The architecture, arts and crafts and traditions of Walata dazzle us the moment we arrive in this city—for centuries a stopover on the trans-Sahara caravan routes—and explain why UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site some decades ago. About 25 kilometres from here we find Guelb Djmel, a herding town on whose southern hill are remains of an ancient Neolithic settlement.

The route is an invitation to discover more of Mauritania's towns and cities, and so we get to Shuergde, a town full of curious buildings which is thought to have been the capital of the ancient kingdom of the same name and at whose foot is the township of Wediniti, a real oasis of plant-life. And that isn't all. Taguraret is located some 75 kilometres from Walata. This town shows us how nomads live. Here too there are Neolithic remains and we can buy the traditional figures made from clay with salt. Tichitt, for its part, has quite a lot in common with Walata itself: its origins are equally remote and it is also one of the four ancient cities of Mauritania that are still inhabited. Its unique beauty comes from its carved-stone buildings and its sand dunes. Nouakchott is the capital of Mauritania. Although it is a modern city we must visit it and experience the wonderful colours of the evening seen from its fishing harbour.

The list of interesting places in the country goes on and on. We shall end these lines by mentioning as a small sample the old districts of the town of Kaedi, the ruins of Rachid, and Bogué, a small town in a meander of the Senegal river with its teeming life