There is an interesting pillar left still standing at part of the Aoudaghost site that archaeologists apparently excavated.
While the driver and “guide� prayed, I wandered the ruins of the old city. Among rocks tumbled from ancient walls, shards of ancient pottery, and fragments of what looked like forged metal, I imagined the life of the people who apparently occupied this city of the Wagadu (Ghana) kingdom around the 8th to 11th centuries.
At the virage, I switched to a 4×4 vehicle with a driver who probably already overcharged me for the first ride, but then really took me for a ride by vastly overcharging me for the two-hour ride to the ancient city of Aoudaghost.
The city was beautiful, surrounded by eroded mountains of layered brown stone with caves and also by unusually orange sand dunes, probably due to the presence of lots of iron. The driver let air out of the tires to get more traction in the sand. (That’s a picture above of the guy who overcharged me so much.)
November 15, 2007, Bus station in Ayoun el Atrous, Mauritania
The journey by bus from Bamako to Nioro du Sahel was fairly uneventful. A pleasant elder gentleman sat next to me and we chatted in French much of the way. I also occupied my time by swatting mosquitoes with my map of Mali until the window was so much covered with their bloody carcasses that it became difficult to take pictures free of the evidence of their untimely end. As we left Bamako, the terrain changed gradually from larger trees and bushes to more of a savannah environment, punctuated by the occasional baobab tree and its sister tree, apparently called the mobili.
At this desert outpost called Nioro du Sahel, I and a Mauritanian business woman named Amie changed to a car, actually a Mercedes, into which they packed a total of seven people, three in front and four behind. I felt really squished compared to the bus, even though riding in a luxury car. We went through the border and many police checkpoints, also without incident.
Then, we arrived at Ayoun el Atrous and I stayed the night at the Hotel Aioun after some difficulty in changing money with the taxi driver. I wanted to wait until the next morning to change US dollars to Mauritanian Ougiya at the bank. Well, it turned out that the bank only changes Euros and doesn’t accept dollars or even CFA from neighboring Mali. A number of money changers offered me poor rates of exchange until I found one named Mohammed, an insurance guy, who was really the only one serious about changing dollars. He changed at the rate of 220 ougiya to the dollar, the best rate I could find, but I later found out the official rate if more like 260 ougiya to the dollar.
Then, off I went back to the bus station, or garage as they call it here, to find a car for the Tamchekett virage, i.e. the turnout for Tamchekett.
November 12, 2007, Bus from Bamako to Nioro, Mali
A nice elderly fellow on the bus told me the following anecdotes:
A boy boarded the bus with a live chicken in Bamako. Along the way, he got off the bus without taking the chicken. Eventually, the bus driver gave the chicken to a woman he liked working in a stall in a town along the bus route.
I saw lots of baobab trees and spoke with friendly passengers on this bus, Peuls who speak Peular and are Muslims. A Mauritanian woman on the bus who says her name is Amie is also going to Ayoun el Atrous. The voyage is going much more rapidly than I thought it would, inshallah.
That last pic is one of my favorite ones ever… check out what appears in the boy’s eyes!
Watch how the number of baobabs increases further north and the terrain gets drier.
