A landcruiser and a pajero and other Mauritania Transportation Tips

'Mode': AROUND
Category: Car/Motor Home
Getting TO/AROUND: We did the transsahara-crossing from the south to the north of Mauritania with two 4WDs of the Dutch organisation Transsahara of Marius Dussel from Leeuwarden. We could drive the cars ourselves or just participate as passenger.

The two cars of our trip were a 22-years old Toyota landcruiser and a 18-years old Mitsubishi Pajero.

Many parts of our route were off-road, like Kayes-Kiffa in the south, Tidjikja-Chinquetti in the centre and Choum-Bou Laounar in the north of the country. By using these 4 WDs we didn't encounter any problems to conquer all the soft sands and rocky surfaces. The age of the cars and the rough routes caused only lots of mechanical and technical problems.

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Phone: +31 58 2890647
Website: www.transsahara.nl
Other Contact: info@transsahara.nl

'Mode': AROUND
Category: Other
Getting TO/AROUND: In Senegal and Mali we saw allready many donkey carts the days before we arrived in Mauritania. After we left the sandy tracks of the south behind us, we did see also a lot of donkey carts in the trading centre Kiffa. The most donkey carts, we saw here, transported whole families, sometimes with some products for or from the market.

Later in Nouadhibou in the north we saw also donkey carts with huge and heavy loads for construction works. In Nouadhibou these carts were here also used for collecting garbage.

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'Mode': AROUND
Category: Other
Getting TO/AROUND: Everytime I did see local minibuses or trucks with very high loads on top, I wonder how they could manage to drive with all this stuff without loosing it !

Very often the loads had the same height as the vehicle itself. That´s the advantage of a country without fly-overs. Though at the moment I write this, I realise that some towns in the north have arches at the point you enter the town. Maybe to prevent vehicles with high loads in town ?

In Nouadhibou we saw other local transport like very crowded buses. We had a old car ourselves, but it surprised me how bad the old taxis in Nouadhibou looked like.

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'Mode': AROUND
Category: Car/Motor Home
Getting TO/AROUND: From the Atlantic coast the ´road of hope´ or the TransmMauritanienne connects the capital Nouakchott with Nema in the deep south. The Transmauritanienne has a lenght of 1113 KM.

For 200 KM we took a part of this smooth highway from Kiffa to Sangrafa. Allthough there was not much trafffic on this highway, we saw more cars here than on all the other roads, pistes and tracks we took.

On the picture you can see a crossing of a wadi. I wonder if there will be ever water in it.

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'Mode': TO
Category: Airplane
Getting TO/AROUND: The distances in Mauritania are enormous, the condition of the roads is often bad and many towns are not reachable by paved road. So most people fly. Air Mauritanie is one of the better airlines in West Africa. Most flights are fully booked, so make reservations in time.

Between Nouakchott and Nouadhibou are twice daily flights. So within one day there came a new waterpump for our car from from the capital to Nouadhibou.

With Air Mauritanie you can fly three times a week to Atar, twice a week to Nema, Zouérat and Tidjikja and once a week to Kiffa. Some deserttowns are also reachable by charterflights from France during winter.

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Website: www.airmauritanie.mr