On the move with two working arms

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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.

We headed out of Niamey and I was happy to be riding again, the arm seemed ok as did the bike. The Harmattan wind blows strong from the Sahara at this time of year, which strangely makes things a little cooler, but more noticably hides everything in a dusty haze leaving the scenery less striking than usual. After a 50 minute ride, we arrived at the guide post in Koure to purchase our obligatory and necessary guide. It was more expensive than the Lonely Planet had led us to believe, but it’s all in a good cause.

After handing over 18000CFA we were back on the road, with a guide riding pillion on my bike. We soon left the tarmac and followed a dusty track for a while, stopping occasionally so the guide could examine some giraffe poo and work out where they were hiding. At one point he asked if we would ride across a soft sandy plain, but I figured Linz wouldn’t be too happy and besides I was supposed to be taking it easy on my arm. We spoke to another guide in a 4×4 to ask him if he’d seen any promising poo, and following a lead we did eventually have to ride the sand for 2km or so before walking another 2km.

It was worth all the effort though, we were able to get really close to a group of 5 of the 150 strong giraffe troop. They are very timid for a 15ft tall animal, but we got some good pictures and it was amazing just to stand and watch them ambling around and munching on the trees. We started the 2km walk back to the bikes, through soft sand in full bike gear at our favourite 12 noon to 1pm slot. When we finally hit the tarmac again it became clear I had a puncture in the rear tyre, so we found a shady spot to stop and effect repairs.

A very large nail had made a small hole and a 3cm rip in the inner tube, just the kind of thing our cheap puncture repair kit is ineffective at fixing. After my failed repair attempt the guide suggested I try the nearby village. A local guy stitched the rip with needle and thread before applying a standard, African hot vulcanised repair. In no time we were back on the road, managing a full 10km before the repair gave up. As time wasn’t on our side we opted for our emergency repair aerosol, a can of pressurised air and glue. We had no faith in it, but the tyre inflated and remained so, much to our amazement.

One thing I hadn’t noticed was that I’d run out of fuel at the exact moment I’d pulled to the roadside to grimace at the puncture. For some reason Linz was carrying 5 litres of fuel in her spare tank, not something we’d done intentionally, just pure luck.. but it was good. I fuelled up the bike and then we crouched to look at the rear wheel and watch the emergency tyre repair glue spurt out of the hole in the tyre. After a minute the tyre was flat again and the guide estimated it was 3km back to Koure with a nice uphill gradient.

The day hadn’t been a very good test of my arm, the strong winds, dusty track, soft sand, pillion passenger and puncture repairs really didn’t have me in too much pain. Fortunately I had the chance to push the bike up a hill for 3km, that would do the trick! We arrived at the customs post in Koure and waited for a passing truck to take us home to Niamey. Before long, 15 helpers hurled my bike in the back of a truck driven by a helpful if expensive bloke. I jumped in the cab and Linz followed the truck on her bike. It was almost 8 o’clock when we arrived back in Niamey, a 10 hour day, slightly longer than expected. Tired and light of pocket thanks to our day out, we headed to the bar.

Our last night in Niamey was spent in the company of Frank and Anne-Kathrine, a young couple from Germany working in the city. We’d previously bumped into Frank in Mauritania and had since met them both a couple of times in Niamey. We drank too much and stayed out until midnight, just to simplify preparations for our first day back on the road. We’ll track you guys down for a beer in Germany!

If it had been good to be riding again on Saturday, Monday morning was heaven. We loaded up both bikes, waved goodbye to our adopted family at the Grand Hotel in Niger and finally got back to what we set out to do. First day back was nothing special, just a windy and dusty ride to Dogondoutchi, halfway stop-off before the Nigerian border.

Second day back was more interesting, the wind was even stronger, the dust thicker, the road surface grim in places and we were raced by 3 deranged coach drivers. We felt like we’d already done a full day by the time we reached Birnin Konni, the Niger border town. We were soon into Nigeria, happy to be in a new country after weeks of rotting in Niger, but not sure what to expect of the border officials, we’d read many conflicting reports.

Our first meeting was with the passport stamping and visa checking bloke, who told us our visas had expired, pointing at the date of issue and explaining to me how that date had passed. When he had stopped shouting I explained what ‘Date Of Issue’ means in English and he carried on with the our immigration. A little later he told me again that they had expired, but this time he explained that was because we’d now used them to get into Nigeria and couldn’t use them to enter the country again… okay, thanks for clarifying the concept of a ’single entry visa’.

Subsequent visits to the SSS (Special Security Service), FDEA (Federal Drug Enforcement Agency), Customs and the Yellow-Fever-Vaccination-Certificate-checking-man were friendly and hassle free. We had to give up our codeine based pain killers (all 4 tablets) because the poster in the FDEA office said so, but that was no trouble, you can buy them at pharmacies here anyway!

The FDEA guy told us where we could find some blackmarket money changers at the border town and we were soon flush with Nigerian Naira and ready to roll. We wanted to spend the night in Sokoto, the first big town after the border, about 90km south.

Most of the advice you can read about travel to volatile African nations, such as Nigeria, describes mobs of people blocking the road as a good reason for turning around and finding an alternative route. This advice was playing through my mind as I threaded through the second such unruly mob of chanting Nigerians. It seemed that there were local government elections looming and the gatherings were to rally support for potential local rulers. We didn’t encounter any hassle, but afterwards we did discuss the sanity of our strategy. But hey, hindsight is a wonderful thing.

In Sokoto we employed the services of an almond seller to escort us on a moped to the Sokoto Guest Inn. A dingy room decorated in 1984, white walls with black splats, had aircon, a fridge, TV, electric lights and running water… luxuries we didn’t want, but seemed impossible to avoid. We’d read that in Nigerian hotels most things don’t work, this place didn’t disappoint. Food was good though, jollof rice and beef is spicy rice with peppers and tomatoes, big hunks of beef and some fine chilli sauce.

In the morning we followed 400km of fine Nigerian tarmac to Zaria. Corruption in this country absorbs countless billions of dollars that should be spent on the people, but they do at least spend some on the roads, they are the best we’ve seen so far. The drivers make the most of it too, why confine yourself to yourside of the road, it’s understandably difficult to resist the temptation when the surface is so smooth. If you do decide to overtake, into oncoming traffic, just flash your lights so the people you are about to collide with are suitably dazzled and unable to see where they are going.

If the New Zaria Motel had dropped the ‘New’ prefix 20 years ago it would still have been stretching the truth, but it housed us for the night and provided omelette, fried plantain (banana) chips and chilli sauce for breakfast.

Thursday we arrived in Abuja, the new (since 1991 I think) capital of Nigeria. This place is weird, once you’ve ridden through the shanty towns and arrived in the city, there are wide, 4-lane, tree lined boulevards connecting plots of huge brand new buildings. To make it worse there is practically no litter, very little pollution, people actually cleaning the streets and pavements and yes they have pavements, not just dirt. The traffic is busy, but well behaved, nothing like Dakar, it was a nice break from Africa but it freaked us out a bit!

We found a cheap hotel and were greeted by a bunch of enthusiastic staff, full of questions about the trip, or mission as they call it here. The room was a bit dull but everything worked! We found the British High Commission as we are in need of some more pages in our passports, space is running out. Unfortunately the place is closed until further notice with just a phone number to ring for emergencies. Next on the list was a Cameroon visa, which we managed to acquire in just under 3 hours! We could have left on Saturday but we decided to stick around for the weekend to rest my arm and maybe try for an Angolan visa on Monday.

Saturday we were hunting two things, a new camera (we broke yet another) and an ATM that would take our Visa card. We found a camera but all the ATMs accepted Mastercard and not Visa. We finally ended up at the Sheraton Hotel where we met Gwen in the carpark, she and Nick are travelling Africa South to North on a bike and were camping at the back of the hotel, for free! The Sheraton ATM accepted our card, thankfully, and we spent the afternoon swapping travel stories with Gwen and Nick. We returned to our hotel with cash and a new camera and later headed back to the Sheraton for a few beers with our new friends.

Whilst in Abuja we were looking for some chain oil, but all we were offered was engine oil or grease. One guy said, “Yes I can chain de oil” and showed me two small Chinese spanners with which I assume he was going to loosen bolts on my bike until oil leaked out, at which point he could ‘chain’ it. We made do with some of our own engine oil to lubricate the chains, it’s difficult to buy maintenance equipment in places where maintenance involves fixing things after they have broken.

Monday morning we opted to try our luck at the Angolan embassy, despite all the tales of woe we’d heard from other travellers. We arrived at 9:30 just as the place was opening, waited outside for 20 minutes, passed through security, handed over our mobile phones lest we make any phone calls which are clearly illegal in the Angolan Embassy in Abuja, then were directed to a waiting area by the receptionist. Okay so far, we read the coffee table magazines, the Angolan tourist brochure from 2001 and watched as staff arrived for the day. The receptionist was busy too, busy picking her nose and reading magazines. After an hour she called us over, ready to meet the visa officer we assumed… not quite, ready to stand and watch her pick her nose in intimate detail whilst staring over our shoulders at the door. She asked us for our letter of invitation and residents permit, details that had slipped her mind an hour earlier. We knew this was coming and said we had neither, but explained how keen we were to spend more than a few days in Angola, despite the fact she continued to look for breakfast in her nostrils. We continued our attack until her entire hand had almost disappeared from view up her nose, at which point we retrieved our phones from the security guard and headed back to the hotel to gear up for the day’s ride.

The last few countries we’ve visited, Senegal, Mali, Burkina and Niger, all have populations around 12 million, Nigeria’s population is somewhere around 140 million. We couldn’t help but notice this increase, as we left Abuja, heading for Jos, we rarely rode for more than 5 minutes without encountering populated territory. The few places in between the people were filled with trees, lots of banana palms, colourful birds and slightly greener countryside than we’ve seen for a while.

Once we got to Jos it was bloody cold, for the first time in Africa we saw people in woolly hats and gloves, a far cry from the constant 35 degrees we’d enjoyed in Niamey. We first tried a religiously inclined guest house, but the place was full and a friendly bloke there directed us to another similar establishment, The Evangelical Church of West Africa (ECWA) Guest House. ECWA had just erected a new building at their plot in Jos, and we took a room with low expectations. To our great surprise the room was wonderful, new and matching carved wooden furniture, fresh bedding, carpet you would walk on in bare feet, light fittings with bulbs, hot running water.. paradise indeed. We intended to spend 2 nights in Jos, primarily to give my arm a rest, it was becoming increasingly painful with each day on the bike. On our day off we took a walk in Jos and met our friendly bloke from the previous day. Turns out he works at one of the banks and took us inside to show us his office, give us free drinks, talk about his family and our journey and really just be the most kind and generous soul we had met in a long time.

After a lot of persuasion I managed to prise Linz from the comfortable bed at the ECWA Guest House and get her on the bike and pointed in the direction of the Yankari Game Reserve. We hadn’t heard great things about the place, but it was on our route to Cameroon and seemed as good a place to stop as any. Previous visitors had seen few animals and the staff and facilities were not preceded by glowing reputations, on the other hand everybody seemed to enjoy the Wiki Spring, a crystal clear geo-thermal spring at a constant temperature of 31 degrees.

We arrived about 14:00 and were told camping was N1600 (6 quid) compared to the cheapest room at N2300 (9 quid). There were no facilities for the campers and the place was inhabited by kleptomaniac baboons, so a room seemed like a good idea, what with the ensuite bathroom and electricity. The safari was N7000 (28 quid) per vehicle, with the cost split between all passengers and there was a group due to leave in 5 minutes. We rushed back to the bikes, were shown a room which looked rough but we didn’t take much notice, just dumped our gear and jumped on the safari jeep.

Despite what we’d heard, the safari was a great success, we saw scores of antelopes and warthogs within minutes of leaving the basecamp, but our guide was on the trail of elephants. Using the poo-tracking method we’d seen before with giraffes, we hunted down the elephants, but along the way saw crocodiles, tantalus monkeys, more antelope derivatives and plenty of baboons. We found the elephants lurking in the bush, a large herd of all ages and close by there were a few out in the open. The ground around the watering hole in Yankari is salt rich and a couple of elephants had dug huge holes to get to the salt. Our driver was a little over zealous and, on more than one occasion, a great photo opportunity was lost to the roar of the diesel engine in our open top Landcruiser. As we made our way back to basecamp there were lots more elephants to be seen as well as a herd of African buffalo, a rare treat apparently. We even saw lions, well, lion’s poo.. the lions were elsewhere but we were assured the crumbly white turds belonged to lions, looked like dog crap I remember as a kid, but hey I’m no zoologist or poologist for that matter.

Once back at basecamp it turned out our room was the worst we had ever seen, we think it could be the room they use to deter visitors from taking the cheapest rooms. The carpet looked like it was stained with whatever was causing the smell in the bathroom, which was a law unto itself. There was a hole in the wall for ‘air conditioning’, the electricity was piped into our hut in wires that ran along the ground outside, then across the road, just twisted together, not clipped, not hidden just right there on the ground! The bathroom sink was where it should be, but most of the porcelain was missing along with any useful tap components. The shower was there, but didn’t work. The toilet cistern contained all the right pieces, but none were connected and the whole lot was just a jumble of parts along with a plastic teapot that together did not form a useful whole.A dustbin of water at least provided us the ability to wash in the sinkette. How lucky were we that we hadn’t camped where there were no facilties? We had food and drinks from the bar/restaurant and chatted with a trio of swiss folk with whom we’d shared the safari costs. Ernest had lived in Nigeria for over 30 years and was entertaining his sister and brother-in-law for a couple of weeks. They were interested to hear of our trip and we were equally curious about Ernest’s experiences in Nigeria and his sister’s impressions of her first 2 weeks in Africa, without the benefit of the slow introduction we have had.

There are definitely better accommodation options at Yankari, if you want a room, don’t go for the cheap ones, you’re better off camping. There was certainly a lot of building work underway and it looked good. The swiss trio were staying in a new hut which was apparently immaculate, the sooner Yankari stop offering the shithole we stayed in, the better.

We had one more full day in Nigeria, a 420km run would take us to Yola, the last significant town before Cameroonian soil. It was a tiring day, the tarmac started good but slowly degraded throughout the journey to dirt track by the time we reached Yola. I asked a guy on a bike where we could find a place to stay, he turned out to be a pastor and was keen to take us to a ’secure’ hotel. He reiterated the security issue on numerous occasions as we followed him through traffic to his chosen place. Once checked into our room, we couldn’t help but notice that security was a theme of the hotel. The TV was secured in a metal cage, as was the air conditioner and the fridge was welded to a palette which was bolted to the floor. We went downstairs for a drink at the bar, but the bar was a tiny hole in the wall with vertical metal bars, at which you ordered a drink. Vincent the bartender was happy to talk with us and said he couldn’t wait to get home to tell his parents that he had been talking with ‘the white man’. We were glad to brighten his evening without threatening the security of the place.

We securely locked up the bikes and went to bed ready for a short trip to the Cameroon border in the morning.

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