Nouabidhou

The second largest city in Mauritania, Nouabidhou is one long dusty street, very busy with vehicles pouring in from the north with supplies from Morocco and further afield.

Having got some money from our young banker we caught up with Tony & Alexandra and the two French guys who had driven down and were heading for Mali the next morning. We all went to a little restaurant, Les Trois Etoiles in hope of some fish, Alexandra had eaten there the night before and said the corbine had to be tried and for 250UM we could get a great meal. Getting there at 9pm it turned out we were too late, the corbine had been eaten and there wasn't much else on offer.

We continued through town in the hope of finding somewhere open that had food (and I wanted some fish!), eventually we found a little Moroccan restaurant just past La Baie du Levrier that was open but by this time we had lost the two French guys and Brendan who were too tired. Watching EuroNews on TV we sat down and ordered, then waited and waited and waited for our food, which I began to think was being bought in Morocco and brought over the border for us. Walking back Alex commented that I had a shadow that for every step I took in one direction he followed me, this was to become quite a laugh whilst I was there with Gianni noticing it too!

Arriving back at Imal Camping we sat down with Amelie & John, a Swiss/UK couple and carried on chatting over a few glasses of my illegally imported Bombay Sapphire and Julian's bourbon. I went into my room later as Alex was dragging her mattress out into the courtyard, looking around the room at the presence of mossies I decided that she didn't have such a bad idea. Had a sound sleep only to be interrupted by the call to prayer at dawn from the neighbouring mosque but fell back to sleep until 9.30am when I woke up to everyone having breakfast around me and the French guys had already gone off to Mali.

Alex, Gianni and I went out and did some essentials, mainly money - I found that the rate was 280UM to the euro but with a bit of pressure on a money changer I managed to get 320UM with a receipt. Gianni was spotted in the street by Ali, the owner of La Baie du Levrier and we were invited in for some tea and a suprise he had for Gianni. There in the courtyard was a French registered campervan with Christine and her husband overjoyed to see Gianni again, they had all met a few times on previous trips. Christine and her husband were an incredible couple, they had adopted 4 children, two from Gabon and two from Peru and at the ages of 71 and 72 looked remarkably fit despite both having had heart attacks. (PS. I have since had someone contact me about this site to say that she met this couple with Gianni in early 2005, Christine's husband (who's name I have forgotten) was a Hungarian Jew and went through hell as a child at the mercy of the Nazi's; a very lucky man!)

We went back to Imal Camping to find it locked up, we sat around in the sand outside waiting for Amandou to show up. Eventually he did and we found Julian & Brendan locked inside!!! We offered to take them down to the beach as Kosando with us, a small dormitory town built exclusively for SNIM workers, the iron ore company that runs the worlds longest train between the mines at Zouerat and the port here in NBD.