Our weekly plane chartered by Le Point (with seats sold on to other operators) was packed out. It makes all the difference for local tourism because in that orange zone most of what most people want to see in Mauritania is easily accessible. You’ll see they critically (and imo, correctly) extend the ‘travel if you must’ orange zone further east compared to the British FCO. It is probably the result of revised travel advice issued by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (left). But the recent resumption of charter flights bringing much bigger groups from Paris directly to Atar (not via Nouakchott) was something for local tour operators to celebrate. Of course tourism never really stopped for independent travellers (compared to Algeria) and despite the killings and kidnap pings of a few years ago (including an entire French family in 2007, right). For the first two days over the dunes we were accompanied by a crew filming a report for a French TV station on the return of tourism to Mauritania (see below). Just back from a two-week camel trek in Mauritania, walking with a mostly French group of 14 from Chinguetti (‘ la Sorbonne du desert’) to Terjit (map, left), about 150km. I suppose this might be Mauritania, Oued el Abiod.We saw a rare waddan (barbary sheep) here. K on a dune somewhere west of Sli Edrar (Alg).
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