Day 2 - Mauritania

Day 2 started on an amusing note. I got up, showered, got dressed and when I walked out of the front of the hotel, the street trader from yesterday was there with his stuff. I said "Bonjour. Ça va bien?" and kept walking even as he called after me. I think I am getting more comfortable with the locals, better sensing how far to take a conversation before I need to cut it off and keep walking. No money changed hands today, other than I found two big bottles of water. One problem solved!

It seemed a bit hotter today. I think the winds have changed and are coming from the interior rather than the ocean. Still, today was the day I was going to walk into Mauritania. This involved walking into downtown Saint Louis, across the bridge and up the ocean side penninsula. No problem with the walk to the beach. I was only mildly harassed in downtown and once I got to the beach only the children would call out to me. I would answer "Bonjour" and keep walking. A few younger women would hiss at me as I walked by trying to get my attention. The first time, when I turned to look, one rubbed her crotch. Ahhh... okay.

The beach in Saint-Louis is a busy, dirty affair. It is full of pirogues, the Sénégalese fishing boats lined up side by side, and the air smelled of drying fish and only occasionally, of human waste. There are young men, women, children and goats everywhere. As I walked up the beach the city just abruptly stops. No more buildings, no more pirogues, no more people, no more goats. Marcel, the hotel owner, said the border was a row of trees about 100 metres beyond the last building, which I think was a military outpost. Googlemaps puts it another 1000 metres farther up the beach. To be safe, I walked another 1/2 kilometre, spread out a blanket and sat for about an hour. It was the first time I was outside the hotel where I was able to assume I could sit and relax without being pestered. Ahhhhhhhh...

The beach in Mauritania is pristine. There is almost no litter, no people, no nothing. It was peaceful, quiet and the water is green and beautiful. Occasionally someone would zoom by on a motorcycle presumably coming into Saint Louis from Mauritanian villages up the coast, but they paid no attention to me.

After about an hour the heat and sun were getting to me and I was out of bottled water, so it was time to pack it in. While Marcel said there would be no problem walking up there, I was technically an illegal immigrant to the Islamic Republic of Mauritania and had visions of sitting in a local jail pretending to be a stupid westerner unaware that I crossed the line. (Would the Sénégalese stop me from coming back???) So I walked back over the border and back down the beach. The tide was coming in FAST though. Before I knew it I was up to my ankles in water and had to move closer to the people and activity, which was a real obstacle course. I got back to the beach entry, walked back over the bridge and caught eye of bottled water at a shop. Bingo! I went in and asked for 3 bottles but he only had 2 bottles, which I grabbed, and continued the walk home.

My day trip was about 4 hours of walking in the hot sun, so I was pretty wiped out when I got back to my room. My shoes were also wet and needed to dry out. So I took it easy for the rest of the day, doing some reading. More pictures on my flickr site.