Nouadhibou Things to Do

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Go and visit Cap Blanc, the extreme South place of the peninsula.
The Western part of the peninsula belongs to Western Sahara (or now Morocco after their Anshluss) and the Eastern part to Mauritania.
At Cap Blanc, there is a tower guarded by the army. There is no real border line, but it is at some meters on the West of the tower.
You have to descend the cliff with a rope or using the natural stair alongside the rocks.
The beach is very beautiful, and as the names says, sand is purely white.
Unfortunately, there is again a wreck on the beach that nobody could remove.
You can see many seals swimming and fishing alongside the coast.

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The nicest beach is across the Centre de Pêche. You have to take a small boat to cross 200 m of the channel and you are on a long, flat, white sand beach, very clean and quiet.
You have to take your umbrellas and drinks.

Outside Nouahdibou, on the lagoon between the peninsula and the desert, there is a beach resort.
Expatriates go there on weekend for rest and free fishing.
The bar and restaurant are very simple but clean, room are not always very clean.

The grand majority of fishermen here in Mauritania come from Senegal. During Februrary and March a large quantity of people go down south to their country to pass the celebrations of Islam when they kill the goat. Another celebration also very popular in March is the visiting of a holy men somewhere in Senegal. Its believed to cure anything. This men offers cows to every family in town to produce enough milk and fresh food to the comming visitors.

In the Port Artisanal if a police comes that say you're leaving. Don't make pics is not alowed. I got my film confiscated by police officers.

Prices:
my price info is from 2000. now the prices have gone a bit up. just to have in mind.

the fare in the passanger wagon is UM650 Choum-NDB, and 800UM zouerat-NDB, or 1600 choum-NDB for a fold-down bunk.
riding on the ore wagons is free and you'll discover why, as the dust works its way into your soul.

if you take this last option, buy plastic bags to protect your stuff in case you have a wind storm in the deseert somewhere in kilometre 380 just imagine.
get a sleeping bag and a scarf lilke turbant type and your set.

you have some police stops on your way to choum.

Motorists who are heading to Atar can load their car onto opene platforms, althogh this can take days: start waiting at the railway station opposite the douanes at 9am to stand the chance of getting it loaded onto the 6pm freight train.

It transports iron ore from Zouerat to Nouadhibou and can be up to 2.5km long. There are lots of bucket wagons for the ore but just one passenger wagon.

Three trains a day go from Zouerat to Nouadhibou, but only one with a passenger carriage passes Choum at about 5.30-6pm. the usual journey time for Choum to Nouadhibou is around 12 hours but expect more. 2 others may come through late at night, or early in the morning, but on these foot passengers have to huddle in the ore trucks.

The train from Nouadhibou to Choum is the longest train in the world.

The iron ore train carry thousands of tons of crusehed rock in a chain of wagons up to three kilometres long. Their schecules and frequencies depend partly on the speed of the extraction at the mines, and on unpredictable hold-ups-damaged rails, enginefailure and even in the past, attacks by Polisario guerillas from over the border in Western Sahara-and travellers should realize that ore is the priority, not passangers.