Sadly I have to say that we didn't spend long in Chinguetti.
It didn't have the 'vibe' that I was expecting and with endless hassle I wanted to leave, Gianni had already been here. The only thing to do was to go off on a camel trek for a few days towards Oudane but as I didn't have time there was no hope of doing that. John & Amelie had arranged such a trek, unfortunately Abdul told them the 'correct; price of 3,000UM per person per day with a guide, food & camp .. and was concerned that the guide they had found didn't know the area that well ..
Over our drink with Amelie, John & Kieran we discovered that they had also had the delight of meeting Karim, who also uses a few aliases, they knew him as Hakim. They had been harrassed and tried to keep clear of him. Going back to Abdul's after dinner we chatted about it and Abdul was unhappy with Karim/Hakim's bullish ways with tourists and worried about losing business. Abdul is only 21 but has a 13 year old wife who was expecting their first child, he wanted a divorce as his wife is a nomad and refused to live with him in Chinguetti prefering life out in the desert. A divorce is apparently quite expensive in Mauritania and Abdul needed money to divorce her and find some more money to pay for a new bride!
Suddenly Karim/Hakim appeared in the doorway having heard our conversation and started yelling at Gianni & I. We pointed out that if he continued this trend towards tourists then they would all lose money and NO we weren't going to get in 'his' taxi in the morning.
Waking up the next morning we had breakfast with Abdul who asked us for 1,400UM each to pay for our taxi back to Atar, he was organising a pick-up to drive us back and would come with us and hoped to arrange our transportation to Nouachkott at a decent rate. We then had a visit from Karim's driver, it turned out that Karim hadn't paid for his ride to Chinguetti yesterday as he promised the driver (not 'his' driver as we were told) that we would be in his taxi to return to Atar, the driver had got wind of the fact we were going in a pick-up. I explained the situation with Karim and that we didn't want anything to do with him, which unfortunately meant that this guy was going to lose out financially.
We eventually left Chinguetti at 12pm in the back of a pick-up, less than 24hrs after we had arrived but I was pleased to be heading south once again!
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AN E-MAIL RECEIVED FROM JOHN & AMELIE WHO FOUND THE SITE:
I am surfing the net a bit and have discovered your extensive travel report on this site! What a joy reading it, brought back the memories...So I thought it was about time to let you know how our travels continued after we left you in the auberge in the dark and crossed over to our part of town...
Well, we set off into the desert on Christmas day (after spending Xmas eve in Chinguetti chilling out and playing cards with Kieron and some lovely French-Canadians in our auberge...) with Ahmed who, contrary to our fears, turned out to be a great guide and has been running a guesthouse in C. for years. He knows lots a about geology as well as about anything else that lives in the desert, grew up in Atar and knows the dunes around Chinguetti like his own backyard. The trip was magic, one of the best things we have done. I loved the desert and after Kieron left after a day with us, it was just the sand, the camels and us for hours on end– such a peaceful experience! Thankfully, Ahmed didn’t rip us off at all, we had plenty of water and food and the price stayed the same and when I expressed concern about unwashed hair, we took a detour to an oasis, where I could have a bath in a pool!
Ahmed also filled us in on the ‘Atar mafia’ : apparently the owner of your guesthouse belongs to it as well and is in with Karim, they slag off everyone who isn’t in with them and promise wrong prices and times for their tours, asking for money afterwards and not including essentials. (Karim had promised us a trip from Chinguetti –Ouadane in 4 days, which is simply not possible as the camels themselves need at least 5, let alone people. And for Atar-tidkikja he said 2 days in a 4x4, but it can’t be done in under 5 (more about him see below!!) . Anyway, apparently the owner of your auberge had actually been arrested for molesting a japanese girl by coming into her room in the middle of the night
...and Karim had spent 3 month in prison a few years back for something...!!!
Well, after the 4 days of the solitude in the dunes, we tried to get to Ouadane but ended up having massive troubles getting there from C., it was just so expensive, and so we returned to Atar only to leave the next day again to Ouadane, sharing a 4x4 with some crazy germans, father and son, who did the Ouadane-C. trip in 6 days without any camels or guides...crazy guys, but very interesting people!!
Well, Ouadane is beautiful, but there is not much going on (no hassle like in C either) and the next day we had real problems finding a lift back out of it. And guess who we met even there, in the furthest corner of the desert??
Yes, right: evil Karim!
Well, he was staying with one of his tours in the same auberge, and we barely said hello to eachother. But after a while, he must have decided to cash in on his superior position of witnessing us (unsucessfully) hitchhiking on the road outside the auberge and came over. Not to talk, but to SING to us!!! yes, he was dancing in his Bou-bou in front of John and me, singing ‘J’aime les gents de langue, j’aime les gents de langue’ ...Now, it might be due to my limited French or just my perplexion of actually seeing Karim dancing out in the street for us, but I wasn’t quite sure what was going on, so after a while asked him what he was trying to communicate!? He repeated ‘J’aime les gents de langue’ and held out his tounge (gross, as you can imagine!), saying that he likes people who keep their word once they have promised something!!! Well, I said likewise and turned away. He didn’t seemed to like that (we must have really fucked him off, which is quite funny, particularly as we had actually NEVER done ANY business with him ) and left shouting that we will never get away from there, and he wouldn’t never take us even if we offered him 200 dollars! Well, likewise was all I can say...
It was just such a funny experience! Eventually he left into the desert with the poor guys who had booked a tour with him and we were relieved to be certain that we wouldn’t see him again, as he was gonna be in the dunes for a while!
We finally found a guy who offered to take us to Atar for the same price as a bush taxi with his Belgian tour group, but we had to wait a few hours. When I informed the guy from the auberge about this (who started to feel sorry for us having no luck with hitchhiking) he said: “oh, no, I hope it’s not the fat guy with the turban. He is a liar and a ‘voleur’!”.... turned out that he meant Karim, whose reputation has obviously followed him already into the deepest corners of the Sahara. John and I had a good laugh and assured the guy from the auberge that we already had learnt not to trust ‘fat turban guy...’. Anyway, we got the lift with the Belgians and ended up in Atar late that night
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