Listen to Africa is a 24,000-kilometre cycling expedition, recording African sounds and voices.
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Musings from Mauritania (Nouakchott to Rosso) Leaving Mauritania – with more questions than answers. An update on our last few days in Mauritania as we cycled from its capital to the Senegalese border.
Gallery: Cycling across the Sahara A few of our favourite photographs from our ten weeks in the Sahara – cycling the Atlantic route from Guelmim in Morocco to Nouakchott in Mauritania. Photographs by Huw Williams and Bex Sumner.
The good, the bad and the indestructible One way or another – with the odd casualty – we’ve reached Nouakchott, meaning we’ve now crossed the Sahara in high summer. What next? Ah yes, West Africa in rainy season…
Wildlife: Subdesert Toad 
We’ve tentatively identified this toad as Bufo xeros , the Subdesert Toad. Our identification was visual and based on written descriptions of the toad’s call but, as always, we are happy to be corrected. These toads were numerous and very vocal through the night and in the early morning at Terjit Oasis in the Mauritanian Sahara.
Species: Bufo xeros
Common name: Subdesert Toad
Date and time recorded: 06:20 local time, 9th August 2009
Location: Terjit Oasis, Mauritania ( view on map )
Copyright: Listen to Africa
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Soundscape: Water in the Sahara One of the biggest joys of recording sounds is that you start to learn to listen. Our whole journey is turning into a (very long) soundwalk . Recording these drips percolating through rocks and dripping down ferns into a little stream at Terjit Oasis , I found myself deeply impressed by the musicality of the water (an impression that was probably amplified by the fact this was the first naturally occurring water we’d heard in our two months in the Sahara, apart from the ocean). One Mauritanian who’d never been to Terjit before said to us: “I never knew this kind of place existed: infinite water, coming down from God.”
Date and time recorded: 09:00 local time, 9th August 2009
Location: Terjit Oasis, Mauritania ( view on map )
Copyright: Listen to Africa
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Soundscape: Morning at Terjit Oasis 
Ah, Terjit. On the evening of the day we left Atar , we crawled into Terjit Oasis – almost literally – with broken bikes and suffering bodies (more about all that soon, in the blog ). Streams, rockpools (to swim in!), date palms, toads , glow worms, fireflies, cicadas, birds: a feast for our ears and eyes after two months of deserts and cities .
Date and time recorded: 06:50 local time, 9th August 2009
Location: Terjit Oasis, Mauritania ( view on map )
Copyright: Listen to Africa
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Pains, trains and automobiles (travels in the heart of the Sahara) An overnight train journey across the Sahara in an iron ore wagon, a failed attempt at cycling through the desert, paralysing heat and black eyes, and the kindness of a Mauritania we’re just starting to get to know.
Waiting for happiness in Nouadhibou Two weeks in Nouadhibou: lazing, learning and meeting some of this town’s community of exiles and would be emigrants. And cooking camel blognaise.
Soundscape: Sahara wind If the sounds section of the website has been a bit quiet of late, it’s because pedalling through the Sahara has been anything but. Wind. Almost constant wind. And, even though it’s meant we haven’t been able to record any birds here, we’ve learned to love this sound; it’s usually a tailwind. This is the sound of the wind blowing through a pile of rocks that marked a junction between a sand track and the main road.
Recorded on: 9th July 2009, 20:10 local time.
Location: The Sahara, Western Sahara ( view on map )
Copyright: Listen to Africa
Gallery: the Maghreb in monochrome A bike’s eye view of the westernmost part of the Maghreb (the Atlantic route through Morocco and Western Sahara), taken during a 24,000 kilometre cycling journey across Africa. Photographs by Huw Williams and Bex Sumner, April to July 2009.
