A little diversion

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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.

When dad returned, Linz joined me with the paperwork to get some respite from the heat. We left the boy outside and went in the office to get some stamping done. It was the usual painstaking affair, African officials are the slowest writers I have ever seen, but he was friendly and we were in no rush. Once finished we resumed our chat with the lad outside and donated an English book that we were carrying, a story about motorcycle travel in Africa funnily enough, figuring it would help with his continuing studies. It was only that evening we realised he’d already helped himself to some of our luggage, from my tankbag he’d taken a headtorch, disclock, Leatherman multitool (sorry Ants, borrowed it from you and lost it!) and the big red pen we use to draw on our map.

We never leave the bikes unguarded, ever. Even when they are in line of sight we always remove the tankbags, but this day, through complacency, or whatever it was, we left the bikes fully loaded. They were visible through the window of the customs office, but we had our backs to it most of the time. Fortunately the little turd had left my digital camera, extra lens and a few other handy items. He may have had his hands in Linz’s tank bag too, but came away empty handed, obviously he wasn’t in need of moisturiser, handwash gel, lipstick, aspirin and various other girl’s handbag things! We soon got over the initial disappointment, we’ve come a long way with everything intact and it was all stuff that could be replaced. Lesson learned though, leave Linz to burn in the sun… I’ll not forget that one in a hurry.

The first 10km from Leconi was shiny new Chinese tar, then a sharp right took us into some fairly easy, hard packed sand. It wasn’t long before this became a little more tricky and Linz started to lose her temper, eventually stopping, leaving me to carry on and see how much further it was to the canyon. It wasn’t far, but with the light failing, as it always is whenever we do these things, I decided to take some photos as I figured Linz wouldn’t make the trip. Whilst I was running around with a camera Linz had dug in and made it to the canyon on her own, so in the end we both got to enjoy the start of the sunset at the canyon edge.

We were on the road, well sand, early the next day knowing we had a tricky time ahead. The sand ran for about 50km before we reached the village of Mbie, first stop in the Congo. No real problems apart from the police officer trying to convince me that I had committed an immigration offence by arriving without a hotel reservation for the capital, Brazzaville. My fine was 10,000CFA, just over 10 quid, as with all fines it was a nice round number, potentially negotiable and no receipt would be given. I explained that we wouldn’t be staying in Brazzaville, but he repeatedly tapped the cover of his rulebook, the fine must be paid. He never actually opened the magic rule book to show me the small print on hotel reservations, possibly under the same section as brown shoe tax and dirty fingernail surcharge. I decided to bring out the big guns, “Sorry I don’t understand what you’re saying, I’m English”, in the Queens best. It wasn’t long before I was allowed entry to Congo with 10,000CFA still safely in my pocket.

It was a tough day, the sand ran for around 200km, some was easy, some was tricky, some was downright miserable. Linz enjoyed it all equally and reminded me frequently how glad she was we had come on the trip, how character building it was to ride sand and how much of a shit I am. Late in the day I suggested we would blag a lift in the next town, stick her bike on a truck and have an easy ride the rest of the way. This went down a treat, Linz politely declined my offer and said she would manage just fine. I forget the exact words she used, but I gave her a wide berth for a while! We made it to Boundji by late afternoon with Linz smiling again, so after an arduous day we found the best hotel in town. At 6 quid it was good value, the rats in our room agreed, as did the cockroaches swarming over my feet as I stood to pee, I must remember my boots next time.

There was only another 50km of sand the next day and it was mostly pretty solid, so Linz was in a good mood and we hit the tar well before 10 o’clock. 450km stood between us and Brazzaville, the capital of Congo, and we weren’t sure if it was possible in a day, given the unpredictable nature of travel out here, but decided to have a go. There was a brief hold up in Oyo, a town big enough to have a fuel station, but obviously no fuel. We found the local trader who had bought all the fuel and emptied the station. He was only too willing to top up our tanks for a good percentage above the pump price. Progress was good throughout the day until we were on the outskirts of Ngo, near the Lefini National Park. The road was potholed and I was following a taxi who was swerving maniacally around the broken tar surface. In my mirrors I could see Linz following suit and we continued for a short way until the taxi driver jumped on the brakes and I had to squeeze hard to stop from hitting the back of him. As I stopped I could hear somebody shouting behind me and it was getting louder, quite quickly, then BANG! My bike jolted forward and I turned around to see Linz on the floor, she hadn’t seen the taxi’s brake lights and being unable to stop in time had hit the back of my bike, but not with much speed. The bikes were fine, but Linz was a little shaken, this was the first time she’d fallen on a tar road. Fortunately she was only doing around 3mph, so there were no injuries.. she had only fallen over because through heavy braking the rear of the bike had risen up to the point she could no longer reach the floor! Linz’s frustration with small legs/big bike continues.

We made it to Brazzaville and with the help of a friendly chap called Yannick, found a hotel for the night. We were only here for one evening, tomorrow we would be on the ferry to Kinshasa, the capital of the other Congo (DRC). A hot shower and a good nights sleep in a hotel were in order before the 7 day run through DRC and Angola. Yannick returned later in the evening with his sister and English speaking older brother, Yvan. We explained our trip and chatted about Congo, life in Brazzaville and the ferry we would be taking the next morning. The brothers promised to arrive early the next morning to help us negotiate the infamous Brazzaville port, we were too tired to argue and figured it wouldn’t harm to have a helper or two and they seemed like genuine people.

They were true to their word on Tuesday morning and the four of us were at the port before 09:00. I left Linz to entertain the hobos, bums, touts, potential husbands and drunken officials while I went off with Yvan and Yannick to arrange safe passage to DRC. Passports were eventually stamped and I found the customs office on my own and got the bikes sorted. Final job was tickets, wildly varying prices were quoted but I ended paying 22800CFA all in for me, Linz and the two bikes, I’ve no idea if this is good or bad but it seemed fair enough. Yvan and Yannick were a little bemused, they had no idea how much hassle we receive as tourists in a place like Brazzaville port. They were kind hearted but a little naive to the myriad of hustlers all vying for the last few CFA I had to spend. We loaded onto the ferry, down a conveniently wet, metal ramp, including a small flight of stairs.. obviously they have bikes down this way all the time. Linz didn’t struggle though, five blokes carried her bike and allowed her to walk on the ferry safely, the same five that watched me struggle single-handedly. Fairly soon we were chugging across the brown and fast flowing River Congo to our 15th country and the single most feared destination on our trip. DRC has a pretty grim reputation, but many had trodden our route before and we would only be hanging around for a couple of days, “Linz, it’ll be fine”, as I’m fond of saying.

By chance I had spent the crossing befriending another Brazzavillois chap who offered to help me in the DRC port. Yvan and Yannick hadn’t hassled us for money and my new acquaintance seemed equally genuine. He took me to all the right places to get the right stamps and soon we were just waiting on the bloke at immigration to hand back our passports. The bloke in question was about Linz’s height, bespectacled and dressed in a Pierre Cardin suit, he’d left the label on the sleeve so I could see and be impressed by his high quality attire. I wasn’t actually that impressed as I sat sweating the last few millilitres of fluid in my body onto the white plastic garden chair in his shitty little office. We were approaching the 2 hour mark, which is nothing compared to the Gabonese border, but the heat was stretching the day already. Linz was once again outside baking in the sun and I was sat watching a self-important official spell my name incorrectly on yet another worthless sheet of immigration kindling. Pierre Cardin eventually stood up and beckoned me to follow him, we seemed to be heading out towards the bikes, so I asked him if everything was okay. I could see that Linz had been joined by a rather well built security bloke and Pierre was heading in his direction. Once the four of us were together Pierre said, “You cannot continue, you have no visa for Angola. You must return to Brazzaville. Go now”. I’m thinking, whoa there, back pedal a little there Pierre, you can’t just turf us out of the place with such a feeble excuse. Angolan visas are only available in DRC, at a town called Matadi, close to the Angolan border. Forcing us back to Brazzaville would achieve nothing, they will just tell us to go to Matadi. Pierre was putting us in a deadlock, we needed to be in his country to get an Angolan visa, but he said the lack of the visa was the reason our entry was refused.

At Pierre’s command, muscle bloke started to drag Linz’s bike to the ferry but he hadn’t reckoned on Linz and she bored holes in his face with her eye lasers, shouted at him and then laughed in his face as he tried to move the bike whilst it was still in gear. He wouldn’t allow Linz to touch the bike, and it wouldn’t move because he didn’t understand how to change the gear and get it rolling. Linz continued to laugh and point, obviously helping the situation, while Popeye beckoned a colleague to operate the infernal machine and I pleaded with Pierre for more information, but the more we dug in, the more aggressive they became. I tried to call the embassy but they threatened to forcibly take my phone should I continue and within a few minutes we were unceremoniously rammed onto the ferry and were trundling back to Brazzaville, unable to comprehend what had just happened.

I was angry and Linz was still red in the face, but it later turned out that 2 hours in the midday sun had left her quite badly sunburnt! We managed to get our passport exit stamp annulled by the immigration guys in Brazzaville and the same for our bike paperwork, they all seemed very sympathetic and unruffled by our deportation. We dropped the bikes and luggage back at the hotel and headed to a net cafe to find out about the Angolan embassy in Brazzaville. We noticed a post on one of the Africa forums at www.horizonsunlimited.com enquiring about Angolan visas and added a comment about our recent experience. After a meal and a beer or two, we returned to the internet cafe to send some emails and by chance paid another visit to the forum. Another user had left a message for us explaining that there were a couple of overland trucks in Brazzaville, one of which had suffered the same fate as us in Kinshasa. A phone number was included and before long we had met Tony and Dianna, running one of the trucks and after a few questions we realised the other truck was the one we had seen in Yaoundé. Tony explained that the real reason we’d been denied entry to DRC was due to violent clashes between police and a religious group in the Bas Congo region, exactly the region through which we needed to travel. The Angolan visa story given by Pierre Cardin was just an excuse to get us out of the place so they could continue dealing with the situation.

The next day we moved out of the hotel and joined the two trucks who were camped in the grounds of a local church school. It was good to meet up with the crew on the truck from Yaoundé and many beers were consumed over the coming days as we all hatched plans to cope with the apparently closed border, at least for tourists, of DRC. The DRC embassy were a bit cagey about the whole situation and unwilling to provide much detail, initially suggesting we try for an Angolan visa, or come back in a few days, or next week, or anything so that we would just stop asking questions.

Today things are a little different, the clashes in DRC have been reported on www.bbcnews.com and the DRC embassy are much more open about the situation. The border remains closed to tourists and will do so until the trouble has subsided and the area is once again safe. The ambassador obviously didn’t know how long the problems would last, but said there wouldn’t be much point hanging around in Brazzaville, it would be wise to find an alternative route. The truck passengers have found various flights to get them around DRC and Angola, since the Angolan visas are still unobtainable anywhere other than DRC. Half of them have gone, the other half will be leaving in the next few days.  We are trying to organise freight for the bikes to Namibia and flights for ourselves, but it’s slow going here and we will likely be in Brazzaville for a week or two.

 We aren’t too bothered about missing out on DRC, but being denied access to Angola is frustrating. Although it’s a frustration that will disappear into the bottom of a beer glass today as we are all intending to enjoy St. Patrick’s today in the traditional manner!

We’ll get back here once we’ve organised some flights and freight for the bikes, or perhaps once we land in Namibia.

PS We’ve uploaded a fresh bunch of photos and stuck some of them in the Escape From Yaoundé post too.

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