After an eventful final day on the river that left me utterly exhausted I was hoping to catch up on a bit of sleep, but having crashed out at three in the morning I was woken up at 6.30 by the police who, somewhat mystified, wanted to know who I was and what I was doing asleep in a strange boat on the banks of the river.
I blearily explained in terrible French my expedition, and while they understood what I was telling them I don't think they could really understand why someone would do that. They were friendly though, and as we walked upstream to the police station to do the usual registration, they asked me what my plan was. I was really only on the edge of Stanley Pool, still 10km or so from downtown Brazzaville, and I hadn't really thought about what was next. One option was to drag the boat along the shore, against the current and carry on once I was past the flow of the main river; another was to just hitch a tow from someone going in that direction. The decision was made for me when one of the young lads dispatched by the police with a motorboat to bring Thundergun Express up to the police station clumsily crunched into the side, snapping the axle and rendering her undriveable. Looking at her, with one paddle wheel hanging off at an unnatural angle I should have felt at least a twinge of sadness - this boat had been my transport, my home and my source of entertainment for the last two weeks - but I was just too exhausted to even care.
Conveniently, I was made an offer on the boat almost immediately. The wife of the police captain asked if I wanted to sell it, and I said yes so long as the price included a ride into town. We agreed, and after I had forced down some bread and sardines bought from the local shop, we were back out on the water, this time going considerably faster. While it was nice to be making speedy progress, I was glad that I hadn't opted to use an outboard for the whole trip. I really enjoyed the forced slowness of my expedition; gave me time to really look around, and also just time to chill out, read and relax. When my normal routine is to be constantly on the go, this was a welcome reprieve.
For some obscure reason, there was some minor problem with my paperwork that meant I had to go through a tedious rigmarole at the port. I was still shattered, and unloading in the blazing sun while 20 people stood around gawping and getting in the way was really fraying my temper. I eventually managed to get my bike and all my luggage off the boat, only to find that I now had to go to another police place a couple of kilometres away to see the chief there. I threw my stuff in a taxi, and then followed the policeman from the port to the other police station. The people there didn't seem to know quite what to do, and I was left on a sofa while they went off and discussed things. Being a Whelan, I promptly fell asleep and had to be woken up when the boss arrived. He explained that I shouldn't really have the one year visa extension I paid for in Oyo because that was a work visa and I was a tourist (or something like that) and that it would have to be annulled, but that they would do that when I left [as it turned out when I collected it a few days later they had done nothing at all with it]. He also said that the route I was planning to take (to DRC via Tombo) would not be possible as it was rife with Ninjas; not the Japanese assassins but the Congolese rebel militia who continue to cause trouble in the Pool region. Frankly, I was too tired to give it much thought but I made a mental note to do some digging.
I loaded all my gear very slowly onto my bike, and headed for a hotel recommended to me by the Canadian couple in Bomassa. They had no rooms, but I could camp in the yard for free. Fine by me. I had some food, pitched my tent and then after ambitiously having two beers instead of stopping at one crashed out, dead to the world.
When I was back in Oyo, the mechanic I saw there had said that the problem I had with the bike was not one that he could fix as he didn't have the part, so he gave me the number of a friend of his in Brazzaville. I called this guy up, and arranged for him to come and have a look. I did this with the help of my new friend, Aristote, an English student from DRC who had 'helped me' at the port and was back the next day. In fairness, he actually was quite helpful - we went out to the shops to pick up a few things and he helped me find them, but later on, just before the mechanic came he blotted his copybook. He asked to borrow the keys to 'warm up the engine'; I thought he was just going to run the motor in the carpark for a bit, but then when he disappeared off down the road I was slightly more concerned. When the mechanic arrived an hour later and he still wasn't back, I was decidedly worried. If he was just warming the engine he should have been in about ten minutes, so what had happened? Had he been in an accident, been detained by the police, or worse made off with the bike? Rather than just hang around waiting, it was time to go Starsky and Hutch and track him down ourselves. The mechanic and I flagged down a taxi, hurriedly explained the situation and then screeched off. My suggestions were to try the hospital and the police, and the mechanic had a few contacts of his own to try. We drove out along the main road, the mechanic with his phone pressed to his ear giving rapid fire descriptions of my bike. Just like in most of the countries so far, my bike is very distinctive and soon we had our first lead. The taxi driver swung the car around and we made a beeline for our contact. The bike had been seen heading into town so we followed the tracks, the mechanic still ringing people and hopping out to talk to people as we went. Despite our early leads, the trail soon went cold. We stopped to talk to some policemen and checked with them but they hadn't seen anything, we went to the hospital but no one fitting the description had been admitted, and we had called everyone we could think of. We were fairly sure the bike was in the city (as there are toll booths at either end), and I didn't get the impression that the guy was a tea leaf, so what had happened? We soon found out.
We got a call from the hotel saying that he had returned, and so feeling relieved we made our way back. Despite asking questions, I never really got the full story so I'm still not completely clear on exactly what transpired, but at some point my friend had dropped the bike (the rear brake pedal was bent as were the handlebar protectors), but worse he had completely knackered the clutch. The bike had gone from having a minor suspected problem with the injector to being unrideable, and he had had to push it back to the hotel. The mechanic was unimpressed, but said that it was something he could fix, so he put a bodge fix in to allow him to take it back to the garage and we arranged to meet him there the next day.
True to his word, the bike was back up and running and I was able to set off again the next day. Despite not paying for accommodation at the hotel, I had invested heavily in food (most notably two consecutive evenings of gigantic Vietnamese buffet) and I was feeling a considerably more fortified than when I arrived. I retrieved my passport and set off early in the morning for DRC.
The road was good all the way to the village of Boko, and I was able to see the rapids beyond Brazzaville that had prevented the early Europeans from venturing deeper into the interior. In Boko, I even found a guy who was a former student at the University of Essex and we had a conversation in excellent English (his not mine). However, after Boko, things got tough.
The tarmac disappeared and was replaced with deep red dirt roads. It had clearly rained not so long ago as at any low points in the road, the earth was a thick cloying clay that jammed up my tyre treads and left me sliding around as if I was on slicks. Despite being cautious, I was finding it difficult to stay upright (partly I suspect because it had been the best part of a month since I did any challenging riding, and partly because with every fall my confidence was knocked just a little bit more). However, the sixth fall was by far the worst. Having been helped up by a passing local just minutes before, the thick mud, deep ruts and overloaded bike sent me sideways again. This time however, my leg got caught by the pannier and instead of just sliding out and away from the bike it was twisted backwards with a sickening crunch. I shouted out, partly out of the pain of having a quarter of a ton of motorbike and luggage land on my leg, and partly out of sheer frustration that this had happened. I was in big trouble. This was not a busy road, and there was no way I would be able to move the bike by myself from my current prone position. The prospect of trying to wrench a potentially broken leg free from under the weight of the motorbike was not appealing, but neither was lying in the blazing sun for an indeterminate amount of time. My mind began to race through what tools I had and what options were available.
Just at that moment though, I heard a sound to lift my spirits, that of a scooter coming the other way; the guy who had just helped me earlier had heard me shout and turned around to come to my aid. He managed to lift the bike off my leg and I tentatively dragged it out, worried about what state it would be in. This was the make or break moment - if my leg (or ankle, or knee) was broken, I would have a tortuous ride to the nearest hospital and might well have to abandon my trip before I had even completed the first leg; if I had escaped serious injury then I could potentially (and carefully) continue onward. I sat on the side of the road for a few minutes, then gingerly tested my leg. I was able to move it, and while my ankle and knee were both sore as hell it didn't feel like anything was broken. I decided that I would press on, and my new saviour, being the type of good samaritan I have had the fortune to meet several times on this trip here in Africa, opted to ride with me to make sure I made it safely. We took it very slowly, but were making steady progress towards the border village of Tombo. The roads had got slightly less muddy, but this had been replaced instead with huge ruts, a foot or more across and twice as deep, snaking lengthwise down the roads. While cautiousness can be good, a certain level of confidence is required on a motorbike to tackle difficult terrain; hesitate and you could stall and fall. I was wavering on the edge of the minimum level of confidence needed but getting by until I spooked myself by looking too hard at the 6 foot gully at the side of the road and ended up wedged in a rut in the middle. In itself this wouldn't have been a problem, but as I tried to ride the bike out the power disappeared. The engine was revving but nothing was moving - my clutch had gone again! The two of us pushed and pulled but to no avail. Up a steep hill, wedged in a rut, this was more than a two person job. The silver lining was that we were only a kilometre from the village, so my friend set out to get some help, while I hid in the shade. Soon, like the magnificent seven, over the crest of the hill came my reinforcements. Even with so many of them (there actually were about 7) it took a lot of effort to push the beast out of the rut and up the hill. It seemed unfair to get them to push it all the way to the village so I tweaked the clutch and managed to get enough grip to ride slowly into the border town.
I stopped off at the customs checkpoint, and while the police were doing the usual formalities I peeled off my boot to have a look at the damage. It wasn't pretty. My ankle was swelling up fast and taking on a distinctly purple hue. By this time it was three in the afternoon, and while the village on the other side (in DRC) was only 11km away the roads were apparently bad and my ankle was throbbing. Rather than risk it I asked if there was anywhere I could camp up for the night, and not only did the police let me camp up next to the police station they also gave me dinner!
The next morning, I considered my plan of attack. My ankle was not really better, but it could be several days or even a week before it was back to normal. I was out of Congolese money, and running low on food in a village without much in the way of places to buy more. My clutch was bodged but was unlikely to last much longer, and fixing it in DRC could take a while in country where I only had 7 days of my visa left. I needed to move. While I had been told that the road ahead was bad it hadn't rained now for a couple of days so, deciding to take my chances, I strapped up my ankle and set out into the Democratic Republic of Congo...
Conveniently, I was made an offer on the boat almost immediately. The wife of the police captain asked if I wanted to sell it, and I said yes so long as the price included a ride into town. We agreed, and after I had forced down some bread and sardines bought from the local shop, we were back out on the water, this time going considerably faster. While it was nice to be making speedy progress, I was glad that I hadn't opted to use an outboard for the whole trip. I really enjoyed the forced slowness of my expedition; gave me time to really look around, and also just time to chill out, read and relax. When my normal routine is to be constantly on the go, this was a welcome reprieve.
For some obscure reason, there was some minor problem with my paperwork that meant I had to go through a tedious rigmarole at the port. I was still shattered, and unloading in the blazing sun while 20 people stood around gawping and getting in the way was really fraying my temper. I eventually managed to get my bike and all my luggage off the boat, only to find that I now had to go to another police place a couple of kilometres away to see the chief there. I threw my stuff in a taxi, and then followed the policeman from the port to the other police station. The people there didn't seem to know quite what to do, and I was left on a sofa while they went off and discussed things. Being a Whelan, I promptly fell asleep and had to be woken up when the boss arrived. He explained that I shouldn't really have the one year visa extension I paid for in Oyo because that was a work visa and I was a tourist (or something like that) and that it would have to be annulled, but that they would do that when I left [as it turned out when I collected it a few days later they had done nothing at all with it]. He also said that the route I was planning to take (to DRC via Tombo) would not be possible as it was rife with Ninjas; not the Japanese assassins but the Congolese rebel militia who continue to cause trouble in the Pool region. Frankly, I was too tired to give it much thought but I made a mental note to do some digging.
I loaded all my gear very slowly onto my bike, and headed for a hotel recommended to me by the Canadian couple in Bomassa. They had no rooms, but I could camp in the yard for free. Fine by me. I had some food, pitched my tent and then after ambitiously having two beers instead of stopping at one crashed out, dead to the world.
When I was back in Oyo, the mechanic I saw there had said that the problem I had with the bike was not one that he could fix as he didn't have the part, so he gave me the number of a friend of his in Brazzaville. I called this guy up, and arranged for him to come and have a look. I did this with the help of my new friend, Aristote, an English student from DRC who had 'helped me' at the port and was back the next day. In fairness, he actually was quite helpful - we went out to the shops to pick up a few things and he helped me find them, but later on, just before the mechanic came he blotted his copybook. He asked to borrow the keys to 'warm up the engine'; I thought he was just going to run the motor in the carpark for a bit, but then when he disappeared off down the road I was slightly more concerned. When the mechanic arrived an hour later and he still wasn't back, I was decidedly worried. If he was just warming the engine he should have been in about ten minutes, so what had happened? Had he been in an accident, been detained by the police, or worse made off with the bike? Rather than just hang around waiting, it was time to go Starsky and Hutch and track him down ourselves. The mechanic and I flagged down a taxi, hurriedly explained the situation and then screeched off. My suggestions were to try the hospital and the police, and the mechanic had a few contacts of his own to try. We drove out along the main road, the mechanic with his phone pressed to his ear giving rapid fire descriptions of my bike. Just like in most of the countries so far, my bike is very distinctive and soon we had our first lead. The taxi driver swung the car around and we made a beeline for our contact. The bike had been seen heading into town so we followed the tracks, the mechanic still ringing people and hopping out to talk to people as we went. Despite our early leads, the trail soon went cold. We stopped to talk to some policemen and checked with them but they hadn't seen anything, we went to the hospital but no one fitting the description had been admitted, and we had called everyone we could think of. We were fairly sure the bike was in the city (as there are toll booths at either end), and I didn't get the impression that the guy was a tea leaf, so what had happened? We soon found out.
We got a call from the hotel saying that he had returned, and so feeling relieved we made our way back. Despite asking questions, I never really got the full story so I'm still not completely clear on exactly what transpired, but at some point my friend had dropped the bike (the rear brake pedal was bent as were the handlebar protectors), but worse he had completely knackered the clutch. The bike had gone from having a minor suspected problem with the injector to being unrideable, and he had had to push it back to the hotel. The mechanic was unimpressed, but said that it was something he could fix, so he put a bodge fix in to allow him to take it back to the garage and we arranged to meet him there the next day.
True to his word, the bike was back up and running and I was able to set off again the next day. Despite not paying for accommodation at the hotel, I had invested heavily in food (most notably two consecutive evenings of gigantic Vietnamese buffet) and I was feeling a considerably more fortified than when I arrived. I retrieved my passport and set off early in the morning for DRC.
The road was good all the way to the village of Boko, and I was able to see the rapids beyond Brazzaville that had prevented the early Europeans from venturing deeper into the interior. In Boko, I even found a guy who was a former student at the University of Essex and we had a conversation in excellent English (his not mine). However, after Boko, things got tough.
The tarmac disappeared and was replaced with deep red dirt roads. It had clearly rained not so long ago as at any low points in the road, the earth was a thick cloying clay that jammed up my tyre treads and left me sliding around as if I was on slicks. Despite being cautious, I was finding it difficult to stay upright (partly I suspect because it had been the best part of a month since I did any challenging riding, and partly because with every fall my confidence was knocked just a little bit more). However, the sixth fall was by far the worst. Having been helped up by a passing local just minutes before, the thick mud, deep ruts and overloaded bike sent me sideways again. This time however, my leg got caught by the pannier and instead of just sliding out and away from the bike it was twisted backwards with a sickening crunch. I shouted out, partly out of the pain of having a quarter of a ton of motorbike and luggage land on my leg, and partly out of sheer frustration that this had happened. I was in big trouble. This was not a busy road, and there was no way I would be able to move the bike by myself from my current prone position. The prospect of trying to wrench a potentially broken leg free from under the weight of the motorbike was not appealing, but neither was lying in the blazing sun for an indeterminate amount of time. My mind began to race through what tools I had and what options were available.
I stopped off at the customs checkpoint, and while the police were doing the usual formalities I peeled off my boot to have a look at the damage. It wasn't pretty. My ankle was swelling up fast and taking on a distinctly purple hue. By this time it was three in the afternoon, and while the village on the other side (in DRC) was only 11km away the roads were apparently bad and my ankle was throbbing. Rather than risk it I asked if there was anywhere I could camp up for the night, and not only did the police let me camp up next to the police station they also gave me dinner!
The next morning, I considered my plan of attack. My ankle was not really better, but it could be several days or even a week before it was back to normal. I was out of Congolese money, and running low on food in a village without much in the way of places to buy more. My clutch was bodged but was unlikely to last much longer, and fixing it in DRC could take a while in country where I only had 7 days of my visa left. I needed to move. While I had been told that the road ahead was bad it hadn't rained now for a couple of days so, deciding to take my chances, I strapped up my ankle and set out into the Democratic Republic of Congo...
