Morocco to Mauritania: crossing the minefield border

INSPIRE / SHORT STORY

id: 2023_mauritania-minefield-border

slug: mauritania-minefield-border

title: Morocco to Mauritania: crossing the minefield border

type: inspire

region: North & West Africa

country: mauritania

angle: De-risk

guide_wave: Brand

links_to_guide: none

status: draft

target_query: morocco to mauritania border crossing

meta_description: Between Morocco and Mauritania lies a no-man's land locals say is mined. The rule for crossing: drive exactly where other cars have driven.

source_file: 2023_mauritania-minefield-border_source.docx

route_file: none

longform_file: none

photos_file: none

resolved: []

last_reviewed:

Morocco to Mauritania: crossing the minefield border

Between the last Moroccan post in Western Sahara and the first Mauritanian one there is a strip of desert that belongs to nobody. No tarmac, no signs, nobody in charge - a few kilometres of gravel and sand between two barriers, and you drive it yourself.

We crossed it in May 2023, three old Subarus into our Africa Rally. Before we rolled in, locals gave us one instruction and repeated it until it stuck: drive where other cars have driven. Away from the tracks, they told us, the ground is mined - left over from the Western Sahara conflict and never fully cleared. Nobody offered a map of what was where. The instruction was the map.

So that is what we did. We came down off the tarmac, found the most-driven ruts we could see, and followed them. No shortcuts, no curiosity, no pulling aside for photos. Where more than one line ran ahead, we took the one that looked most used.

We never saw a mine, and I cannot tell you where a single one is - that is not the kind of thing you get to verify. What I can pass on is the rule every driver there follows, and the strange feeling that comes with it: for a few kilometres, the usual assumption that someone has checked the ground under your wheels simply does not hold.

On the far side there was a barrier, a stamp, and a country that turned out to be one of the best surprises of the whole rally. But the border is where Mauritania starts telling you what kind of place it is: you listen to locals, and you drive where others have driven.