Expect the unexpected

I broke my arm in Niger, didn’t expect that. We had been traveling with Big Dan, Ed & Chris, life was good and then we had to sit tight for 7 weeks until my arm fixed. Back on the road we reached Brazzaville, Congo and found we could reasonably go no further, didn’t expect that.

We were a little frustrated, we wanted to see Angola, but it wasn’t to be and eventually we landed back in the UK and set about raising some cash for another venture.

Yesterday I accepted a contract to work in Luanda, Angola, certainly didn’t expect that. Had it not been for the broken arm and the Brazzaville situation, it’s unlikely things would have worked out this way… but who knows?

Since we’re away from the nest again, I thought I might kick this blog into life. We hope there will be chance for us to visit Namibia, South Africa, Mozambique and a few other places that will be accessible thanks to our base in Angola. I hope to be back here soon, writing from African shores.

The fat lady sings

Once the haze of St. Patrick’s day had cleared, we needed to get our heads together and work out exactly what we were going to do. Most of the overland truck folk had gone, leaving me, Linz, Simon, Brian and Tony the truck driver. Tony and Brian were heading out to Point Noire to stick the truck on a boat before flying themselves to Cape Town and Simon was waiting for his flight back to England.

We knew there was an outside chance of an Angolan visa in Point Noire, if we bought plane tickets to Luanda, then got them refunded after we had the visa in our hands. We’d heard this had worked for a Japanese guy, but hadn’t heard about his experiences of getting into Angola with his bike. The only clear option was to fly our two bike convoy to Windhoek, Namibia and then follow the tar road south to Cape Town.

A little diversion

A couple of nights in Franceville gave us time to get a few jobs done, a blog update, an overdue bike wash and a few other glamorous traveller tasks. Originally we had planned to go straight across the Congo border from Franceville, but at the last minute we decided to have one last night in Gabon. Leconi, the Gabonese border town, is home to a circular red rock canyon, the Cirque de Leconi, and we decided to stop for a visit before finally crossing the border. There was perhaps an ulterior motive for the side trip, since we knew the track to the canyon was sandy, I thought it might be a good idea for Linz to reacquaint herself with the joy of sand riding before having to deal with a full day of it once into Congo.

Leconi is barely 100km from Franceville and the customs/police/border control is just West of the town, giving us chance to get the Gabon bureaucracy sorted in advance of our departure the next day. Linz guarded the bikes as always while I ducked into the police post, but she was suffering in the heat, it wasn’t long after midday and the sun was fierce. At the customs post there wasn’t anybody in sight, so I checked out the house behind the official building and found the customs officer’s family. His son spoke reasonable English and kept us entertained until his dad arrived back from the market.

Escape from Yaoundé

On Monday, the day before we had planned to leave, we received a slightly worrying SMS from Julien, our Canadian friend, who was in Douala, the other big city in Cameroon. We were planning to meet him in Kribi, but he explained that Douala was at a standstill, no taxis, no buses, no traffic, so he was stuck. Apparently the transport strikes were about the price of fuel and various basic food essentials. The strikes had turned to violent protests and the military had even been called in to try and rectify the situation. Fortunately things were calm in Yaoundé and we packed up ready to head to the beach the next morning.

Cameroon Part 2

Sober and rested, we opted for a clockwise journey on the ring road around Mount Oku… well sort of opted, we didn’t find the road for the anticlockwise route. We threaded through the traffic out of Bamenda and followed good twisty roads north, past rainforesty looking scenery.

The first stop was at Metchum Falls, a small but quite beautiful waterfall about 20km south of Wum. We were hassled by a 12 year old claiming to be the guardian of the viewing place and soon left to pick up the journey north to Lake Nyos, our intended stop over for the night. After Wum was the village of We and the track began to deteriorate but progress was still reasonable. The dense population of the area around Bamenda had dwindled leaving just the occasional small village, much easier going with less people and traffic around.

Cameroon Part 1

Our last night in Nigeria, was at a secure location in Yola. We opted for easy hotel restaurant food and asked the waitress what was on offer. We were surprised when she first said, “You people don’t swallow food, do you?”. I know we look a little thinner than when we started this trip, but… maybe she suspected we were bulemic? Was the food here so bad that most visitors immediately spit it back out?

We couldn’t be sure exactly where the suspicion originated, but we convinced her we could swallow and digest food at will, and were hungry enough that anything on a plate would be consumed and kept down.

Next morning, we performed our miracle again with breakfast, all chewed and swallowed and everything. We were close to the Cameroon border crossing, shown as a road across a river on our map, but our previous travel companion, Mikey, informed us there were no such luxuries and pirogues/canoes were the order of the day.

On the move with two working arms

Okay, so we didn’t report back in a week as promised, but you should be used to our lack of punctuality by now. I spent a week trying to build some strength into my crooked arm and replace the ‘bingo wing’ I’d developed in place of my previously rippling muscles. After a week of arm exercise and some bike repairs we decided to go for a test ride.

The plan was a steady ride out to Koure to see the last troop of wild giraffes in West Africa. We’d avoided them previously, thinking it was a zoo, but they really are wild. We weren’t sure how far it was to Koure, but we’d been told it was only 30 minutes, sounded ideal.

Limp wrist

Happy day today, the good people at Clinic Gamkalley finally removed the plaster cast from my arm. It’s only been 6 weeks, but it feels like a hell of a lot longer since I acquired the plaster accessory.

During those 6 weeks I gained a wonderful layer of leathery, yellow skin which I began scraping off almost immediately. Following an x-ray, the doctor said it all looked good, but I should be careful for a while to get some strength and movement back into the joint. A fair point, since my wrist is particularly flaccid at the moment and has very limited movement.

The Missing Link

Thanks for all the well wishes, comments, emails and SMS messages over the last month, they kept us smiling while we wrangled with African bureaucracy and our insurance company. Although we can receive SMS messages, we still cannot send, so don’t be troubled when there’s no reply.

We’ve finally decided to sit down and fill in the gaps in our story, the last useful blog entry had us camped in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso and we’ve been a bit sparse with the detail since then. The story of these missing days is probably more useful to us, but we did take some cool pictures, so even if you don’t read the drivel, you can click on the pictures and look at the rest on our Flickr page.

Happy New Year!

Hello everyone… hope you’ve all had fun over Christmas, yes we’re still alive, still in Niamey and my broken arm is still encased in plaster. The insurance company are helping us to keep the bank manager happy until I am fit to ride again. If all goes well I will be out of plaster on the 11th and working hard to get my arm back to strength.

Our ‘friendly’ insurers are helping us stay out here until the 21st, at least they pay for accomodation, but every little helps. We have been close to insanity, unexpected confinement after months of travelling is difficult to deal with! We met a couple of other bikers through www.horizonsunlimited.com (thanks Tim C!) who joined us for Christmas along with a Brit couple hooning across Africa in an old Landcruiser.