#Mauritania🇲🇷 is one of the least visited countries in Africa, I suppose because it’s mainly a desert with very few classic tourist attractions. We didn’t waste any time in the apparently not very interesting capital city #Nouakchott and got picked by our driver up for some shopping. On the long drive to #Zouerat we passed small settlements, sometimes just bedouin tents with goats & camels out front, then bushes & small trees as we drove through the steppe and across small mountain ranges. There’s no border control with the Sahrawi Free Zone of Western Sahara🇪🇭, which the road cuts through for about 5km – so we got out for a quick picture.
We spent most of the next day waiting for the train at a local guy’s tent, drinking tea and getting unsolicited fertility advice because “my wife” didn’t produce “at least 4 children” yet 😅 The train finally came at around 4:30pm, but it took until sunset for us to climb on top of one of the world’s longest freight trains at 2-3km length, transporting #IronOre from the mines to the port city of #Nouadhibou. There is a passenger wagon but we decided to sit on top of the dusty iron ore for a good 23h, sleeping under the starry sky in the pitch black #Sahara desert. The next day we witnessed a beautiful desert sunrise but shortly before reaching our destination the locomotive broke down and left us waiting for a good 3h in the scorching mid-day heat. This is certainly one of the rawest adventures that Africa still offers, although for most local people working in the mines, this is a dangerous commute. If you fall off due to the many violent jolts, you’re potentially hundreds of km from any settlement in the middle of the desert – likely a death sentence. After intensive showers at our hotel we coincidentally found out during a walk through town that Mauritania Air decided to skip the stopover in NDB, which is apparently common, and we had to take a taxi through the night back to Nouakchott to make the flight #feb2024
