Stranded in no man's land/minefield

After around 25 hours of bus, shared taxis and a bit of hitchhiking, I finally exited Morocco, crossed through the no man's land/minefield and arrived at the Mauritania border around 6pm on Friday. I soon found out rumour was no rumour, there was no visa issuing at the border any more. Maybe I shouldn't even have called it "rumour" in the first place, because so many travellers and locals had been telling me that. But I just refused to believe it, I was being too stubborn and too over-optimistic that I just wanted to think it was a rumour.

Now it was already around 7:30pm, the Moroccan border was closed, so I couldn't even cross back into Morocco. The Mauritanian guards told me to leave their post immediately and just head into the no man's land. They didn't seem to care if I had to sleep in the cold desert and in the middle of a minefield. However, they did showed "kindness" of warning me to watch out for the land mines.

As I was ready to leave, other travellers started to gather around me and offered me water and their sympathies. Now I think the scene made the Mauritanian guards start to realise that it would just be a really bad PR if they indeed made a lone foreign traveler sleep in the no man's land. So an officer called me over, he asked to have my passport, and talked on his cell phone for a couple of minutes. Then he indicated that he would keep my passport and send a guard to take me somewhere to sleep. At this point, I was already feeling very relieved. It turned out, they put me in a guest house like place that's made up of a few big tents. The guard told me to sleep in here and not to go anywhere, and tomorrow take my passport and cross back to Morocco.

The lesson learnt: you should always listen to other fellow travellers' advice.