Dear Mr. Hans,
After searching on google.com I've found your website. Surfed on it and knew that you've been in Mauritania.
Here's my story:
My name is Lena, I'm from Portugal and I own a small car hire company. In September a man from Morocco hired a car from us and went on it to Morocco. We don
Trip to Mauritania - lost car
Dear Lena,
A very sad story to lose your car like that.
Except for the big cities Noudhibou and Nouakchott, there are not much normal cars in the rest of the country as there are few roads (only sand pistes), so the few people in the inner country that have a car choose for a 4x4, preferably Toyota Hilux. With a Peugeot 307 it is not possible to drive in the inner country. Even to Atar the road is quite hard, but maybe still possible by Peugeot, but people of Atar will not be interested in a Peugeot, as all around the town it is sand piste.
I'm not sure if you will find your Peugeot back in Nouadhibou and Nouakchott.OK there are a lot of normal modern looking cars in these cities, but Mauritania is also a big car sales market for West Africa. And Peugeots are very much wanted in Senegal and other countries of West Africa as taxi drivers in Senegal, Guinea Bissau and Guinea Conakry (and maybe other countries of West Africa) like very much the Peugeot 506 and have lots of spare parts available and know how to fix them. Peugeot is really the top model in West Africa.
So Mauritania is rather a transit country where car dealers from West Africa come to buy their car. We met several car dealers that drove their car all the way from Europe to Senegal ....
There is also a real car maffia in Mauritania and thus a market for selling on stolen cars. Mauritanians are very racist towards black Africans, and there is also a bit of lawless climate where you can get very far with bribes (we also had to bribe the Mauritanian border guards...).
So, I really hope that you will find your car back, but I'm absolutely not sure it is still in Mauritania ....
Good luck!
Hans