Our adventures continue and we have arrived in Nouadhibou, Mauritania. This place really feels like Africa.

We got up early again to leave this morning, at 4 am, and this time did not have any car troubles. Our only surprise today was that we were to have another passenger ride with us which meant that we had to cram four people into the back of a small van. We rode like this for 10 hours. Words can't describe what we experienced today. There were 7 of us in the van, and we all spoke different languages....Arabic, French, Spanish and English. We travelled with 3 Morrocains(one was the driver and the other 2 were just along for the ride), one woman from Ivory Coast, our friend Juan from Argentina, and the 2 of us. As you can imagine communication was difficult, but it was quite fun trying to communicate. I don't think any of us really knew what anyone else was trying to say.

Our trip brought us through the desert where there is absolutely nothing but sand, ocean, some small green bushes, sun and camels. Occasionally we would see people in their nomadic tents and some goats, but really not much to break the landscape.

When had to go through an extensive process of leaving the Moroccain border and entering the Mauritanian border and it took us 3 hours to do this. We travelled through "no mans land" which was a very bumpy unpaved road filled with garbage and wrecked vehicles from travels overland between the two countries. We saw plenty of black market trading going on. The border posts were nothing more than shacks with no power or computers, but full of spikes on the roads to flatten your tires if you tried getting away without consent.

Nouadhibou is the second biggest city in Mauritania. It has about 80 000 people. It is a fishing port and other than fish, all the other fresh products are shipped here. The people here are very friendly. We get many waves and "Bonjour's". The people here appear to be more black africans than arabs. Morocco was all arabs. The poverty here is very apparant. Brian and I both agree that this is the poorest country we have ever been to.

When we arrived we found some food and we had a new version of chawarma....have you ever had french fries on a sandwhich before? The chawarma here consists of egg, beef, and french fries, and no pita. None of these things are found in "real" chawarma. It was interesting but good enough to eat and it filled us up. We also went down to the port and saw some of the guys bringing fish in. The fish were huge and they even had an eel. They pull everything around here with donkeys. The local guys had fun with Brian and all wanted their pictures taken.

Our plans have changed slightly and we are heading to Nouakchott, Mauritania's capital, tomorrow.