TOURING

Well this is my first trip bound diary entry, there is probably a good reason for that; Louise reckons I will just write about the bad things and add unnecessary foul words, well ye be warned this short entry has a PG requirement. Our Senegal border crossing was our first big fuck up of the trip, well mine to be exact. I thought being a Kiwi or a Swiss would mean that I wouldn’t need a visa for a tourist destination like Senegal. Well I was wrong. So it began early morning on the 10th of May leaving Nouakchott, this is the capital city of Mauritania, the country where terrorists recently shot some French tourists, so everyone was a little anxious about spending any longer than necessary is this “inhospitable” land. People in Mauritania are actually exceptionally friendly and make Moroccans look like assholes in comparison, and the Moroccans aren’t assholes, there just happens to be one called Mustafa that claims the title of chief Moroccan asshole, but that story is for another day. Anyway we leave Nouakchott early in the morning heading for the border that is 300Kms away, knowing that the last 100 Kms is piste, it turns out to be an exceptionally good piste. We get to the Mauritanian border at about 3 in the afternoon and after playing dumb white tourist with Erik, we get all the papers stamped out of Mauritania in about 45 minutes and had to pay about 15 Euros in bribes. The community tax guy just generally got abuse as we refused to pay him his 1 Euro to open his rusty old gate. Turns out the policeman does it for you if you drive your car right to the gate.

So out of Mauritania into no man’s land and onto a dam bridge kind of thing we went. We decide it would be fun to wind up the barrier dude there, knowing all too well there is no way of not paying this guy. After 10 minutes of that we got bored and paid him his exorbitant price of 10 Euros to cross the bridge. Once we get to the Senegal checkpoint about 50 meters after the barrier. The police guy who I have kindly awarded the title of biggest asshole (the C word should go here) in Senegal and I would beat the crap out of him if I still had as little sense as I did when I was sixteen. Well he flicks through the pages of my passport and says “No visa, you need visa” I quickly respond “what about Swiss do they need a visa?”, yes is the response to that one, ok can I get one at the border? No apparently not. This is where Mr Policeman starts to earn his title as he ushers me out of his office and starts shooing me off like I am some kind of dog. I am still polite and ask him not to get angry, that doesn’t seem to help the longer I hang around the more inhospitable he gets, we kindly ask if there is anything we can do at all, nothing is possible; I have to return to Mauritania to the embassy to get a visa. So we get back in the car knowing that we no longer have valid visas for Mauritania, I dread to think what it is going to cost us to get back into Mauritania. And more to the point how long it will take us to drive back to Nouakchott, at this point it is just after 4. Luckily enough the border officials were exceptionally friendly on the Mauritanian side and had no problems letting us back in with no money being paid. So back onto the piste we go trying to make the 300Kms before dark; practically impossible with only 3 hours left of daylight. Well we go as fast as we can and get back to Nouakchott as night falls. I now know why they say never drive at night.

Next morning we get up early to get to the Senegalese embassy, wondering how long it will take to get a visa, we find out it will take 72 hours for a Kiwi, luckily Lenny Henry, the man sitting at the entrance to the embassy explains to us for a small fee of 3 Euros how to get it on the spot. We had to wait outside for the ambassador to arrive and explain to him our story. This is our story “ we went to the border yesterday to go to Senegal, the man refused us entry, as I have no visa. My girlfriend’s parents are waiting for us in Dakar and they arrived the day before.” Well it worked, I am pretty sure Louise’s puppy dog eyes look helped a lot and she was prepared to start crying if he wasn’t buying it. Sure enough the passport was stamped by 11 and we headed back to the border.

Arrive on the Mauritanian side and clear customs in about 2 minutes, they had been forewarned that we were returning and just stamped everything with no questions apart from if I had my visa or not. Kind of a stupid question, do they think we like to go to borders to be turned away for fun? Into the police office I went and a new guy was there and he wasn’t very happy looking, nor the hell was I for that matter. Well he wanted another 5 euro for the stamps. Stuffed if I was paying him again. So I told him out right “ I payed yesterday I’m not bloody paying today” he just repeated 3000 Ouguiya. I responded with a simple “don’t make me angry”. At that moment the police guy from the day before walked in and blurted someone out in the local language and the passports were quickly stamped. The poor community tax man suffered one last “piss off” as I walked passed got in the car and drove off.

Next up was Mister barrier, well I didn’t want to really pay this twice, but there was no way around it though we did get a discount and only paid about 7 Euro in local money.

Back to the Senegal border, surprise surprise “Big A” is still there. He has a big smile on his face too, so into the office we go and the smile disappears, he looks through the passports, does the standard slow writing in the book that they all seem to do at the borders, then tells me 10 Euros to stamp the passports. Well I think I accidently said “what the fuck for”, which seemed to upset him. But he just started going on and on about overtime and what not, I threw the 10 Euros at him and this time I know what I said: “hurry the fuck up and stamp the passports”. I was fuming, I stormed into the customs office expecting the worst, a brief search of the car and 20 USD and a small amount of abuse later , we were on our way. Once we arrived at the zebrabar we found out that it can take up to a week for kiwis to get a visa for Senegal in Nouakchott, so we were very grateful for Lenny Henry’s help.