We have crossed our first African border to enter Mauritania from Morocco (Western Sahara for some sensitive readers).
We were preparing a lot for this crossing for two reasons. First, according to many reports the Mauritanian side of the border is so bureaucratic and corrupt that you either hire a fixer for 10-50 euros to sort out all the paperwork, or spend the whole day there while these fixers harass you with the silent support of the officials. The other reason was that the between the two sides of the border, there is five kilometers of no man’s land, which happens to be heavily mined. No road, only diverging tracks and sand in which you can stuck. As a warning, there are burnt out cars everywhere. A few years ago two French travelers leaving the tracks ran on a mine, one of them died instantly, so these are not only rumors to scare tourists. Some reports say there are fixers which will take you directly to the minefield in order to ask for a further sum to guide you out of it.
In principle, we would not want to pay at a border crossing for something that is not required by law. With some curiosity we decided we would try to sort it out ourselves.
It was a walk in the park. We crossed the border in a mere three hours. The Moroccan side was superbureaucratic and slow, but straightforward and everyone was helpful. On the no man’s land we insured ourselves by following four cars. We saw no burnt out car, but dozens of soldiers to monitor every move. Of course Mauritanian road-side made up for wrecks more than enough.
No man's land in 8x
On the Mauritanian side we rejected at least a dozen fixers firmly but politely. Still, we could not send away the last one: we told him we do not need his help and would not pay, he was inseparable, providing translation and giving advices. We passed all formalities of the entry (ten fingers biometric visa for 140 euros per person) and the importation of the car (10 euros for 15 days) quickly. The Mauritanian officials believed us that we have no alcohol or drugs (indeed, we had not had any beer since 1 of December and had not brought any pálinka either). Finally we had to make a liability insurance (or not, no one has ever asked for it yet). It was clear that the fee of the fixer was built-in at this step as having been escorted by him we could not get the insurance under 25 euros for 10 days.
