Mauritanian Weather
 

We're planning a trip into Mauritania (via Morocco/Western Sahara) (LR110) mainly pisteing it around the Adrar and hopefully, if we can team up, a challenging dune crossing or two.
How much is the season an issue? We get conflicting advice from books and web searches. Some say feb to May is out of the question because of the hot wind s; whilst others cite june to september as a nightmare because of the 'unbearable' heat. Our two possible windows for travel are late March/April and August/September (!).
It would be great to hear any relevant experiences of Mauritanian travel in those months — are the concerns purely a matter of comfort/convenience or something of real consequence?
Cheers.

I should probably add that we've had lots of desert under our tyres (Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Northern Kenya etc.) but always during the winter.

Will we boil?

Richard,

difficult to tell you when the best time, but I went through Mauritania early october, first through the desert from N'bhou to N'chott, then back and forth to Atar/Chinguetti/Terjit, and then further on to Senegal. The desert was no real problem re temp, because you're always pretty close to the sea so you get some colling effect from the sea. Same more or less for road down to Senegal. However road from N'chott to Atar was pretty hell, up to 80° (celsius!!) in the sun, no shadow, well, you can picture it more or less... region of Atar is better due to altitude. If you are there, you MUST visit oasis of Terjit, you will double appreciate it when it's hot...

Hope it helps you on your trip,

jef

80c (!)
Well, maybe what we lose in water we can save in stove fuel...
thanks Jef— that's partly reassuring. What were your highlights? (other than dunking your head in the waters at Terjit!)