Last night’s flight from Casablanca creaked and rattled its
was south before depositing us at Nouakchott, the world’s sandiest capital
city.
We knew we had truly arrived in West Africa, as officialdom
welcomed us with open arms. A change of
government policy required the purchase of a visa-on-arrival. When the rest of the ECOWAS community is
relinquishing visas to stimulate the tourism economy, Mauritania has elected to
impose a 120 euro tax on all arrivals, payable in euros, and with no cash
machine in the immigration area. Ty had
a luckier run initially, sailing through the immigration process with just a
cursory inspection of his documents and no demand for a visa at all.
Having paid for visas using James’ cache of euros, we were
then asked for our hotel address in Mauritania.
Explaining that we did not have one and would be transiting to Senegal
was to no avail, and the immigration guard point blank refused to process our
entry into Senegal.
Whilst this argument was ensuing amidst pushing and shoving
from others in the queue, a little chap appeared at our elbows to inform us
that one of our bags had failed to arrive on the plane – the one carrying all
of our repairs and spare parts.
We finally resolved the hotel issue by simply locating last
year’s hotel name and quoting this to the immigration official, who responded
by producing the magic stamp. Wandering
through into the main hall, we were also magically reunited with the missing
bag that had apparently fallen off the conveyer belt and landed in an obscure
corner of the terminal.
Ty in the meantime had been informed by one of the baggage
chaps that the immigration official had incorrectly processed his application
sans visa, mistaking last year’s Mauri visa for current. Whilst this seemed like a 120 euro win, in
reality it just represented future hassles at the Mauri/Senegal border and an
excuse for harassment by every official asking for papers enroute. Result: Ty has to go back through the entire
cycle again.
Our Mauri contact from the shipping yard was still waiting patiently on the other side of this debacle. Who waits for 3 hours until 2am in the morning, and then still greets you with a big smile? After throwing bags in the back, his truck rattled pleasantly through deserted streets to Hotel Halima where we were asleep within minutes of arrival.
