Tag Archives: Mauritania

New Photos - The Mauritanian Sahara

June 27, 2008 – 1:18 pm

Months ago many of you watched the video that we put together about our time in the Sahara in the Banc d’Arguin National Park.  Here are the photos.

Photos On Flickr

See the video

The first big dune we had to cross got us stuck a good five times.The Tundra has so much weight that it gets stuck much more often.Miles and miles of sand and no roads gets a little uneasy at timesGPS is pretty acurate, but without a good map of GPS coordinates it can get tricky.More kilometers than not we made our own tracks.The Mauritanian desert is no easy task to navigate.Sometimes you have to stop the trucks and hike ahead to make sure that the sand does not get too deep.Deep ruts slow the trucks down in the Sahara desert.We had the entire costline to ourselves for miles.So Bouey practiced his arabic a little bit.Mautitania was french occupied, so who would we be to not collect some fresh escargot?Nothing like living large in the middle of nowhere.As the sun goes down you begin to realized why you spent all day eating sand.Words cannot explain the beauty of a sunset that you have worked so hard for that day.As the sun goes down farther and farther, the light just got more amazingLeaving our beautiful beach campsite was no easy task with sandy hills and cliffs surrounding us.Setting up for some action shots.Taking a break from driving.The huge, wide-open basins are great for speed testing:)Civilization at last! ??The high tides make fields of shells in the middle of the desert.Bouey is taking a rest from some hard runs dune surfing.Dunes as far as the eye can see.Brook...making some fresh tracksSteve checks out his line.He goes for the leapAnd botches the landing, with a nice mouthful of sand as a present from the desert.And the hike back up.At night these little guys would crawl under your tent for warmth and make a really creepy noise.After you get the car unstuck, it cannot stop for danger of getting stuck again, so the diggers have to walk.A little free souvenir, some sand.Every once in a while there is a lone rouge tree that says,

 

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By Steven Shoppman | Posted in Africa, Mauritania, New Photos | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

National Park?

March 13, 2008 – 11:51 am

When picturing a national park, most of us probably think of rangers that help to protect the wildlife and answer visitors questions about the surrounding area and the flora and fauna that reside there. As you get farther and farther from the main tourist tracks in the world, the standard and definition of national parks changes dramatically.

In Mauritania there is a park called “Banc d’Arguin National Park.” It is a World Heritage Site, and like many other World Heritage sites we have visited on our journey, it has a long way to go before one could call it protected. It does, however, offer something that no other national park has that we have been to…vastness.

The “entrance” to the park is a GPS coordinate listed on a small map provided by the park office in the small town 200kms away. This map has a list of GPS coordinates that we tested before we left for the park, of which over 30% of them were incorrect. We knew this going in, but figured that we navigated Mongolia with just binoculars and compasses so with the GPS…how could we go wrong?

The local population is only approximately 500 Imraguen tribesmen that live in seven villages within the park. We visited most of these villages and with so few people inhabiting over 12,000 square kilometers of space with no real infrastructure, it is safe to say you are on your own if something goes wrong. For three days we navigated the park, digging out of sand traps and motoring over sand dunes with a moderately accurate map and a couple of boards to help drive over soft sand.

I would not call this the most stunning or spectacular national park in the world, but it does offer a playground for a real deep in the dunes style Sahara experience. We left the park at the end more dehydrated and dirty than any of us have ever been in our lives, nearly out of gas, with sun and wind burns, but for three days we gave the largest desert in the world our best and came out triumphant.

Mauritania Beach

At least you get the beach to yourself when there are no roads to it.


 
icon for podpress  Banc d'Arguin National Park - Mauritania [2:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1235)
By Steven Shoppman | Posted in Africa, Mauritania, New Videos | Also tagged , , , | Comments (5)

It Is Getting a Little Crowded

March 6, 2008 – 6:11 pm

_DSC0023 It is starting to get a little crowded down here in Africa. The road that is, and it is not necessarily a bad thing. We are quickly finding out that Africa is definitely the place for overland travel and adventure. There are people from all over the world here in North Africa in their desert rigs, custom off-road RV’s and expedition vehicles. In fact, we have probably seen more overlanders in the last few days than we have on the entire expedition combined. In Mongolia, we spotted a couple different groups heading towards Beijing and Shanghai from Europe. In Kyrgyzstan, we met up with the guys from Trabant Trek, and at the ferry depot in Kazakhstan, we ran into a couple of French guys headed east as well, but that was about it.

Now, it seems like every day we meet new groups of people. Most seem to be headed in the opposite direction, and although it would be nice to caravan for a while with some other people in the lonely stretches of empty desert, we have been getting some pretty detailed intel about what lies down the road for us. In Dahkla, Morocco, we crossed paths with three South Africans who have been surfing their way up the west coast of Africa for the last 11 months. We soon became good friends with the guys from African Surfer and they passed on a lot of helpful information including assuring us that we would not be disappointed by taking the west coast route.

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Tim sets up camp in the African Surfer ‘81 Toyota

Here in Nouadhibou, Mauritania, we have also met numerous overlanders headed in all directions. We have been camping with a couple from Germany, learned the complexities of trying to sell a vehicle from a group of kids from Poland, traded stories from the road with another group of South Africans and exchanged GPS coordinates with a couple from France. Everyone has unique experiences and words of advice and encouragement to share with everyone. Even though the stories are different and the words of advice may conflict from time to time, if one thing has remained constant, it has to be the abundance of adventure and the rewards obtained from driving overland in your own vehicle. Nowhere else on the expedition have we met more people who understand why we are doing what we are doing. No one ever has to explain why they are driving overland because everyone already knows. It is a refreshing feeling. Oh yeah, and most of the vehicles happen to be Toyotas…

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The Germans get ready to head north into Morocco

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If you are in the market for a couple of Land Rovers we know some guys in Mauritania

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Some more South Africans arrive on the scene

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The SA’s logo is pretty cool

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Just another day in expedition-ville central

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By Steven Shoppman | Posted in Africa, Western Sahara | Also tagged , , | Comments (0)

Mauri…what?

March 5, 2008 – 5:57 pm

A couple of years ago the TWBR route began to take shape. When first planning a route for a grand voyage like this, the sky is the limit. Countries that you never even knew existed become possibilities; geography becomes a daily topic of conversation. It is quite interesting just how large some countries are that probably 90% of people do not know exist. Mauritania is one of those places. With a population of only 3 million people in just over 1 million square kilometers, this country is a giant desert with large expanses containing very little signs of life. For most of us the Sahara desert is something that we read about in books or hear about in romantic adventure stories while we are growing up.

The last week or so, however, the Sahara desert is the place that we have been calling home and although signs of life are few and far between, they are quite intense when you do find them. A year ago Mauritania was a country that we did not even know how pronounce and was a place that we decided we would not be traveling through. Since our original route became basically impossible as Libya would not issue us visas and Algeria’s borders are closed, Mauritania has officially become our second country in Africa and we could not be more pleased with the new route. The first day we spent here is like no other day on the trip so far. We are staying a town called Nouadhibou, and here there is a ship graveyard with well over 40-50 ships that fill the coastline. Ranging in size from small dinghies to giant industrial ships, the coast has a post apocalyptic feel like something really bad has happened here. The beach is full of all kinds of different trash ranging from the standard plastic bags to pieces of heavy machinery.

The truth, as we have been told, is that the harbor master over the last handful of decades allowed people to decommission their boats for free here. The “decommissioning” process here is to simply leave the boats on the shoreline to rot. Certainly the large amounts of industrial trash and toxins that are released from these boats are not good for the environment, but the spectacle they leave behind is something that all of us will never forget.

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Mines are all along the road on the way here.

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Some people have taken the trash on as a home.

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It is hard to understand how this ended up the way it did.

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I heart goggles and turbans


 
icon for podpress  Mauritania and the Shipwreck Coast [1:18m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1046)
By Steven Shoppman | Posted in Mauritania, New Videos | Also tagged | Comments (2)