To get to Congo (and beyond)

From my last posting in Gamba, I continued south into the 12th and final new country of my trip: The Republic of Congo. For those of you who may make a similar trip someday, here is a rough schedule of what to expect:

Day 1

The much lighter ride back to Tchibanga

06:00 - wake up, eat, say final goodbyes to A/C, internet; mexican food and host.
07:30 - ask around in town for a ride back to Tchibanga
08:30 - miraculously leave almost immediately on the back of a truck to Tchibanga. Feel grateful that there is little luggage in the back, so sitting is possible (see last post for alternative)
13:30 - arrive in Tchibanga, nurse blisters and bruises from the ride.
14:00 - visit first hotel, decide it's too expensive, ask directions to next
14:45 - arrive at second hotel soaked in sweat. Find out it's more expensive than the first.
15:30 - arrive at third (and cheapest) hotel, bucket bath and pass out in the shade until dusk.
18:00 - venture outdoors to the nearest bar, enjoy a beer while fendng off "friendly" scammers trying to get you to buy them one.
18:08 - power cut. Sip beer in complete darkness.
19:30 - get bored of darkness, go to hotel.
19:35 - realize hotel also has no power, thus the fan in the room does not work. lay down and begin soaking the sheets with sweat. Eventually pass out.

Lunch?

Day 2

 06:00 - wake up, wander to find breakfast.
 06:30 - discover everything is closed. Eat bread and wait for lunch. read. shower.
 11:00 - go to find bus to Ndéndé. Discover it doesn't exist.
11:30 - take taxi to edge of town. Find 30 people waiting to hitch rides to Ndéndé, get in line.
13:00 - negotiate a ride with a truck. Get excited about hitchhiking again
13:15 - find out truck charges the same as the taxi, get less excited about hitchhiking again.
13:45 - finally get in truck, discover it has air conditioning. Relax.
13:50 - air conditioning breaks. Sweat.
16:00 - arrive in Ndénde. Go to cheap hotel from before
16:15 - Cheap hotel is full. Get directed to other hotel
16:35 - other hotel is expensive. Get directed to Case de Passage
16:50 - Arrive at case, look for owner
17:00 - call number on the door, wake up owner. Dump luggage in room.
17:05 - run across the street to immigration to get exit stamp for tomorrow morning.
17:10 - chat with immigration officials, wait for them to ask for bribe.
17:30 - get released with exit stamp without paying bribe. Smile. Find food
18:30 - return to case. Get invited to a drink by case owner. Oblige.
20:00 - go to bar with case owner, meet up with immigration officials and other local travelers.
20:30 - try to learn to dance. Fail miserably. Succeed in becoming source of entertainment
21:15 - turn down offers of women. Accept offers of beer.
23:45 - collapse in bed. Sleep.

Night storms in Ndéndé

Day 3

05:30 - wake up, begin search for a vehicle to the border.

09:00 - still looking and waiting for a vehicle to the border.

10:15 - find a truck, agree to a price, point out that the truck currently has a flat tire.

11:15 - leave vulcanization shop after watching tire get fixed, prepare to leave.

11:45 - make last shopping and passenger stop in Ndéndé, prepare to leave again.

12:30 - actually leave

13:15 - stop at Gendarme checkpoint. Hand over passport. No problems

13:30 - stop at another Gendarme checkpoint. Hand over passport. Watch Gendarme flip through visas and pretend to be satisfied without having found the Gabon or Congo visas or the personal information page.

14:00 - stop at border control checkpoint. Hand over passport for stamp, get asked for $20 "departure tax". Assume it's a bribe, refuse to pay. Make a scene, realize locals are paying, too. Maybe it's not a bribe. Try to get receipt. Get 3 tickets instead. Hope that won't cause future problems

14:30 - leave border control checkpoint

14:35 - stop at police checkpoint. Hand over passport. No problems.

The border

14:45 - cross border.

14:46 - stop at Congo border checkpoint. Hand over passport. No problems.

14:50 - walk to Congo customs (the guy next door). Hand over passport. No problems. Cursory bag search. No problems.

15:00 - walk to Congo police checkpoint (across the street). Hand over passport. Comment on "BARACK OBAMA 2008" poster on the wall. No problems.

15:15 - walk to Congo immigration checkpoint (again across the street). Hand over passport. No problems. Get told there are no vehicles until tomorrow.

15:30 - meet Bruce, the Congolese traveler from the car. Book a room at the hotel to share

17:00 - realize there is no food in the border village, eat sardines with Congolese beer.

17:45 - swim in border river. Hope the parasite count is low.

19:00 - crawl into bed next to Bruce. Try to sleep.

Bruce and the local brews

Day 4

05:00 - wake up, ask about a truck, discover there is none.

05:15 - go back to sleep.

07:30 - wake up, go outside, realize there is no truck. Sit in a chair.

09:00 - Truck shows up, says it will leave soon. Prepare to leave.

09:30 - truck driver is sleeping. Eat manioc and sardines with gendarmes and Bruce.

11:00 - get bored with waiting. Take a nap

12:00 - get woken up, truck is leaving

12:30 - truck actually leaves. Prepare for 10-hr journey.

Inside the truck

13:30 - truck driver demands everyone gets out. Truck turns around to go back to the border.

13:35 - begin waiting at village bar with everyone else. Watch young men play cards while little kids stare

17:45 - truck comes back. Now it's filled with jugs of gasoline. Throw bag inside and climb on top. Settle in for long ride.

20:30 - truck stops for dinner. All restaurants are closed. Eat sardines and manioc on the sidewalk with Bruce and new guy.

21:30 - truck leaves again

22:00 - try to sleep on top of truck. Realize it's equivalent to trying to sleep on vibrating wooden pallets with an occasional buck. Sit up straight again and stare forward at the road.

Day 5

03:00 - start falling asleep on top of truck again. Fear falling off of truck. Crawl inside

03:30 - finally find a semi-comfortable spot on top of gasoline jugs between other bodies. Pass out.

06:00 - wake up in Dolisie at destination. Find out the jugs were leaking and butt is soaked in gasoline.

06:15 - go find breakfast and SIM card with Bruce.

Dolisie view

11:00 - find taxi to Pointe-Noire.

12:30 - taxi finally leaves Dolisie for Pointe-Noire. Realize the bumpy truck roof was more comfortable than being crammed into the front seat with wide-hipped African woman.

15:30 - Arrive in Pointe-Noire. Eat beans and chicken with Bruce.

16:00 - Accept Bruce's help to find a taxi to Couchsurfing host's neighborhood

16:45 - realize Bruce expects to be hosted , as well. Have awkward conversation in bad French.

17:00 - Meet CS host. Part ways with Bruce.

17:15 - Arrive in air-conditioned, western-style apartment. Shower. Discover bruises and blisters from truck. Tend to rash on gasoline-soaked butt. Wash clothes. Hope the next leg of travel will be easier.

Epilogue

It isn't.

First this gendarme told us we needed to stop for the night to avoid bandits on the road. Then he bought me a beer. Then I slept on the ground and woke up covered in dust with a torn shirt.

Then I was reminded of home (and this is not an unusual sight...)

Then we got a flat tire. Then the driver drove on it.

And kept driving on it for 10km more

it's hard to jack up a van without a tire, it's easy to get it off the jack!

Then they got the van stuck in a ditch

Then we had to start walking and hitching rides on trucks

Then we hitched a ride on a truck

This is what one looks like after two days on the road between Pointe Noire and Brazzaville.

Next time maybe I'll join these British tourists in their Africa overland battle truck.

Gabonese Transport, Part 3

Near the beginning of this trip I took a bus ride in Mongolia. I described it in the blog like this:

Imagine a mechanical bull. That's right, the kind they have at those rodeo-themed bars. Ok, now imagine that you're sitting on that mechanical bull. Now, imagine that you're sitting on that mechanical bull in a closet. Now make that closet about half the size that you were just imagining. Maybe a little smaller. It's not just any closet, but more like Mrs. Trunchbull's "chokey" from Roald Dahl's Matilda. You know, with the sharp bits of metal sticking out of the walls so you can't lean against them. Ok, got it? Now, it's not just you on this bull.  It's you and your new friend, Sanjay, sitting sidesaddle. In the closet. Well, maybe it's more of a cubicle. You  can see over the walls a little bit. Now imagine that you take another 20 cubicles just like the one that you and Sanjay are in and pack them into a room of about 200 sq ft. Now put that room filled with all 43 of you on wheels. Now turn on all of those mechanical bulls. Now try to sleep. Welcome to the last couple of days of my life.

Oh yeah, and add in a puking kid, a couple of plastered old timers and three flat tires.

Since that day back in July, I´ve been bent and squeezed and crammed and prodded and strapped and balanced on all sorts of trains, planes, buses, boats, cars, trucks, motos, bicycles and even my own motorcycle for a bit. The roads have run the gamut from brand-new tarmac to a vague directional bearing across the steppe. I thought I had had some rough rides, but then I came to Gamba, Gabon.

Most sane people fly here. In fact, most of the westerners here either work for Shell (like my host), or are well-off tourists who are happy to pay upwards of $200-400/day to explore the nearby Loango National Park, so an extra couple hundred for the hours´ flight from Libreville isn´t so bad. I opted for the other route, described as a ¨route dur¨ (hard road) by locals. Psshh, no problem. I´m all about the ¨route dur¨

The vehicle

I fit behind the big blob.

When I bought my ticket, I had the option of ¨cabine¨or ¨derrière¨. Derrière was cheaper, so obviously that was my choice. I had a vague notion that this probably meant riding in the back of a pickup, but that´s not so bad. In fact, one of my best rides was in the back of a pickup in Cambodia a few years back with 25 sacks of rice, 15 dining room chairs, 2 other Americans (Dave and Elena, for those who know them), 13 Cambodians, all of our luggage, and a dog. The photo from that day actually is the background photo for this blog. On that day, however, our truck bed was slightly larger and I had just enough room to wedge my butt onto the edge of the truck, tuck in behind the cab with my center of gravity solidly within the vehicle, and hold on tight to some solid chunks of metal as we zoomed down the paved road.

In Gabon, ¨Derrière¨ means you get to share the space on a 2x6 strapped across the very back of the bed of the truck with three Gabonese dudes, grab onto whatever tarp or rubber straps you can bunch into your sweaty little fists and hope you don´t fall off the back. On the relatively smooth bits of road, that meant sitting was an option, as long as we didn´t hit any big potholes. Unfortuntely, there were very few ¨relatively smooth bits of road¨.

The Road

An hour after we pulled out of Tchibanga on the way to Gamba, we turned off of the ¨main road¨ and onto the road that ¨dances,¨ as my comrade on the bumper described it. Those of us on the back spent six hours on our toes with knees bent in an athletic, shock-absorbing position for the next six hours as we drove through some of the most loosely defined ¨road¨ I´ve seen. It ranged from bumpy dry riverbed to sloppy muck to actual currently running river:

Average bumps

Average muck

Average straight road

At least the hood is still above the water, even if the bumper isn´t...

In fact, out of all of the types of travel I listed above, there is one type that I was most reminded of as I balanced my way across the Gabonese countryside with a death grip on fistfuls of tarp: Dogsledding. It turns out, riding the back of this truck is very much like riding a light sled behind a strong team through a particularly rough portage trail, except with no handlebar or brake. One is constantly shifting weight from one foot to the other, thrusting hips from side to side to keep from falling off or tipping, and knowing all along that if a fall does happen, it might take a while for your ride to stop to let you catch up. On the plus side, hypothermia is the furthest thing from your mind, except as a seemingly nice alternative to the heat stroke that seems imminent from hours of exposure on the back of a truck in the equatorial sun.

Bridges are overrated

Occasionally we got breaks from our balancing act to maneuver the vehicle across two of the bigger rivers. One we got to bring ourselves across on the barge/raft shown above, and the other we had to wait for a larger, powered barge (which, in turn, we had to lift and push out of the mud by hand before it could start moving).

In the end, 8 1/2 hours after leaving Tchibanga, I arrived in Gamba, about 90km away as the crow flies.  The best part is, I get to do it all again on my way back! Here´s a bit of video from early on to give you a taste.

Oh yeah, and for the guys with me on the back, this is their ride to work.

"It's on like Gabon"

And then it wasn't. Then it was again.

Leaving Cameroon

When I found out that I wasn't going to be able to bring the moto to Gabon, I'd already gone through the trouble of getting a Gabon visa, and paid the associated exorbitant fees, so I was going. Conveniently, Evan and Lisa had a 5-day weekend around the same time that I was going to be heading down, leading Evan to utter the above quote before we left Douala.

Inspired by my 6-hour Gabon visa turnaround time, the plan was to go to Yaounde (Cameroon's capital), apply for Evan and Lisa's visas, get them that afternoon and cross the border the next morning. We'd then do a quick 4-day trek across the country, ending in Libreville (Gabon's capital, where I am now), where those two would fly home and I'd continue on my adventure. 

Unfortunately, international diplomacy and bureaucracy is incredibly fickle. As fickle, in fact, as the person sitting across the table from you when you sit down at the embassy. Regardless of most international regulations or any written rules (if they exist, and then if you can find them), whether or not you get a visa and how much you pay for it seems to be entirely up to the whims of the man or woman with the stamp. It was a good day for the Gabon lady when I showed up and handed over a pile of potentially useful documents (there was no list online, as the embassy has no website, and they don't answer their phone). Evan and Lisa, however, met the same woman on a worse day and, despite having far more documents than even I did, were refused the ability to even apply for the visa because they were missing one copy of a document (of which they showed her the original) that I did not even think to mention when I was there. C'est l'Afrique.

Mr. Murphy on vacay

On to plan B. Intent on a vacation, Evan and Lisa decided to head to the beach to relax for a day before returning to Douala, so we hopped on another bus (at this point I was very much missing the moto) and crossed the country again. I spent the day with them eating fish, drinking Cameroonian beer and enjoying some time with good friends in a far away place, then we parted again; I went back east to Ebolowa and the border (by bus. Again), and they returned home to Douala.

Pagne party

Solo encore

So, I was back on my own, back on public transport, and back into the uneasiness and excitement that comes with entering a new country. This border crossing I knew by far the least about, other than that I would at least be able to keep my currency (Cameroon, Gabon, Congo, CAR, Equatorial Guinea and Chad all use the Central African Franc CFA). After a quick stop in Ebolowa, where I stayed with another PCV, Annie, I hopped a bus, then a moto, then a taxi to the tiny border town of Bitam in Gabon.

Another visit to a PCV! And an example of Cameroonian buses

Since I didn't really know what to do in Gabon, I decided to spend the day relaxing and planning the next three weeks that I had in this new country. I'd heard that Gabon was more expensive than its neighbors (implying more well-off people, as well), and after seeing three or four cyber cafes in a town with only a single paved road with some side trails and a consistent supply of electricity, I was impressed. Little did I know that this would be the last time that I would see either of those things until Libreville.

Bitam. They also had people who actually came out and picked up trash!

Instead, my next week and a half in Gabon would be more dictated by the natural and village life around me than the developed, connected town and city life I had come to know in Cameroon. That being said, the expense of Gabon was not an exaggeration. 

This is how much fun I have in expensive, jam-packed minibuses.

My first stop was Makokou and Ivindo National Park, in the NW of the country. This is a park known for its jungle and the Kongou Falls, so I thought I'd try to go on a bit of a trek to see both. After overcoming the initial sticker shock, I decided to tag along with a couple of Austrian brothers, Ulrich and Clemens on a 3-day trek with the staggering price tag of $360 (This amount of money is almost equivalent to the amount I spent in my entire 3+ weeks in Tajikistan). Gabon was starting to look like Mongolia: expensive to get anywhere, expensive to do anything, hard to travel alone and especially on the cheap, but rewarding if you were willing to shell out a bit of cash here and there.

An example of a Gabonese hotel room. My back was against the opposite corner when I took this photo.I could see the neighbor's room through cracks in the boards. Still, more expensive than air-conditioned hostels in Central Asia.

The Jungle

So, after a day of exploring the city, we were off! The three of us were loaded into a taxi, brought into the park, separated from our cash, then plopped in a pirogue (dugout canoe) for our 2-hour ride down the Ivindo river, deep into the jungle.

Our guide preparing for the mini-rapids

Immediately after setting foot in our camp, our guide pointed out some elephant footprints on the shoreline. This was just the first in many sightings of sign (elephant, boar, gorilla and panther tracks and scat) and live animals (mandrills, other monkeys, a type of otter, many birds, countless species of insect, spider and millipede, and eventually two live elephants!) Here are some of the few I was able to document, along with some vegetation. I apologize to the nature photographers and artists who read this (Floris and Jess in particular) for the quality of these photos.

Elephant footprints!

Grasshopper. I should have put a finger in for size comparison, as they are equivalent lengths.

Crazy vines. This one was over a foot thick in places and felt more like a tree trunk.

La mante religieuse

Fungi! It was tiny, size of a quarter each

Panther poop!

Millipede!

Antfest. There were so many different kinds of ants in this jungle...

earthworm writhing to escape the ants (unsuccessfully) 

flowering vine

Crazy roots. Apparently they provide good shelter when an elephant is charging you.

Crazy buttress roots. Not so helpful with the elephants, but good burial spots, apparently.

Army ants in formation. The column is about 2in wide.

Gigantic caterpillar!

Part of the Kongou Falls

The platform overlooking the falls with Remont, Ulrich and Clemens

Leo, Remont, Clemens, Ulrich and I at another set of Kongou Falls

Eventually, our time for adventures was over and we had to return upstream. We settled into the pirogue for a 3-hour ride back up the river. These hours were punctuated only by shifting position to hide from the sun, occasional bird sightings, and almost swamping the boat in a few rapids. Then, just as we thought we were out of the park and back on the road, we (almost literally) ran into two elephants! One was on a marshy island in the river (pictured below), while the other was on the bank. We watched them for several minutes before their huge bodies disappeared into the seemingly impenetrable forest.

Sleepy, sun-beat pirogue-ers on the way home

ELEPHANT!!!

Back to the "main" Ivindo NP camp

Gabonese Transport, part 1

Once back in Makokou, the Austrians and I spent one last night together before parting ways (although I'll be meeting up with them again later this week when I go to Lambarene). My next stop was the town of Lope, a little equatorial village on the edge of another Gabonese National Park of the same name.

The minibus, and the roads.

Thinking that transport here would be like other places I'd visited, I assumed that I'd be able to get some sort of bus or taxi or car or train from one tourist destination (Makokou) to another (Lope). Wrong. It turns out most tourists in Gabon either a) don't exist, or b) are rich enough to drive themselves, hire a car entirely for themselves, or fly wherever they want to go. Since I surely existed and was sorely short on cash (turns out only Libreville and Point Gentil have ATMs), neither of these applied to me. Instead, I was told to take a minibus to Booue, then hop a train from Booue to Lope. Easy enough.

Pangolin bushmeat. Yes, these are endangered. Yes, the lady in the car bought it for $5.

Then I remembered that this is Africa. a 4-hour drive to Booue is actually 9+hours of finding a minibus, waiting for it to fill up, driving around town while the driver performs various unexplained errands, finally leaving, then stopping at every bushmeat salesman on the road (plentiful) so the lady in front can haggle for some illegal endangered (but delicious) meal. Once finally arriving in Booue, I figured the train would be easy enough to find. Wrong again. When I asked at the station about the next train, I was told that it wouldn't leave until the next day. Actually the next night. Actually, it left at 1am, so basically two days from now. "You want a ticket?" "No. Are there other options?" "I don't know, I just sell tickets." "Thanks..."

Just before I left to wander in search of a new taxi, a local came up to me and brought me to a couple of police officers. Until this point, all police officers in Gabon had done for me is look at my passport, try to find something wrong, then comment on all of my visas and stamps, so I didn't have high hopes for these two. In contrast, they told me to follow them over to the freight terminal and invited me up into the engine with the conductor to leave 20 minutes later on a train to Lope! Hitching trains suddenly became my new favorite form of travel.

Front row seat!

Since I've already written far too much for one post, I'll limit my description of Lope. In short, it was similarly expensive for guided tours ($60-$150/day), much less jungle, much more savannah, many fewer animals for sighting (by me), and an even tinier associated town than Makokou. On the first day I teamed up with some teachers from the American International School of Libreville (one was a friend of Lisa's) for some overrated tours. The second day I decided to head out on my own to wander some of the trails of the park. I was hesitant to go off trails (I'd heard stories of "savanna vipers") or into the jungle (monkeys are scary...), so I stuck to the ridge trails, read a lot, took a nap, and walked back out of the park around dusk as thunderstorms approached, just in time to get a long lecture in French from half a dozen park workers who were appalled that I had entered the unmarked park grounds without a guide (an unposted requirement, apparently). I arrived back at my tiny hotel room just as the deluge hit.

1500 year old rock carvings

Turtle tracks

Ogooe river

Lope National Park

Fun tracks, let me know if you identify them (finger for size comparison)

Gabonese Transport, part 2

After my 2 days in town, I was out of money and it was time to get to Libreville, A/C and ATMs. I started by heading to the train station, asking about trains (again), hearing about the 3am train (again), asking about alternate options ("les AUTRES trains...") and then a first: The police officers at the train station told me something to the effect of, "Oh, you want to get to Libreville, you don't want to wait until 3am and you don't have much cash? You should just go into town and hitchhike! The trucks come through pretty often, sometimes they'll take you for free, or a little something. They'll  have you to Libreville in no time!" Suddenly, my motivation for travel was rekindled. Hitchhiking in Africa? Done.

An hour later I found myself in the cab of a mercedes truck on its way from Franceville to Libreville. My driver was Cameroonian, so we were able to talk all about my time up there, politics, Central Africa and, of course, family. An hour after that, I found myself here:

How many truckers does it take to escape a mud pit? 11.

One truck was already stuck in the mud (from the night's deluge) and one was crippled with 3 blowouts (probably from attempted tows), my driver managed to power through the pit and come out unscathed, which was lucky because he then got to tow his partner's truck out, then the two successful trucks together towed the original truck out, who then towed the next truck that came along and got stuck out, so finally traffic could move both ways. Meanwhile, the truckers who weren't actively involved in the towing operations were rearranging wheels and spare tires on the crippled truck. La fraternite des chauffeurs

Libreville

Finally, after being dropped off at a broken bridge near Libreville 6 hours later, I hopped another two taxis into town, met with Nick and Terry, the teachers I'd met in Lope, and settled into their air-conditioned, wifi-enabled, laundry-machine-equipped, beachfront apartment. Luxury is nice, sometimes, even when it's relatively simple. I got to accompany them to their school this morning to explore and remember what it's like to get kids who aren't used to actually thinking about science to actually think about science. It was a good day.

Nick's classroom (SS/LA)

Terry and his classroom (Science)

What's next

I shall soon be leaving this lap of expensive luxury to make my way south to Lambarene, at least one other National Park, and eventually on to Congo! No telling when or where I'll find internet again, so no promises on the next post. Until then!