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O and I sat in the front courtyard of the hotel and had
a breakfast of coffee, bread and jam. We borrowed some money from the hotel owner and headed to the Internet café for a few minutes and afterwards caught a taxi to the airport. I am (still) unable to speak French,
so I have not been involved with the negotiations for money with the taxi drivers, the airport security guys, the air traffic controller and the fireman. In this part of Africa you have to fight and bargain for
absolutely everything. Anyway, the fireman by the name of Said who had taken the money to arrange all the payments, had managed to con us out of some money. It seems they are nation of people always trying to get
easy money from some unsuspecting foreigner. And just when you think you are an experienced traveller, some new way is found to separate you from your money. Many of these people see travellers like us as a target
and they manage to get money by playing on our trust. They scream blue murder if we tell them that we will check the price first or maybe pay them later - accusing us of not trusting them and that all they want to
do is help someone far from home blah, blah, blah! Olivier cornered Said, during the morning and they landed up having a serious shouting match. They nearly came to blows in the tower, but when Olivier mentioned
that he had six years of Karate behind him, Said backed off and tried to calm Olivier down.
Nouakchott is quite fascinating to see with all the
different types of traditional clothing they wear. The men mostly wear light blue Arab-dress things called a bou-bou - and most of the women wear long silk-like lacy dresses with scarves over their heads. About 20%
of the women wear (usually black) veils over their faces so that all that you can see are their eyes. Olivier has a theory that only the very ugly ones cover their faces!
We refuelled and then headed back to the hotel for a
light lunch. Later we caught a taxi to a moneychanger and changed about $500. Some of the bank notes are so old they are hardly recognisable. Back at the airport we topped up the fuel and prepared them for flight in
the morning. Somehow, my trike is now using less than 10 litres per hour. What is going on with the sudden economy?
Back to the Internet café for a quick session.
At the hotel two South African men had also booked
in. They were on their way south on two XT 600 motorbikes – having left from London two weeks before. Clearly they had had quite a tough time getting through the desert. Good luck, guys.
We bought 6 litres of water. Tomorrow we head
eastwards down the road into the Sahara towards Mali and Tombouctou.
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