Wallis On Wheels Big Bicycle Adventure

Procedure on entering Gabon:
Show border policeman my passport for visa check, when he’s happy he sends me over to the immigration officer who fills-out a registration form, when he’s content it’s back to the policeman for second check. Now I’m free to go…almost. 100m down the road an officer at a small police station re-checks my visa and registration form. Handing back by papers, without any eye-contact or sign of ‘welcome’, well come on, these people are power-hungry god like figures, just too high ranking to make visual at a working-class peasants like me. Cycling away from god I thought the procedure to be slightly different to normal but assumed the registration form accounted for this.

The day’s destination was Bitam, about 30 miles (56km) from the border, but unfortunately, the wet-season decided otherwise. Reaching the tiny village of Ewong the heavens opened big time, thunder, lightening and a rapid drop in temperature. Fortunately I found shelter, some sort of communal ‘meeting-place’ just off the road, all latter villages had these. Five minutes later a young lad joins me, along with his, as most children have, machete. Half an hour later with it still raining hard a lady comes over with a bowel full of bananas, hands them to me, turns and walks away, then a few minutes later a young boy appears with some thick, 1m long cane sticks, bemused I said ‘merci’ he then walks away. Question-mark faced to the youngster I soon found out what they are, sugar-cane. With his machete he professionally strips the outer skin from one and shows me how to deal with them, bite off a small piece, crunching with front teeth to compress and force the fluid out and then spit the waste out. Western kids would love these, there twice as sweet as the sugar cubes. I now call them energy sticks (His machete is on his right).



 With the time approaching 4:00pm and still raining I decided I’d pitch the tent in the shelter for the night, the locals seemed friendly enough but then someone else appears. I explain my intentions and Barnum says I can sleep in his family house. An excellent start to a new country.





 The road continued as much the same style in Cameroon, good tarmac, an abundance of greenery and little traffic. Having to head to the capital for…can you guess?..the next visa, I had two possible routes. I could follow the main road, which would mean going considerably south, crossing into the southern hemisphere, then heading north-west, back into the northern hemisphere again or at the town of Bibas I could take a right-hand turn onto a (quote Michelin) Partially improved route that drops south-west. This was shorter, and as crossing the equator will be a hugely momentous point in my journey going back across it a day later would seem like a back-ward step so no further uncertainty, the partially improved route won the vote. The map close-up shows the route, across some mountainous terrain but it’s hardly the Pyrenees, surely? (the crosses indicate where I stayed each night) The equator is the horizontal line toward the bottom.




This was the first picture of the route, reasonably bump-free gravel terrain. Considering it was the wet season it appeared ok, with about 200 miles to go if it had been boggy mud I would have turned around pronto. It reminded me of service roads that are found on some sections of the mountain-bike trails in Wales, just wide enough for one vehicle to pass.






 My concern now was food, or lack of it, previously shops and road-side café’s were always ‘just around the corner so I usually carried enough for two days. But here, all that was around the corner was another big hill.


At the end of day one I stopped at a village to use the water-pump and asked a man if I could pitch my tent in the shade of his house, with an inevitable ‘oui’ (yes). As I started erecting it up he implied I set it in his house, a barn style building. Alagee is shown, along with his machete. (I was going to buy one as I felt out of place without one!)

 

 No, it’s made from Cassava. A large potato like plant but much much bigger, more like a marrow. This is made my removing the skin, then chopping into small pieces and then pounding with large club-like mallets in a big trough to produce a fine granular substance. Then it is placed onto a large leaf, wrapped as shown, tied with vine and cooked for several hours. Small villages make, and sell these to other surrounding villages and make reasonable income. They keep for a long time, and like potato are full of carbohydrates, quite chewy and do take getting used to, but when choice isn’t on the menu.

 

Due to there [normal] availability and ease in carrying, baguettes had become a big part to my daily diet for breakfast and lunch, but here all the villages were sold out. With Sam being the next town of any size I kept my fingers crossed. With about 25 miles before I reach there, about 3.5 hours on this terrain, my stomach wasn’t happy. Asking at another village for baguettes they said the normal, my face must have spoke volumes, as the man said to wait, 2 minutes later he returns with about eight bananas, and wanted nothing for them, there’s always a saint in every village. Being in forest / jungle like terrain I’d seen banana tree’s dotted all the way along the trail, some with bananas waiting to be picked, but without the long cane hook-tool to get them all I could do was drool.

Eventually reaching the town of Sam disappointment wasn’t too far behind me, In comparison a quant Cornish village would look like a city! Ok, I wasn’t expecting a TESCO size supermarket but the shop had bugger all, including bread. All I could buy of any use was a tin of corned beef, washed down with a tin of sweetened condensed cream, and on it’s own is disgusting, the only advantage that it’s full of sugar.
Refusing to be confronted by defeat and always remaining optimistic I cycled, and pushed, onward. That night I reached a village called Ben-Doulou. Implying to some locals in their communal ‘meeting-place’ (sun / rain shelter) that I would like to sleep the night here they directed me to the village chief’s house. Briefly before getting there a Toyota pick-up stopped and asked if I was ok, I said yes and asked if there was a boutique (shop) where I could buy some baguettes, or any food, he said no but had about thirty in his vehicle, and gladly gave me two, refusing money for them, another saint. At Ben-Doulou I learnt how to tell which house in any village is the chief’s, it always has a flag pole, along with the countries flag. So going over to see him, with an interpreter my needs were explained, as always, a warm show of kindness, no need to even pitch the tent, they had a spare bed that was briefly prepared for me, and later a dinner of rice and meet, along with litre carton of red wine for the interpreter and myself. Later the heavens opened again, thunder, lightening and fat rain that would have been deafening in the tent!

Looking at the map picture there is a larger town (denoted by the black dot). Medouneu would definitely come up trumps, after all, there’s even an airport. This was 31 miles away. Thinking I may take a short day there and re-coup a bit, but would decide once I got there. With the past few days food in-take being reduced even more so than before my body was feeling it, I was just being driven by the desire to get to Libreville, any side-ways deviation to this thought and I think I’d loose-it, I had to stay focused, any cracks in the wall of positivity would soon allow that grey cloud of negativity to erode the foundations. This was proving hard, bloody hard, certainly good training for any army / marine personnel.

Thinking the show was over there was more to come, he now wanted me to join him at the immigration office 100 metres away. Walking over with him we then waited for the top-dog to arrive, when he turned up there was some argument between them, voices raised, shouting and screaming, quite entertaining. So finally into the office he inspected my passport and the registration letter. Top-dog made a few phone calls to Libreville and then said I would have to stay here the night as there was a problem, the problem being my passport had not been date-entry stamped, an error not seen by three (3) officials at the entry border, and assumed by me to be substituted by the registration form. As I was thinking about having a short day it was no real problem. As I went to unlock my bike though the junior-dog said I had to leave my bike here at the immigration office. I shook my head and said “No, that’s just not happening. Those bags contain all my present worldly possessions and things I need, so the bike is NOT staying here. Final” He shook his head and implied all would be ok. “I said ok or not, I need those things and the bike is coming with me. Simple. You have my passport, I’m hardly going anywhere, am I?”. Knowing he didn’t understand me verbally my body language said it all. He appeared out of his depth and ran in to see top-dog, then came out and said “Oui, ok”.

The night was spent in town’s groggy little motel, managing to knock 40% of their asking price as it looked like it closed down 10 years ago. The reception had bare empty shelves and cupboards, not even a pen on the desk, just years of dust. At least the short day gave me some time to clean the bike down a bit. In the evening top-dog came to see me with an interpreter and find out why I was actually in Gabon. Explaining everything and showing him the route so far he appeared content and even gave a smile. He said to return at 8:00 in the morning and their ‘glitch’ on my passport would be resolved.


The following morning he said I’d pass a police check-point 67km away and wrote a letter explaining matters for the officer there who would stamp my passport. I found it strange that this immigration office, at the Equatorial Guinea border did not have such a stamp, yet one that is mid-way down a road, 67km from the border did.




With road improvements in place for a big football event in Equatorial Guinea next year I passed a road-works team just packing up for the day, the foreman said to follow him to the village and I could sleep there. The compound had various buildings, one of them being a storage room, complete with 4 new mattresses
 

















Just over a day later the main road to Libreville re-appeared. It felt good to be back on tarmac, with a reasonable pace the miles ticked by nicely and the city soon turned up. It turned out to be quite a modern, clean and tidy city, courtesy of the oil industry. In fact it gets the wallisonwheels “Africa’s cleanest city so far award” Here I stayed at a CoushSurfers house for five days while I waited for my Congo Visa.







Having mastered the art of acquiring a village bed for the night accommodation was never too far away, if I passed through a reasonable village at 4:30’ish I’d ask where the village chief’s house was and soon offered a bed for the night.

On my map the route after Lambarene was shown as ‘partially improved’ but to my surprise turned out to be surfaced for another two days riding, with teams of Chinese road workers busy improving the route. At the town of Ndende the immigration office stamped me out of Gabon but I spent the night pitched under the immigration offices car-port shelter.


The next day the Gabon / Congo frontier edged slowly closer, my only real concern was what the first road of Congo would actually be like. With the map showing quite clearly a change in route, from the red / white section of Gabon into a mauve section for Congo, of which implied a distinct change in road condition, the maps key / legend did not even list or give a description for a mauve road. I chose this route as it was the most direct, heading south-east to Dolisie and then east to Brazzaville, the countries capital.