5 days down, over a fortnight to go ...

Once we had got past Mauritanian customs we hopped back in the van, then horror of horrors a tout from Nouabidhou (NBD in future as it's a pain to spell!) jumped in too. He started telling us the best place to stay in NBD, another hour away despite protestations from Gianni who had been there before and wanted to go to La Baie du Levrier (which didn't pay touts!). Brendan was following some of this French, rolling his eyes in horror after what had been a long day, Julian as with the earlier part of the trip didn't really understand what was going on.

I finally lost my rag, I was tired, I had been on the road for over 30hrs now without a proper sleep and turned around to our baseball capped tout and said to him firmly but politely; 'we're tired, we've got another hour to go and we do not need your sales pitch the whole way to NBD, please shut up'. Incredibly he did!!! He didn't utter another word the whole way! We got to the police post 15km from NBD where the border roads splits between Nouachkott (capital, some 5.5hrs away) and NBD, this passed without incident and the van rolled into NBD.

Suddenly the van slowed down, the front doors were slamming and someone was trying to lift the bar off the back doors to let us out. In front of me as I scrambled over the cargo of our van was an English guy with a London accent, behind him was a French car I'd seen go past me at Dahkla when I'd been looking for a lift. Well, we were somewhere but I didn't have a clue which hotel/campsite we had arrived at but there were other travellers, a brand new BMW off road bike with a UK registration parked in the hallway and there seemed to be enough rooms for all of us. Five days after leaving a cold Carcassonne by bus on 15th December, I was in NBD on 20th December ...

We walked in, feeling a bit like space aliens after the ride in the van .. my thoughts suddenly turned to money - it had been impossible in the amount of time we had had in Dahkla to buy Ougiya, the currency of Mauritania. Finding Amadou, the guardien of the hotel, we discovered that I could share a room with Alexandra a girl from Paris, Julian & Gianni were sharing with a Japanese guy & Tony, the Londoner from Wales with the bike, Brendan was able to get his own room as he had hoped. But it was 8pm at night, we were all starving hungry, we didn't have any money. Tony & Alexandra were wonderfully helpful and said that Amandou could organise a banker for us, I asked Amandou about this and sure enough he made a phone call to have us meet someone as the banker usually came to the hotel in the morning to do foreign exchange. The next problem was that Gianni remembered that we hadn't picked up a foreign currency declaration at the border, we had not been offered one either, Amandou didn't see this as a problem but Gianni wasn't so sure.

We all trooped out of a side door into the street with Amandou leading the way to the bankers office. We arrived in an office with a desk, two chairs and a safe, our party of 4 became five as the Japanese guy needed money too. A few Mauritanian guys came in and hastily organised chairs for all of us. Gianni (the only other one that spoke French) started the proceedings asking for the rate, a mere 280UM to 1euro. Seemed odd as he had got 360 or so earlier in the year in April, but the banker explained that due to oil prices the Ougiya had become stronger. Gianni & I were still suspicious, then it turned out the Japanese guy had US dollars. I translated for the Japanese guy who didn't speak French and not much English to boot which completely puzzled our 20year old turbaned banker. A female in a room with 4 men and SHE was leading the negoiations in three languages. He refused to talk to me, he spoke directly to the guys in French, I pointed out that only Gianni spoke French but couldn't translate to the others, so if he wanted any business he had better get over his problem of dealing with a woman and speak to me ...

Due to this situation and the dodgy rate of exchange I gave him 10 euros, enough to buy me some food and see me through until the morning when I would have to give Amandou 2,500UM for my B&B.