After the bad news last night, we slept quite well, until we got woken up by a dog fight near our tents in the middle of the night. This morning the victims, a young male dog, was still seeking comfort and protection close to our camp and was lying under Trevor’s car in the shade deep asleep.
Trevor hadn’t slept well, as he had had to get up a couple of times during the night to re-inflate his air mattress. It seems to have a tiny hole somewhere.

We prepared and had our own breakfast at our leisure. Afterwards we used the opportunity of the extra day here to do our laundry. Man, that water, that came out of these clothes of the past week, was dirty. A week of dust and sand could be clearly seen in the wash water. Now all fresh and clean the laundry was hanging in the strong desert sun and wind, that got stronger during the morning. Amazing, how fast everything started drying. Within about an hour most of the T-shirts and underwear was dry. The trousers took a bit longer at the seams. Clean clothes for another week. Happy days!
News came from Alex that the plane will hopefully bring him to Nouakchott tomorrow evening. The other option would have been for him to fly to Dakar, but then he would miss the nice Saint Louis and the southern part of Mauritania. Half the fun would have been taken from him. Let us all hope, that Mauritania Airlines manages to bring Alex from Abidjan to Nouakchott tomorrow night and safely.
In the meantime, he was at the airport in Abidjan to retrieve his suitcase and to organise tomorrow’s flight. Good luck mate!

Meanwhile, here in Mauritania, Trevor and I wanted to go into town trying to find the Michelin dealer. Trevor had found a pin on Google maps and hoped, that it would be a big company that has a water basin and tire repair capabilities. Then they could locate and repair his air mattress. We set off. First crossing the better neighbourhoods of the capital, nice big houses, but hardly any street tarred and lots and lots of garbage flying about in the strong hot winds coming from the desert that was also bringing a lot of dust.

Then we got onto one of the major tarred roads and followed that for a while. When we reached the given location, Google maps had indicated, there was nothing, but small clothing shops. We asked around but nobody seemed to know.
At a bank nearby, we stopped and I withdrew some money to cover the next day’s costs and the big refuelling of Eeyore. Trevor attempted as well, but did not manage due to communication problems with his bank, that he had experienced before. Before his card was swallowed by the machine, he rather aborted the operation and retrieved his bank card. We continued trying to find another tire repair shop to help Trevor fix his air mattress. We drove crisscross through town. Trevor had located another location for the Michelin importer and we drove there. It was a tire shop indeed, but a small one and although it could change and probably plug tires, it didn’t look sophisticated enough to be able to help him with his air mattress. We continued searching.

The city looks very dusty and run down. Many streets are in disrepair, stop lights often don’t work. There is a certain anarchy to the traffic. Everyone drives everywhere and how they want. Most cars have seen much better days long time ago. Indicators and break lights only work seldomly. Front lights are often replaced with some dodgy African DIY lamp that is either going to illuminate the entire town or just functions as a position light. The Mauritanians certainly love the old Mercedes-Benzes. Especially, the old W201 model, that was produced between 1982 and 1993. It seems, that most of the ones produced, ended up here eventually. So most of these cars are more than 30 years old and still run, although would never pass a safety inspection in Europe anymore. You hardly see any modern cars, i.e. cars younger than 10 years.

Over the years, I have seen many old bangers on African roads, but what we spotted today was probably number two and number one of that list and topped it all. They truly participated in normal traffic and also didn’t get stopped by police. See for yourselves on the pictures.

We passed through downtown Nouakchott, with its ministries and the National Assembly. All pretty, but could all use modernisation, some repairs and paint. Most buildings do not exceed three or four stories.

We found a tire repair guy next to the road leading back to the beach and stopped there. They inflated the air mattress and started to wash it down with some filthy water looking for the leak. At a certain point the chap found indeed the culprit. A tiny hole at the top edge. Trevor investigated and happily marked it for future repair. They could not do this there and in hindsight, Trevor had brought a repair kit him, that was back in the camp though. A few Ouguyia changed hands, that reminded us again that many Mauritanians are still counting and living with the old currency, which had one digit more. We had noticed, that often you get prices quoted, sounding far too high, but in actual fact, you just need to divide the amount by 10 to get the correct amount in today’s currency. It changed back in 2018 and many still haven’t gotten used to the new currency. The young waitress at the camping, for example, also still quotes in old Ouguyia.

We returned to the camp and had lunch in a shady place and a bit out of the wind.
In the afternoon we just chilled in this brutal heat of again about +37°C, doing administration, correspondence and chatting, constantly moving with the shade.
At the end of the afternoon, a large group of tourists with an overland truck from Dragoman Tours arrived and descented over the camp like grasshoppers. There were about 20 travelers, a driver plus a tour guide. Within minutes they emptied the bus, set up tables and kitchen stuff next to the bus as well as popped up tents everywhere. The showers and toilets looked like a mess within a short amount of time. In the evening they occupied the terrace without consuming anything and occupied the wifi.
Shortly after sunset Trevor offered me one if his beers. The best you can get here in Mauritania, Bavaria 0.0%. After a hot day it was the closest you could get to a nice cold alcoholic beverage. The wind had almost completely died down, but the temperature was still hot and dry: 32°C and a whooping 10% humidity.
We had a lovely dinner on the terrace, when suddenly the direction of wind changed and a cold breeze came in from sea. The temperature dropped by a few degrees and it became too chilly to continue sitting outside. We retreated to our tents.