Wednesday 30 September 2009

She Says – Major Border Crossing No.1!

26-30 September
Well it’s been my turn to be laid out with the nasty diarrhoea bug, and I’ve been unwell for just on 4 days now. I wasn’t feeling quite right when we left Laayoune, but thought I was just tired. It was a long trip to Dakhla, about 500km travel of nothing too exciting, although just outside Laayoune there were gorgeous dunescapes as far as you could see, including several lagoons, and sporadic dunescapes along the way. Otherwise it was dull hamada, with occasional cool rock formations and glimpses of dramatic cliffs on the coastline and more dried riverbeds. We kept ourselves occupied with a new game of ‘guess the movie’ (‘eye-spy’ gets boring after you’ve gone through road-sky-desert a few times…). Dakhla itself is at the end of a 40km peninsula, with huge beaches and crusted dunes lining the thin road down. That’s about all I can say about it, as I didn’t see anything else! I was feeling rough just as we arrived, Xander did all the hotel checking for us, got recommended a place that was really good with a garage (Hotel Taroudant, only 150 dirham, about 15 euro) and I wasn’t inside for long before I was sick for the first time, and spent the rest of the night running back and forth from the toilet for one reason or another. I spent all the next day in bed and slowly felt better the day after, before having a relapse after an excursion outside for a cup of mint tea. Was it the tea? Well, it made my tummy upset, but I don’t know. It’s pretty strong stuff, brewed for hours it seems and then heavily sweetened. We both thought the sweetness would be good, but I guess the tannins weren’t! Xander forced me to drink rehydration fluid to start with, which just made me feel worse; once I stopped that I was fine until yesterday afternoon. I’ve lost of couple of unwanted kilos picked up during the trip, but I can’t say I recommend the bread, water and diarrhoea diet to anyone :-(

The day we left Dakhla, we were supposed to be going just to the border. We got an early start and I was feeling better, although I felt exhausted when we got up. We had a choice of stopping 80km from the border at a hotel, or camping at a border fort. We decided to push on for the border and got there just after 12pm for lunch. By this stage I was feeling rough again, my tummy had been unsettled all day, but now I was not feeling great. We persevered, expecting border issues to take only 2 hours at most – the whole thing took around 4 hours! Procedures on the Moroccan side were the most time consuming, with Xander running to various offices of police and customs for a variety of stamps and writing of passport details, plus completing an exit form for the bike. I hovered around the bike, feeling less than great. Then our luggage was checked, not thoroughly but we had to open all 3 big boxes for checking - a nuisance but easy enough. Then a confusing policeman asked if we had drugs and we thought he said medicine, but he actually asked if we had any munitions! We were in the process of saying yes to medicine till we all realised the mistake! He just moved on after we said no. We packed up and got ready to leave, after checking that we could change money on the Mauritanian side (there were no change bureaus here, I guess because it is illegal to take Mauritanian money out of the country), but we also knew we could do black exchange in No Man’s Land. We tried to leave but were pulled over to check that our passports had been stamped out – OK, fine, but then we were pulled over AGAIN to enter our passport details in a book all over again!

Finally, we headed for the border. We had read conflicting information on how to go about the crossing, of most concern being exactly how long was the rough track through No Man’s Land between the two borders! We had decided that the best information said it was 5km (not 50!), which was correct, but it was no simple track. There are actually many diverting tracks that all eventually meet up and/or reach the Mauri border, but it was somewhat disconcerting as this is minefield country! We had heard stories of people hitting mines when they had strayed too far from the tracks; however, the tracks are pretty obvious so you go where others have gone and don’t blow up!!! The track varied from once-paved to solid rough rock to sand pits, and we got severely bogged at one point in a very short section of deep sand. Luckily, dropping the luggage off and a bit of wiggling and kicking sand under the rear tyre got us out. We got on OK after that, taking around 45 minutes for the whole trip. We were approached by a couple of cars for money exchange, though most were just sitting inside the Moroccan border. No hassle, no threat, though the number of trashed car bodies around the area was disturbing! We’ve heard the cities of Mauritania are bad for car theft, and had to wonder if this is where all the stolen cars end up…We finally reached the Mauritanian border and it was closed! We had to wait some time before they finally opened everything up again; by this stage it was about 4pm. They very much wanted to deal with the man only, but while Xander had to go deal with formalities, I kept getting chatted to, including one official who seemed convinced that Xander wasn’t my husband even after my persistent statements that I was married! Maybe it had to do with my uncovered hair, although I had kept my jacket on to cover my t-shirt. We got through formalities fairly easily with the help of a money changer, who I’m not convinced wanted money for all his help, just to change our money at the end. It helped to have someone guide Xander this time, as the customs office was just a timber hut with no signs on it, at the end of the line of money changers – we would have had trouble working it out for ourselves! Xander had to pay a ‘present’ to the gendarmerie to enter our details into their book, there was no question that we had to pay and we had had warning from our guide book, so Xander paid it – it was only 10 dirham (about 1 euro) but I’m not convinced we couldn’t have got out of it. From there it was customs, where we got our carnet stamped for the first time (with many more to come!) and also had to pay a fee (not a present this time so seemed more legit but…), then to buy compulsory insurance, and finally our friendly money changer changed our money. We had stocked up big on dirham in Morocco as ATMs are not common in Mauritania, so we’re pretty set now I think!

We travelled on to Nouadhibou about an hour away, at the end of another long peninsula with lots of sand dunes. We had planned at least 2 nights’ stay here, but will stay at least one more night to make sure I’m better. I was feeling better after the Mauri border, but then Xander was feeling unwell again! He’s recovered, I’ve been ill for the last two days, but now I’m just tired and bored and depressed mostly. I’ve been trying to push through the nausea and dizziness for the last few hours to get moving and get over it!!!