Places to visit Science and technology Sahara

Located 15 km from Nefta, Oung Jemel (or "camel's neck") is famous for the sets of the movie Star Wars, at the GPS point 33° 59' 32" N - 7° 50' 41" in the middle of the chott Garsa. The site is quite surreal. You will see the Chott el-Gharsa, this saline depression generating mirages. You will find Mos Espa, the hometown of Anakin Skywalker (the future Darth Vader) because it is where the first Star Wars movie was shot. The #SaveMosEspa campaign helped save the film's sets from being buried by the advancing dunes, which are moving 50 feet a year.

Even if it is extremely difficult to visit them if you don't know a member of the SNIM staff, it is worth a try. In an atmosphere charged with a reddish dust, you wander under an unbearable heat, consequence of the sun but also of the furnaces, while taking care of the steel monsters which carry the ore and while startling with each shooting of mines... An impression of the end of the world, Dantesque and terrifying at the same time! Unfortunately, these mines are the scene of many work accidents, most of the time quite serious.

Mauritanian cement, otherwise known as banco, is used as a binder for building houses. In Chinguetti, it has been extracted for centuries from a mine located less than a kilometer southeast of the city. One can access underground galleries of several hundred meters, by letting oneself go down to the bottom of a well hung on a beast skin. It is obviously not of any rest, but the discovery of these labyrinthine galleries is astonishing. They are several meters high in some places and leave barely enough space to crawl in others.