I haven’t posted in a long ass time, but Mauritania — one of the strangest, hottest and most desolate places I’ve ever been — is in the midst of overthrowing their elected government. Oh, how I love coups.
Turns out the president canned the presidential guard leader, General Mohamed al-Abdul Aziz, and he in turn arrested the president, the prime minister and the minister of the interior. Now the prez guard is running the show from the prez palace. Oh, and guess what? They have a shitload of oil. And the longest train in the world that carries iron ore from one remote place to another even more remote place. And there are bad guys running around who like to kidnap and kill whitey. It’s on the north west coast of Africa, below Western Sahara and Morocco and above Senegal.
I was there in 2006 with my girlfriend and it was pretty damn boring. We slept in huge tents, saw the 7th holiest site in Islam and basically wandered around in the Sahara Desert for a while — sweating a lot and getting chapped lips and eating really, really bad food. Not exactly a romantic getaway but it beat going to Cancun with a bunch of orange frat boys.
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August 6th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
That tent looks romantic to me!
August 7th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Love your pictures, Jeff.