Riding the Iron Ore Train

While waiting over the weekend for the Senegalese Embassy to open a part of the group decided to do a small weekend trip to ride the Iron Ore Train. The purpose of the train is to freight iron ore from the mines in Zouérate to port in Nouadhibou. This train is interesting for travellers for two reasons. One, the train is generally about 2.3km, sometimes up to 3km, long, making it one of the longest trains in the world. Two, they allow people on board, not only with a ticket in the passenger wagon at the end of the train, but also in any wagon on top of the iron ore.

But before getting on the train we had to get to the actual train. We started out by taking a bus from Nouakchott to Atar. One annoying thing about Mauritania is all the checkpoints. The bus got stopped everywhere and everbody had to show their IDs and as we were foreigners they wanted to copy all of our passport details. By hand. Each time. Eventually the bus driver got so annoyed that he made an extra stop for us to get a bunch of photocopies of our passports that we could hand over at the checkpoints. These mini-buses are not used only to move people. They are also packed with anything else that needs to be delivered, including animals. How do you get a small goat to stay still and not make a mess during a bus ride? You put it in a bag an throw it up on the roof. Animal rights are a bit different here…

As we reached Atar we organised a place for the night, and also an extra trip for the afternoon to visit Terjit Oasis, an oasis not far away from Atar. This was a tour on a budget, and I’m not even sure if that guy generally did tours or if he made it up on the fly for us. We ended up being 7 people squeezed into a small car that seemed to have passed its expire date a long time ago. But we did reach the oasis and it was definitely worth the trip! Even though I enjoy deserts it is a special feeling to see green, lush trees after days of empty, barren landscapes.

The oasis was surrounded by cliffs giving us the possibility to explore the oasis not only from the lush inside, but also from around and above. The tour ended with a cup of mint tea, which, in Mauritania, involves a ceremony of making the tea. We had several of those in Morocco as well, but this might have been the best mint tea I’ve ever had.

The next day we got up early to take a shared 4x4 taxi to Choum a tiny town that doesn’t even have any proper roads leading to it (hence 4x4 taxi). It is however one of the few places where the iron ore train stops. It was very unclear when the train would depart so we couldn’t do anything but sit around and wait for several hours. When the train finally arrived we realised how much the locals utilise this train. Sure, we did expect a few other people riding the train in the same way as free is a really good price, but we didn’t expect a whole lot of goats on top of the train, and they even managed to load a donkey on top of all the iron ore.

We climbed onto a wagon and tried to make ourselves as comfortable as we could among all the dust and stones, and when the train took off we could enjoy an amazing sunset from our spot on top of the world. The view from the train is amazing, but after only a few hours it had turned pitch dark. And dark in the desert means DARK. No light pollution for hundreds of kilometers, and an amazing sky full of stars. But when it gets dark in the desert it also gets cold, really cold…

After 12 hours on the train the sun rose again and we arrived at the final stop, Nouadhibou. We got off the train, tired after barely being able to sleep, cold to the bones, covered in iron ore dust, but still really happy about doing this trip. It was an experience!

From here we took the first bus we could find to Noukchott to catch up with the rest of the group. Turns out the only information they got was that none of us actually needed visas for Senegal so tomorrow we’re ready to leave Mauritania!