The Vuvuzela Diaries

We awoke gritty eyed on the Dogon rooftop in Kani-Kombole on our last day Mali. The thick dust blown up the previous day had not settled and we were glad to be back in the cool, dust free comfort of the cars as we made our way to the Burkina border. We had not seen the Harmattan winds and dust until Mopti (Dogon country) and we certainly didn’t expect that it could last for two whole countries!!

After changing some money in Koro (where the hotel owner changing the money offered us his hotel as collateral for our Euros he went off with!) it was a short gravel hop to the border. The crossing itself was quick and efficient and we had no problem getting the Burkinabe visas that we needed. For the first time since Morocco we crossed with other overlanders – an extremely well kitted  French group (one chap had done the Dakar rally 7 times!) in Land Cruisers with a guide and a dusty and dirty Dutch/Belgian duo in a series Landy. The French were well fed, well rested and well groomed and their guide swiftly escorted them through immigration. When we next saw them parked for lunch at the best “hotel” in Ouahigouya, it was certainly a lesson on how to overland in style – and could not have been a more different approach from the Dutch/Belgian crew! Next time…

As we only wanted to be in Ougadougou on Sunday evening (and it was Saturday) we set off to explore the area north east of Ouaga. We drove on dirt roads in thick Harmattan dust and although the area certainly won’t register on our highlights list it was interesting to see rural Burkina. The area was surprisingly populous with lakes (dams) to water crops and animals. A new artisanal mining area right next to the road provided a fascinating stop with men digging out dirt in tiny tunnels 10m underground. Interesting to see a mini little gold rush next to the road and quite scary to see the conditions they work in.

We managed to persuade a hotel on a lake just outside Kongoussi to let us camp in their courtyard and the trees and grass provided a little oasis from the dust. The next morning Danielle and I were kicked out of camp by Paula and Mikaela and we returned 20mins later to a romantic champagne breakfast prepared the rest of the crew. It was our 1 year wedding anniversary and the others had outdone themselves to put on a special little celebration for us. Grant was quite fetching as a waiter with the dishcloth draped over his arm, Mik’s pancakes were excellent and we will never know where they got that champagne from!!

That morning we made our way through Kaya – where we had a huge Burkinabe lunch of chicken in the best steak restaurant in town (no red meat was available!) – and on to Ouga.

Given that Burkina was supposed to be the poorest country we had visited so far and given the dustbowls we had travelled through, we were pleasantly surprised to find that Ougadougou is a (relatively!) well developed city with good infrastructure (roads, traffic lights, government buildings, banks, shops etc).

We made ourselves comfortable in the open ground in front of Hotel OK Inn which is disturbingly located behind the major weighstation and truckstop in Burkina. Although a little dusty it contains all the essential aspects for an overlanders base in a major city: secure parking, wifi, great steaks and a pool!! We spent the next two days doing admin: Ghana visas (easy!), washing clothes and getting car noises diagnosed at the Toyota dealership (our bushes have taken a bit of a beating).

On the morning we left we were all up bleary eyed at 6am to listen to Grant talk to John Robbie on 702. In a bizarre scene, we sat in the hotel lobby with earphones plugged in listening to the slightly delayed broadcast through the 702 website. Grant did a sterling job and it was great to know that people back home are interested in our little journey.

Finally after a quick lunch (and ice-creams!) at a local Lebanese café in town we set off for Nazinga Ranch (just north of the Ghanaian border). The ranch is a great elephant conservation success story started by two Burkinabe Canadians. It has now been taken over by the government and standards are slipping but it was still a magic stop over. We lived it up in very basic lodge huts (no camping allowed) with animals in the camp during the night and after a quick morning game drive we spent the rest of the morning watching bathing elephants at the dam just in front of the camp. It was great to see animals in the bush again.

That afternoon after a short detour to see the painted village at Tiebele (not so painted and not so friendly!), we drove the last few kms to the Ghana border… English speaking people and the beaches awaited!

No mans land between the Western Sahara (Morocco) and Mauritania is a maze of rough, rocky tracks crisscrossing the land mined hamada (stony) desert. Bumping and crawling along in 1^st gear for 5kms (whilst watching massive trucks and others do the same) highlights the fact that there is beautiful tar on both sides of the border posts and shows it as yet another piece of crazy governmental non-cooperation. It also comes complete with its own second hand car dealers, black market money changers and general wheeler dealers and it was easy to see how the likely stolen Mercs we had done battle with the day before had quickly changed hands (the driver of the car I had driven into at the border had shown me the Italian registration plates he was taking back north an hour after the border closed for the evening).

After clearing Mauritanian customs and immigration, buying 3^rd party insurance and changing some Euros for Ouyigiya we entered Maurtiania well rested and in surprisingly good spirits given the 25 and a quarter hours (!!) it had taken us to cross the border. We quickly covered the 40kms to Noudhibou and settled into our oasis of a campsite  (Camping Baie du Levrier) in the middle of the dusty town. A fantastic, clean and well run spot the owner informed us that his previous South African guests included a group led by a very memorable big bearded man giving out mosquito nets!

That afternoon we explored the tiny portion of the Park Banc d’Argin located on the tip of the Nouhibou peninsula. It’s a beautiful if strange feeling spot with small dark red sand dunes and numerous ship wrecks lining the lagoon side of the peninsula (given lax maritime laws, Noudhibou became a ship grave yard and the EU funds earmarked to be used to remove them don’t appear to have been done too much good just yet). The park has been specially created to protect the “le Phoque Moine” (yes, it is quite awkward to say aloud) – the much endangered Mediterranean Monk Seal, of which, according to the information centre there, there are only 400 to 500 left. Luckily for us, the ranger there managed to call one up for us by whistling from the top of the cliffs and it was great to see a local person so passionate about the animals that he was protecting. The Maude crew also braved a quick swim in the sea below a huge wreck placed on a sandbank right at the end of the peninsula.

Unfortunately, given the recent foreigner kidnappings in the region and the British foreign office’s continued advice “against all travel to Northern and Eastern Mauritania” we (like most other tourists) decided that it would be wise not to spend more time than necessary in Mauritania and to cross as quickly as possible. So, the next day we completed the stark but beautiful 500km black top desert drive from Noudhibou to Nouakchott. I, for one, certainly travelled very wistfully looking down the desert piste turn-offs that would have taken us to the Adrar and Chinguettii or the down the coastal route through the Park Banc D’Argin. Although the stong hot wind was inhospitably blowing the sand in lines across the road, beautiful desert scenery taunted us the whole way down – well, we will just have to come back another time! After all our concerns about Mauritania, we were quite surprised by the number of tourists and passed a few convoys of French retirees in motorhomes, banger rally vehicles and other 4×4’s. There was also a reassuring military presence and we had to stop 8 to 10 times to dish out fiches along the way.

The northern edge of Nouakchott is dotted with nomad’s temporary camps as their camel caravans arrive in town and it certainly felt like we were arriving at a frontier town. It was also interesting to see water stored in large portable (when empty!) pvc sacks at each camp. We spent one night in town, camping at the beach in an expat bungalow hotel (Hotel Sabah) next to the fishing boat port. There was more and more vegetation as we travelled south towards the Senegal River and for the 1^st time we saw cows – a definite sign that we had crossed the desert and were approaching sub-Saharan Africa! The area just north of the Senegal river is dotted with acacia trees and we could just have been driving in the Kalahari.

Rather than cross the river into Senegal at the notorious border point of Rosso, we decided to cross further downstream at Diama and spent our third and final night in Mauritania at a magic bush camp on the Senegal River flood plain in Diawling National Park. The flood waters were mostly dried up but the wetland birdlife was fantastic with huge flocks of pelicans, flamingoes and white-faced whistling ducks. We also saw (and walked into at camp) many “Phacochere” or warthogs – our first mammalian wildlife. A fantastic spot, it was great to camp in relatively familiar bush surroundings and sounds.

The next morning we birdwatched our way to the border, avoided paying our Euro10 per vehicle fee to the customs official, I was instructed by the immigration official that Danielle is my “femme” not my “mari”, we paid our community tax and then bid our fond farewells to Mauritania.

It really struck us that Mauritania has so much to offer tourists and that a couple of attacks have done so much to damage its infant tourism industry.  Our visit was uneventful, thank goodness, but fleeting – hopefully things stabilize soon, we would love to return to explore properly someday!