MAD (~€29 or US$30). Unless we meant Nouakchott? The vendor switched to English to make sure he sold us a ticket to the correct destination*. To Nouakchott would be several hours more and cost 440 Dirhams. We received some papers stapled to each other. He explained that one ticket was for the Supratours bus to the Moroccan side of the border. The other, smaller ticket was for the no-man’s land. A bus by a company called El Moussavir would pick us up and help us through the Mauritanian side. Sounds good.
* The secret third option would be to only book the bus to Guerguerat. That would be a little cheaper. But then you’re responsible for passing the Mauritanian side of the border, which can be hit or miss. I’d generally advise against doing this alone.
Applying for the Mauritanian eVisa
TL;DR: Apply for your eVisa before buying the bus ticket. Main article:
Nazi Salute While Waiting for the Bus
Our excellent host in Dakhla had arranged for a taxi to take us to the Supratours bus station in the morning. We’d asked for a pickup at 7:15 with the departure at 8:00 in mind. In case the taxi driver would be unreliable, there would be plenty of time to still find another taxi or walk to the bus stop.
But everything went smoothly and as planned. I walked out of the main door, and the taxi just turned the corner. Everything was very neat. We were at the bus station at 7:20, which was way too early. But the café next door was open, where we sat down for a cup of coffee and pet some cats. The morning employee of that place was very intense. He shook Jonas’ hand way too long, and seeing that, I didn’t offer mine. He then kept asking me if I was a Muslimah, and gave us breakfast stuff we didn’t ask for. When he asked us where we were from, and Jonas replied Germany, he pulled an elon musk.
Jesus christ. Somehow it’s always when we’re about to leave an Arab country when people pull a nazi salute. The first time was our taxi driver in Tunis who drove us to the airport. A very similar story. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence… I wonder in which country this will officially become a pattern.
The first fellow obvious tourists and backpackers arrived at the bus station only at 7:45. Some of them had juggling clubs for street performance. I would occasionally walk to the bus station next door to see if it had opened. We still need to buy our luggage tags for our backpacks that go under the bus. Only at 8:00 did someone open the ticket office. I queued with our bus tickets and a 10 Dirham coin to pay for both tags. Jonas paid 50 MAD for the drinks, although the guy quoted 45 as the price and then kept asking for the 5 as a tip. Whatever, keep it. But it’s always weird to leave a country we’ve enjoyed on the tone of being overcharged one last time.
The bus – in CTM livery instead of Supratours – arrived, and Jonas put our luggage in while I went inside to find seats 3 and 4. A girl was already sitting there, but seats 1 and 2 behind the driver were still available. I was concerned we’d be fried behind the glass window once the sun rose. But I also didn’t feel like arguing with her.
There were already so many (tourist) people on the bus, it must’ve picked them up somewhere before this stop. I hear the joys of Polish while trying to get comfortable. It wasn’t the cleanest bus. We could’ve also tried hitchhiking to the border, but I was under the assumption that we’d have to enter Mauritania on the exact date our eVisa says (which is not true).
At 8:23, we drive off under a cloudy sky and make a grand tour of Dakhla, past two other bus stations in the city. At the first, a very excitable USAian lady boarded the bus. We pick up many more people, and it’s taking forever. Luckily, there are some funny kittens outside that entertain us. The sun crawls above the horizon, and the bus fills up to the rim. At the last (official) bus terminal, our tickets get checked. This is also one of the few toilet opportunities. Getting on at this stop would allow you to sleep in for an hour more.
Departing Dakhla for Guerguerat
It’s 9:18 before our overfilled bus begins the journey out of Dakhla. We drive on the other side of the airport, where there are the outlines of new neighborhoods. Roads and street lamps without buildings and people. A strange sight.
We only meet the road we’ve traveled on a dozen times to go kitesurfing after 15 minutes. We’re at the PK25 police check at 9:42. It’s hazy, and the wind has dropped. Clouds are scraping the lagoon waters. I doubt the wind will be strong enough today.
Street lights for no one
The lagoon
Past the roundabout, we’re finally on unfamiliar roads again. A sign through the fog informs us it’s only 904 kilometers to Nouakchott. This is the road to the border. Only a few more villages lie in between. As predicted, the road quality changed quite soon.
A thing I noticed before, but couldn’t confirm until now, was that trucks or cars in Morocco use their left blinkers to say don’t overtake, it’s not safe. In Europe, most people use this to indicate to cars behind them that now is a good time to overtake. I’m not sure which makes more sense.
The road quality deteriorates even more. We even have to go a bit through sand. European campervans coming back from Mauritania bobble over the unpaved road in the opposite direction.
By 10:24, we’re in El Argoub for a 20-minute break. Some locals hop out and have breakfast. I use the toilet here, which turns out to be the smartest move of the day. It’s a squat toilet, and it’s fine. There’s a bucket of water to flush. Everyone is cooing over the puppies at this stop, who are drinking their mother’s milk. I hear gunfire from the nearby military base.
I snap a picture of our bus, which says it’s going from Guerguerat to Dakhla. All they have to do is turn the sign over, and it’s correct. I look on the map and confirm the disappointing distance we’ve made; El Argoub (and the Oasis212 kiteboarding camp) is just across the bay from Dakhla. This part could’ve been a ferry instead of a bus.
At 10:58, we continued driving. I keep an eye on the map because we’re about to cross the Tropic of Cancer. First, we pass the offshoot to the Plage de Porto Rico—the nicest beach near Dakhla. The spot is marked by several cars and foreign campervans hanging out at the memorial. If we’d been hitchhiking, we might have stopped here as well to snap a cool picture.
The filthy-looking USB charging things on the bus actually work. We charge our devices since we still have a long day ahead. We both take naps in between chatting with each other. Swerving or hitting the brakes hard is usually what takes me out of the nap zone. We pass a sign saying لا تسرع يا أبي. نحن في إنتظارك (Don’t hurry, dad, we are waiting for you) and other messages in a similar vein.
After Imlili and Tchika, the landscape changes. Sand dunes appear among the flat, hard ground. Our road takes a turn to dodge another sebkha. This one looks pink from the bus. Then we veer closer to the ocean again and drive on a cliff edge. The topic of the road signs has changed. Now, they tell you how many kilometers it is to the next gas station to fuel up your steel camel.
A little after 13:00, we arrived in Bir Gandouz. Some camels welcome us befor we enter town. The gendarmes who had been sitting on the floor chatting to the bus driver hopped out. A new passenger hopped in. We continue driving 10 minutes later, but make loops and loops through town. Bir Gandouz is a proper town. There’s a hotel, an ATM, a pharmacy. If I were hitchhiking, this doesn’t look like a bad stop to spend the night if it’s late and the Mauritanian border is about to close. We drove by the CTM and Supratours offices in town. A lady hops in, who later hops out when we continue driving south. The sign on the front of the bus still says it’s going to Dakhla, not from.
The road surface in these afterthought lands keeps switching back and forth between rough and smooth. I asked Jonas if he has internet, which he still has. We hadn’t noticed a difference between our Maroc Telecom and Inwi Moroccan SIM cards at all until now. What a redemption arc of that telco.
After 14:00, we overtook a long-distance cyclist. The cute little dunes between rocks continue. I can’t nap anymore now that we’re approaching Guerguerat. At the beginning of town, one of the guys that had been at our morning café with a 24-inch HD screen at 7:20 in the morning got out. I wonder how many Moroccans will cross the border with us today.
We’re approaching the unpaved airport runway of this military outpost. All the road signs in this area are vandalized and completely unreadable. Beyond that, the little hub of Guerguerat appears.
It’s shiny and well-maintained. One building hosts every Moroccan ATM you might want, including the no-fee Al Barid bank. There’s also a hotel for all the people who forgot to apply for their Mauritanian eVisa and still assume you can get a visa on arrival in Mauritania (wrong). Several restaurants line the area closest to the border.
Our bus skips the lengthy queue of cars as we approach the border facilities. Pretty cool. Then the bus drops us off at 14:37, and we’re left to the touts. One guy immediately approaches Jonas with his dubious services to help us across the border.
The Moroccan Side of the Border
Jonas grabbed our luggage, and we found a spot in the shadow of a tower. Now that we’ve crossed the Tropic of Cancer, I can already tell you that there won’t be a shadow here at this time of day in a month or two.
People keep talking to us or hovering around us while we figure out that the border is currently closed. The Moroccans have their lunch break. More and more fellow foreigners from the bus gather in the shadow. Including people with a unicycle.
The call to prayer sounds, and I take off my down jacket. It’s like 30°C by now, while this morning it was 14°C. A shitty kid with a plastic car was playing on the ground and running around, making noise, and stumbling over everyone’s luggage. He also had his mommy’s phone and was playing All I Want For Christmas Is You. There’s nowhere else to stand. Surely, this is some kind of test.
By now, about 12 foreigners were waiting with us. Some of them were chatting about the iron ore train.
At 14:57, things were getting started at the border. We were so ready. Jonas and I were the first from our group through the first check, which was just checking our passports and eVisas for the other side. This is the only We continue through the pedestrian alley, which is a lot like the border crossing between Melilla and Beni Ensar in terms of barbed wire. This one just lacks a roof.
We arrived at the luggage scanner building, where we were behind a group of local ladies with too much luggage and no skills of going through quickly. Once it’s our turn, we put our backpacks through and walk through a metal detector. The usual stuff. On the other side, the local ladies are in our way for getting our backpacks out.
As per the directions of the scanner guys, we continue walking through the narrow pedestrian corridor. The vehicle area is to our left as we catch glimpses of it whenever there’s a fence instead of a wall. We pass a closed booth and then end up almost at the exit of the border, but without a stamp. Once outside of the pedestrian corridor, a guy points us to the small queue of people with cars. That’s where our passports could get stamped. Per the suggestions on the internet, we added our passports to the bottom of a stack of passports.
I hang out in the shadow with all our luggage while Jonas makes sure our passports are still on the stack. There’s a group of very pushy ladies, my perpetual arch-enemy when traveling. I grab our sun hats and give Jonas his hat as he deals with the bureaucracy. There are lots of cars with EU plates here but with local drivers. It’s a one-way trip for these vehicles. A hand pops out of the small window and grabs the stack of passports. A few seconds later, the hand spits our passports out again. We wait. Meanwhile, I see a unicycle carried through the pedestrian corridor. A minute later, the guy with the unicycle returns. What is going on here?
Eventually, it was our turn to approach the booth. No, we don’t have a vehicle. Yes, our purpose of travel was tourism. The sun is relentless while I try to look into the window to see what’s taking so long. Jonas’ processing just took a minute. I just hear clacking on a keyboard and then *stamp*. Ah, the good sound. But then he took out his smartphone and did a whole photoshoot with my passport for another three minutes until he handed it over. Dodgy? Yes, that’s fucking dodgy.
At 15:18 Moroccan time, we’re through. I checked the stamp. We walk towards the exit, but there’s one more man in a uniform. He checks our passports and stamps and then points us towards the exit. We’re told to walk in the car lane towards the exit. Luckily, everything on this side of the border is so slow and chaotic that we’re not at risk of being run over. At the exit gate, there are a few more policemen who again look at our passports.
Through the Berm: No Man’s Land
At 15:22, we were outside the gate and in no man’s land. There are several sand heaps nearby. Is that the famous berm? Don’t stray off the trodden paths here; long-forgotten landmines (probably) lie beyond. I shan’t fuck around and find out.
Some guys approach us from a Hiace minivan with a unicycle on the roof rack. “Supratours?” “Oui, Yes.” The minivan says El Moussavir (المسافر – the traveler) on the outside. Jonas grabs the other half of our complicated bus ticket to show we’ve already paid. I hear Polish. How are they here first? Did the pedestrian immigration office open?
There were moneychangers around, and they immediately spoke about the Mauritanian Ouguiya (MRU) in the old exchange rate (MRO), which has one zero extra. It’s only been 7 years since the redenomination. But the rate was acceptable, paying only about 3% in commission. Jonas got rid of our leftover 300 Moroccan Dirhams and got about 1200 MRU in return.
We took up the back bench in the minivan. There are lots of flies bothering us. Our luggage will go on top, eventually. I spoke a little Arabic with the money changers and SIM card people. “Welcome to Mauritania,” they say. But I’m not there yet, so that requires an inshallah, amirite? The man confirmed, inshallah.
Lots of fellow backpackers are making it through the border now. I strike up a conversation with one of the many German speakers. They are three young guys who are going to Mauritania just to ride the iron ore train.
What is clear is that we don’t have enough seats in this van for all of us. Another minivan appears, and they say that the people going to Nouakchott have to go into that one. We’re going to Nouadhibou, so we’re good. There’s also one local (Moroccan/Mauritanian?) guy with us crossing. Just one.
By 16:05 Moroccan time, we’re complete. Now the luggage shuffle begins, and Jonas makes sure our backpacks are on top of the van we’re riding in. We still don’t leave until 16:14. There are four people on the back bench of the Hiace, tight and sweaty.
The road through the Moroccan-built berm and no man’s land is fine. The picture of the Moroccan king is getting smaller and smaller. There’s a ginormous queue of trucks and cars waiting to enter Morocco. And lots of trash next to the road. We pass by something that looks like a berm. A proper wall of sand.
Past that berm, there’s a sudden drop off the edge of the good asphalt and onto the bumpy whatever the hell this is. I look out the window to see if there’s evidence of roadworks to improve this stuff somewhere, but there isn’t. This is just the main (and currently only) open border between two huge countries in West Africa. That’s crazy.
I’ve been taking photos in the border area but always kept it on the down-low and made it quick. But as we’re passing through Western Sahara’s no man’s land, I feel the urge to take a video. I don’t know what to expect. Landmine warning signs, perhaps? Military vehicles? Abandoned vehicles? Protesters? The berm itself? But there’s just not much in it. And in this crowded van, I can also not see all that much. Every bump comes as a surprise as I’m holding on for dear life.
We pass through other man-made mounds of sand. I have no idea which of these sand walls is the Moroccan Western Saharan Wall. Perhaps this area is also not representative of the wall longer than the Chinese wall that Morocco has been building since the 1991 ceasefire. And perhaps it shifts as Morocco closes in, like in 2020. I checked the map. Thankfully, we’re almost on the Mauritanian side. Then, the Mauritanian pillars and gate appear.
The 1st Mauritanian Side of the Border
It’s 16:25 Moroccan time when we roll out of the van and into the office. My passport disappears into the hands of one of the guys from the bus. Is that air-conditioning that I feel? Nice! And there are cool maps of Mauritania on the wall. If I rewind my clock to Mauritanian time, it’s just 15:25 now. Surely, we will arrive in Nouadhibou at a decent time…
The people from the Nouakchott van are with us as well. By now, we know all the faces involved in this border crossing. I strike up a conversation with the guy with the unicycle. He’s from Brazil, and his friend is Colombian. They’re street performers and have been traveling here for a while. Someone else later mentions they’ve spotted them on the streets of Laayoune and that they’re really good.
One by one, we are ushered into a room by nationality. When it’s time for “Americans”, I tell the street performers that’s them as well, which they appreciated. Dutch is not mentioned, and I sneak in with Jonas and a German couple. We get our passports back and get ushered across the street to another building. There’s no need for the eVisa yet.
We’re at the other building at 15:55 Mauritanian time. This building was cramped and had no AC. We handed over our first passport copy. They’re also not interested in the eVisa here. Besides bonding with our fellow travelers, what the hell was any of this about?
At 16:03 Mauritanian time, the eight tourists going to Nouadhibou drove off from this area. The one local guy has disappeared from the scene. I hope he’s Mauritanian, and he’ll enter his own country quickly, the way it’s supposed to work. When is gonna be customs and immigration?
Our vehicle stops abruptly after a gate, and the bus people gather our eVisas. I can see a building of the gendarme nationale with a painted-on officer with a German shepherd snitch dog. Funnily enough, there was also a German shepherd sticking his head out of the building. We drive a few more meters and then stop again.
The 2nd Mauritanian Side of the Border
Here, we wait in the vehicle or right outside it for a long time. None of us have gotten the memo on what’s going on. I’m beginning to not feel that great, and I burn myself on the window glass of the vehicle that’s been baking in the sun all day with us in it. The USian lady is doing stuff on her laptop, really making the most out of this tortuous day.
There are money changers and SIM card vendors, though. We don’t have a reliable connection from Morocco anymore. They sell Mauritel SIM cards for €25, with something between 2 and 5GB of data. Damn, that’s expensive. We’d done our own Mauritanian SIM card research before coming to this country and assumed we could do it officially or at least for cheaper inside Nouadhibou, so we said no thank you. This was a mistake. We didn’t carry that much in Euros either, and they’re too precious to drop on a SIM card. We could’ve used our fresh Ouguiyas, but then we’d arrive in Nouadhibou without enough money for dinner for the first night. In hindsight, bringing more Dirhams in to exchange them would’ve been the right choice.
At 16:39, we were shuffled into an office. There were lots of guys in front of a door where someone important must be behind. Most of our group ended up sitting down on the wall of some weird patio area. It was cooler inside, but not cool enough to chill me down. I can’t imagine doing this shit in August. Only at 17:23 did we get out of there. I have no idea what the purpose of this office visit was, but my involvement seemed completely unnecessary.
I thought we’d go back into the van, but then we were shuffled into a different building north of the other. This one was much nicer as it had seats and was cooler. At 17:31, it’s prayer time again. Here, the drivers from El Moussavir said it was necessary to get everyone’s WhatsApp number. Very strange, but we added it to his phone. Is this to send us spam?
The three Austrian boys who have less than 48 hours in Mauritania all have the same blue Tuareg-style scarf. The drivers help them wrap it on their faces correctly for the iron ore train. They say they’ll ride it to “Tschoum” (it’s pronounced Shoum) empty and then back when it’s full. Then they have to cross this dreadful border again and take a bus from hell to Agadir to fly out four days from now. Those are crazy distances to be covering. Are they even going to make it on the train tonight? My basic research indicates that it leaves Nouadhibou around 19:00.
By 17:59, Jonas and I are inside the office. This seems like an important part, as we get to answer questions about our trip. We say we want to visit Nouadhibou and Nouakchott and that we will leave via Senegal. Our eVisa is necessary at this point, and we get our fingerprints and photos taken. He also wants the money, so we drop €110 of our precious, non-renewable Euros. We left the office without our documents.
Sitting down again, we talk to some more people. Jonas and I eat our msemmen from Dakhla. The USAian lady’s excitable spirit isn’t broken at all. Her name is Chelsea, and she’s traveling with someone who I can’t say is her son, nephew, or just a fellow Californian called Danny. The young fella wants to ride the iron ore train as well, but not tonight. He’s teaming up with this Argentinian woman named Augustina, who has hitchhiked and couchsurfed through all of Morocco. She’s already through the border.
One of the Polish girls manages to get a key from someone to use the toilet in this building. I’m considering it when she says it’s moderately clean, but in the end, there were people with a bigger need.
I go outside and ask the German guy if I can have a cigarette. We’re chatting and smoking while the hazy sun closes in on the horizon in the border area where international trucks are being held hostage. These countries need to join the fucking TIR convention. This is all so stupid. At least the company is growing on me. It’s some sort of fucked-up bonding experience. Coming to think of it, is there any other kind of bonding experience?
Outside, I hear the news that Chelsea has been taking too many photos at the border and that she was forced to delete some. They were ready to delete all the photos from her phone, which gave me chills down my spine. This is not the added stress I need. So, no pictures of that sunset. Chelsea also found out that they’re not taking US Dollars anymore at this border, so she had to exchange them into Ouguiya and pay their eVisas in that kind of money, which was more like 1200 MRU than 1000 as per today’s exchange rate.
We went back to the police office at 18:37. There was another Austrian guy with very blond hair who was not part of the other Austrian group. He’ll also ride the train, but without the time pressure. The three Austrians with time pressure are also negotiating with a taxi driver outside the building to be dropped off at the iron ore train in Nouadhibou. According to my info, the train departs in about 40 minutes.
Jonas and I are chatting with the German couple, whose names are Alex and Luise. I will share the info I have about Nouadhibou. They don’t know yet where they’re staying. Alex gives me another cigarette. I watch a uniformed man hoist down the Mauritanian flag from the pole. The border is closing. A young foreign woman who looks like she’s hitchhiking walks out of the office crying. The sun is setting. We’re hungry, but the مطعم we can see from here is outside the border area. The uniformed man grabs a broom and cleans the sand out of the office. A local woman also walks out of the office, crying. What a disaster.
There’s talk about the WhatsApp group. What WhatsApp group? The one about Mauritania. They ask if I’m in it. I say no because we’re not taking the iron ore train. Luise assures me it’s not just for people riding the iron ore train. I’m a little uneasy about joining since the last major WhatsApp group chat I was in (Tarifa) was mostly useless in getting things off the ground. I added Luise to my contacts, and she’ll add me later. None of us have internet right now.
I highly recommend joining the Mauritania Backpackers WhatsApp group. It was very valuable for getting up-to-date info about traveling around Mauritania and doing the border crossings. Trying to find information without them was a struggle.
At 19:01, the three Austrians with 5L of water per person are getting their hopes up because the train is sometimes late. I learn that the crying young woman’s name is Anna and she might be from russia. She’s teaming up with the three Austrians to get out, but she wants to talk to me while the guys are loading up. She has her passport in her hand. How the hell did she pull that off? I tell her she needs to get into the taxi with these guys now, or they’ll forget about her as 20-something boys on a mission do. Her face lights up when there’s still a chance she gets to ride the iron ore train.
At 19:05, we’re back in the van and receive our stamped passports and eVisas. We can’t pack it away because they check it one last time at the exit gate between the police station and the first restaurant in Mauritania. By 19:08, we’re driving off.
Fina-fucking-ly.
Practicing Arabic on the Way to Nouadhibou
We’re driving off in our little Hiace van in near-complete darkness. Now that the Austrians are gone, there’s so much space in the van. There are two guys from El Moussavir sitting behind Jonas and me. One of them handled our luggage during this long day, and he had gloves. They also helped me buckle up in the van.
We drive across the train tracks before the road splits in the directions Nouadhibou and Nouakchott, and I snap a picture of it. This prompts one of the guys to say something to me in Arabic. I understood he was talking about the train (القطار), so I responded with one of the few Duolingo things I know how to say (محطة القطار). They found this interesting and hilarious.
Our van stops at a police checkpoint. Our driver says we’re all Germans. All of us had to hand over a copy of our passports. Two down, eight to go. During a later police check in what’s mapped on OSM as a minefield, the police just shone their flashlights into the van and the back of my eyeballs.
I end up spending most of the ride chatting in Arabic with these two guys, who give an extra challenge because they’re talking through each other. I also translate for Jonas, who they assume also knows basic Arabic. They ask me where I learned it, so I said on the internet and that I’m learning “book Arabic” and not Darija or Hassaniya. Book Arabic always results in much praise. Of course, they ask a lot of personal questions, like if he’s my husband (زوج) or (boy)friend (صديق).
By the end of the ride, I’m all Arabicked-out and can’t do it no more. We arrive at the El Moussavir minivan depot at 19:57. We immediately have to negotiate a taxi. No one knows where they’re going, except for the very blond Austrian guy, who negotiates a taxi and goes to Vila Maguela. It’s just Chelsea, Danny, Luise, Alex, and us. There are two taxi drivers, one who’s called Omar. We end up driving with Omar to our Hotel Valencia in Nouadhibou. Everyone is coming with us because we say it’s the hotel zone (which is true). We pay 50 MRU per person or 300 Ouguiyas for the whole car to go the last 3.5 kilometers.
How does it fit? Stacking. I sit on Jonas’ lap in the passenger seat while the other four people share the back bench. All our luggage fit in the trunk, thankfully. Once everyone is in the car, I try to close our door. But because of the weight, the lower edge of our door got stuck on a concrete ledge. Omar has to get out, and he eventually frees the door. I’m worried he will want payment for damages to the car, but a quick look at the rest of the car tells me that ain’t a thing.
I thought sharing this ride with six people plus one driver was just a convenience thing for a short ride. Little did I know that this type of transportation in West Africa is called a sept-places (seven seats), and it will remain relevant throughout the region.
The ride is uncomfortable but relatively short. Omar goes off the main roads and on dusty ones. I need to hold on to prevent my meat prison from being launched into the ceiling or yeeted out the window. Eventually, we make it to Hotel Valencia. It’s 20:15.
I didn’t know it back then, but there was some kind of bitey bug on the bus that bit my left arm four times during the ride. A month later, the marks still haven’t disappeared completely.
Elucidating post? Consider buying me an Itay!
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