Chinguetti

We arrived in Chinguetti with another argument, this time it was Karim trying to tell Gianni that we should stay at a certain auberge; Gianni wanted to find Abdul's where he had stayed before and told Karim that we really didn't need his help.

Karim & Gianni directed the taxi driver to Abdul's - it turned out that they both were aiming for the same place, Auberge Zarga, at 1,000UM a night it was the cleanest & cheapest place I've seen in Mauritania!!! Unfortunately Karim still managed to extract money from Abdul for 'bringing us' and treated Abdul as some sort of servant in his own home, he was also pressuring us to take the taxi back to Atar when we left. We ignored it all and hoped that was the last we would see of Karim.

Wandering across the fleuve to the 'old' town I realised that this place wasn't as wonderful as I'd hoped. I had my own pre-conceived ideas about this magical thirteenth century desert town, it was already becoming destroyed by the amount of touts pushing for us to buy things or visit places. The tourist industry has had a massive boost here due to the flights arriving at 'Atar' airport which is actually nearer Chinguetti. The main airline coming in is Point Afrique, a French cooperative airline & travel business that also does organised tours. This 'package' tourism was creating the young of Chinguetti into very pushy salespeople.

The three of us aimed for a cafe as dusk was setting in to have a drink and get our bearings after a very long day. As I walked towards it a voice came out of the dark

'Chloe, how did you get here so quickly?'

- it was Amelie & John, who we had met in NBD at Imal Camping, they had met Keiran an Irish guy. When I got home I received an e-mail from him as he caught up with Gianni in Mali and they were travelling together!