Mauritania has one amazing thing going for it. About 30% of its coastline is all declared a national park, and it is definitely one of the more amazing bits of the country to go a visit.
It was the first time Miso, my dad, had ever driven on the beach, and we were treated to quite a spectacular drive along 40km of the coast. Our only downer was watching about a million camper van cars, manned by thousands of German and Dutch looking people, go screaming past us in this monster convoy. After spending so much time in areas where we knew only a few people had been and seen, it felt slightly disappointing to see so many tourists driving on “our coast road” (particularly because they were all driving really badly and didn’t seem to be appreciating where they were, rather feeling the need to treat the beach as a race track) I was reminded of the Kruger National park at home and can imagine people who might have been in it before it became a mess of traffic jams, overpriced accommodation and pretty much a crammed caravan park where animals happen to be.
We spent three nights camping in Bedouin tents on the beachfront, eating local grilled fish made by the ladies co-operatives in each campment and watching spectacular sunsets over the ocean.
The only fishing done in the National park is by sail boat, no motors allowed, and the fishing communities are fairly small so the fish life was incredibly abundant and spectacular to witness, just goes to show what a marine protected area can be capable of. The whole experience culminated in a fantastic snorkel off the edge of a cliff coastline, where water was crystal blue and we swam for over two hours, photographing and filming some amazing creatures such as the biggest cuttle fish I have ever seen (actually the only cuttle fish I have ever seen!) They were as big as a rugby ball and some of them were so unafraid of us that we could swim right up to what I would presume would be their eye balls, without them darting away. Parrot fish the size of a sheep would come darting past us every few seconds, and pipe fish as long as my arm and as thick as my wrist would swim next to us as we moved along the cliff side.
Our last day in the park saw us drive for hours in complete isolation through the Sahara. It was both a wonderful and slightly un-nerving experience as we moved using only our trusty GPS as a reference to where we were and what direction we were heading to, cutting our own tracks through miles and miles of sand dunes and flat salt plains. You had the most intense feeling of openness and space, tempered by the fat that if you broke down it would be a nice long jog to find anything besides the odd camel.
We made it through unscathed towards Nouidbou, even managing to find a whole jerry can of diesel fuel that had obviously fallen off someone’s car a few days back. Karma points for being robbed by the border officials we thought, as we happily filled up our car with some free fuel and made our way towards Morocco.
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