TOURISM New promotions target the more adventurous
The call of the wild

Until the late 1990s, Mauritania made little effort to attract foreign tourists. It wasn’t just that the government had other priorities other than spending millions of dollars building up a more modern infrastructure. Just as important an impediment was the fear that an influx of Westerners would damage the country’s cultural and religious heritage, and that traditional desert hospitality would break down under the strain.
In recent years, however, the authorities have looked more favourably on the possi-bilities of tourism, not just as a revenue gen-erator but also as a contributing factor in cultural and ecological preservation. Rather than aiming for the mass market, new initiatives are targeting special interest groups and adventure tourists who are keen to explore new frontiers and don’t mind roughing it.

The Adrar region in the interior has become a favourite with predominantly French groups who want to combine desert travel with exploration of the old Sahara and Sahel trade route cities. The four towns of Chinguetti, Ouadane, Oualata and Tichitt date back to the 12th and 13th centuries, and have been declared World Heritage sites by Unesco. All are trying to keep the advancing sands at bay. They form atmospheric depositories for valuable Islamic books and manuscripts (Chinguetti), and boast intricate geometric house decorations (Oualata).

Charter flights fly regularly from Marseilles to Atar, obviating the need for costly and time-consuming routing through Nouakchott. One pioneering Mauritanian tourism company is El Mejabat El Koubra Tours (MKT). Tourism director Boubacar Ould Taleb points out that the number of visitors entering the country this way has risen ten-fold during the past five years, from 2000 to an estimated 20,000.

He says the country’s visa regime has been eased significantly for most Europeans. Visas can be arranged for clients at airports and in frontier towns and there has been a Mauritanian embassy in London since 2000.
The desert offers a startling variety of colours and landscapes, as well as the tranquillity of a number of oases. The countryside along the Senegal River in the south is particularly verdant. MKT has set up a permanent camp at Keur Macene, about 100 miles southwest of Nouakchott, which has its own 120,000-hectare hunting reserve. Warthogs and a variety of birds such as geese, teals and snipe can be hunted there.

For tourists who prefer to shoot with cameras, the Atlantic coast near Iwik offers the enjoyable spectacle of hundreds of thousands of migrating birds, feeding and resting in the nature reserve of the Banc d’Arguin. Even more memorable for many visitors will be the sight of the Imraguen people using the traditional method of getting dolphins to chase fish into their nets.
Boubacar Ould Taleb envisages the opening up of other parts of the country. “The Keur Macene Camp has 30 rooms, but that will rise to 100 in 2003, and we have set up a new camp at Tergit. We also have a centre for sports fishing at Nouadhibou that will be expanded in the same way in future.”

He stresses that the benefits of tourism are spreading beyond the relatively few people employed in the business. “We are having a social impact – we took the initiative in setting up a women’s cooperative not far from Keur Macene Camp. We sought out a partner to provide a motor-pump and fuel is bought on the basis of £5 for each of our clients.”
MKT reports high customer satisfaction with its camp formula. Boubacar Ould Taleb says: “We have not gone in for five-star or multi-storey hotels. Our clients like leaving Europe and finding themselves in a camp that is comfortable inside yet gives the impression of life in a Mauritanian village.”

The country is unlikely to receive a large volume of tourists, at least in the short term, largely because of poor infrastructure. This is particularly marked in Nouakchott, where most foreign visitors are businessmen or aid workers. “There are 200 hotel rooms in the capital whereas we need 1,000 to meet demand,” says Boubacar Ould Taleb.
Travel around Mauritania tends to be in a four-wheel drive vehicle or, for the more hardy, on a camel. For those who want to experience travelling with locals, minibuses travel along the metalled roads south of Nouakchott to Rosso on the Senegal River, and along the southern highway that passes through towns like Boutilimit and Kiffa, and on to the Mali border.

Similarly, it is possible to obtain tickets to ride on the train running from Nouadhibou to the mining areas at Zouerat and beyond. The train, said to be the world’s longest, mainly consists of wagons transporting iron ore. But it is establishing itself as a favourite with railway buffs, giving a unique perspective on one of the wildest regions on earth.