"a country living in the past " a Mauritania Travel Page by jorgejuansanchez

I got the visa quite easily in Dakar, and then entered the country in trucks.
If you like desert, then Mauritania is a country you will love, and it is less developed than Mali or Alger. There are still caravanes carrying salt crossing the country in their way to Mali.
I wanted to go back to Spain overland, but from Nouakchott to Nouadhibou I coul not take the road bordering the Atlantic Ocean because there was no service and the road was dangerous. Instead, I went by truck to Atar, in the way to Alger, and then boarded a cargo train to Nouadhibou together with many refugees from Western Sahara who still preserve the spanish language since the times when all the Saharawi Republic was a spanish colony.
We stopped on the way in tents like the one in the picture, where we used to drink chai (tea) and eat something (biscuits and no much more).
In Nouadhibou, the Morocco inmigration did not allow me to travel through Western Sahara (land that they occupy) and I had to wait during 10 days in Nouadhibou until a spanish fishing boat took me for free to Tenerife, in Canary Islands.
In theory, slavery was abolished in Mauritania only about 20 years ago, but in the practice there is still. I myself saw slaves (blacks from Mali) in the tuaregs towns south of Alger, and I heard that in Mauritania there are many more who live in the houses of the tuaregs or mauritanian people doing everthing, from cleaning to cooking, etc, and they themselves accept this condition with resignation, otherwise many would die from hunger.
Yes, Africa is not Europe.
Many african people prefer to be slaves than starve to death.