Still stuck in the Congo (Waiting for a visa)

I was so busy writing about mud in the last entry I forgot to say anything about the country! Not at all as expected, when people think of either of the Congos they normally think of war, corruption, poor infrastructure and chaos. After crossing the border we passed though some small villages receiving the most frantic waving yet, I thought some of the kids were going to fall apart they were waving so violently. As soon as the shouts started people poured out of their houses to take a look and wave as we drove through. Most amusingly we entered one village to be spotted by a child who started screaming "Touriste, touriste" (French African accent required). The customs post was really beautiful, in the middle of nowhere and everything built from natural materials, not a sheet of corrugated iron in site. Officials were friendly and chatty.

Brazzaville has been most unexpected, apart from the manic driving, it's a calm, peaceful city. Probably my favourite capital so far in Africa. Hippocampe was well placed and we walked everywhere, people were friendly and helpful, and we had no problems with officials at all.

We had a few more days at Hippocampe sorting things out, we got the car fixed and greased and had a few other chores. We had been regretting our decision not to get the Angolan transit visa in Abuja for a while. Our hopes had been raised slightly by Roy and Michelle who said it was now easy to get it in Brazzaville, we heard otherwise at Hippocampe.

For those who don't know, the Angolan government likes making it really hard to get into the country. The only places to reliably get a visa in Africa north of Angola are Abuja in Nigeria and Matadi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Even then, unless you wait three weeks for a tourist visa you only get 5 days to travel 2000km on bad roads, very few people manage. We still had Matadi to go through before reaching Angola, unfortunately the DRC immigration at the Kinshasa ferry terminal don't let tourists into the country without proof of onward travel, for example, an Angolan visa. We bypassed the visa in Abuja hearing that the problems on the DRC border were over, but apparently not. So, we now couldn't get into the DRC without an Angolan visa, and couldn't get an Angolan visa without getting into the DRC. We thought we'd try our luck at the embassy in Brazzaville. We dressed in our finest clothes (such as they are) and managed to get through the door which is apparently a feat in itself. They asked for a letter explaining what we wanted and why, various photocopies and three passport photos each. We provided all this that afternoon, sat in the reception for an hour or so, with Florian who'd volunteerd his portuguese skills, only to be told they'd call us to let us know if we could apply for the visa. we weren't holding out much hope so switched to plan B. We would create a fake shipping receipt, saying we would ship the car and ourselves from Matadi around Angola, directly to Namibia, therefore no visa required. After a bit of work and internet plagiarism we had a beautiful shipping receipt. Peter, another overlander, who had just thrown his worldly possessions in the back of a pickup after finishing a contract in Algeria and started driving south happened to have a printer with him which was handy, so we worked together to produce something that looked vaguely official so we could try and cross the border with Florian and Sarah the next day.

The Brazzaville - Kinshasa ferry is infamous for its chaos. We arrived at the port and everything was incredibly disorganised, it seemed to take us forever to find and finish the formalities required to leave the country. Eventually the ferry docked at Brazzaville, hundreds of disabled people started rushing through the gates, some being grabbed by the police and dragged back, others being hit with sticks. I believe that disabled people travel for free on the ferry, so they are used for all the imports/exports between the two countries. I have no idea why there needs to be complete chaos when they disembark however.

We sent my mum a text saying we were trying to cross and asked her to get in contact with the British Embassy in Kinshasa to brief them and see if they could help if there were any problems. They said to just give them a call, so it was nice to know we had a backup plan. We'd tried the consulate in Brazzaville, they said they wouldn't be able to help until Monday, today was Wednesday - I hope no one ever requires urgent help from them.

Eventually it was our turn to get on the ferry, Hannah was evicted from the vehicle and for some unknown reason had to walk onto the boat. The ferry was still being unloaded from the trip over, at the same time as being loaded for the coming journey. How does this work?! I think the English are inherently bad at the African 'queuing' system. The guy guiding me onto the ferry was getting angry that I wasn't just driving through crowds of people, I was just a little concerned about killing someone. Slowly but surely we crawled through the chaos and onto the ferry. Once on things were much calmer, safely locked in the car. The ferry set off and we were on our way.

The journey across the mighty Congo river itself was fairly painless, then everyone started pushing towards the front as we neared Kinshasa. Surprisingly, Kinshasa seemed much more organised with people slowly disembarking while being whipped by a policeman. Hannah and Sarah were once again evicted from the cars (but escaped a whipping), then passports and carnets were requested and promptly disappeared in different directions. Flo and I were left on the boat with the cars wondering where our passports, carnets and girlfriends were, all three fairly important components of the trip. We were eventually led off the ferry and into parking spaces. I got out the car and Hannah walked over "I've already been asked about Angola". The visa was the first thing they looked for when we arrived. Florian and Sarah had their visas so they were ok.

Florian and Sarah started the very slow immigration process with a grumpy looking man in a mustard shirt, in the meantime someone walked into the office asking if anyone had jump leads as the chief's car wouldn't start. Willing to try anything to get into the country I volunteered myself, jump leads and car (though possibly not the best plan given that Stanley himself had had to be jump started that morning). Hannah started our immigration proceedings without me, I returned to the office to find the shipping receipt being scrutinised by the chief. They clearly found this mysterious boat they'd never heard of slightly confusing. We explained how it would all work, we'd avoid Angola and didn't need a visa for Namibia, they eventually seemed to accept it. Hannah was slowly winning round Colonel Mustard and he was now smiling. He then disappeared with passports and our shipping receipt, the phone number on the receipt was wrong so they couldn't check it, although I suddenly realised they could phone Matadi port to check if the boat existed. I started to get concerned they might be doing just that. The door opened, two policemen were standing there with serious faces, then smiles broke "Bonjour", they were looking for the chief and left. It felt like this was taking forever. Eventually Colonel Mustard returned, handed passports to Florian and the shipping receipt to Hannah, "C'est bon". I breathed a sigh of relief, we were in!

Next step was the now famous disinfectant scam. All foreign vehicles entering Kinshasa port have to be "disinfected" at the cost of $60 per vehicle. This is all incredibly well done, and clearly set up by someone quite high up. They all have nice uniforms, even an office in the port, books of regulations and price lists. Frank, who we'd adopted / had adopted us to help us through the border was an absolute legend. He'd been helping us every step of the way and sprung straight to our defence. Still, there was a big steel gate between us and the outside world and we were going nowhere until an agreement was reached. We decided to try the British Embassy, Frank sorted us a phone and I called them, the phone was answered in a perfect British accent, "I'm sorry, there is nobody available to take your call right now....", that wasn't going to work. After lots of arguing we eventually agreed on $40 per vehicle as we really just wanted to get out of there. Just as they started spraying the vehicles they asked if anyone was asthmatic. I had asthma as a kid and saw an opportunity here, they conceded they couldn't spray our vehicle. Fantastic I thought, that saves some money. No, we still had to pay apparently, but it was alright they said, they'd give us a receipt as if that was the most important thing. What I hadn't realised was that Flo had already gone off to hand over the money. We just had to accept that the money had gone to the big black hole of African corruption as we really wanted to get out of there. We'd already spent 8 hours crossing the border (with just 40 minutes of it actually crossing the river) and just wanted to settle down somewhere for the evening.

The following day we left Flo and Sarah in Kinshasa and headed towards Matadi, hoping to get our visa application in that day as it was a Thursday, and the weekend was fast approaching. We arrived at the Angolan consulate in Matadi shortly after 3pm, the Chief had left at 3pm so we couldn't put our application in. We asked if it was possible to get it the same day on the Friday. It was possible, but it's not the secretary's decision so he couldn't promise anything. We were told to turn up at 9am the next day with various photocopies and a letter requesting the visa. The weather closed in overnight and we returned in the pouring rain at 9am as requested, the guard said the secretary wouldn't be in till 11am. We sat in the car for a couple of hours playing rummy, returning to speak to the secretary shortly after 11, he was now there. It was still possible that we could get the visa today, but the ambassador hadn't come to work because it was raining, she doesn't like getting her clothes wet! A few hours later with the rain still falling we were told we couldn't get the visa and would have to return on Monday. This was annoying for two reasons, firstly we'd have to spend the weekend in Matadi, and secondly we would now miss the arrival of Hannah's brother in Windhoek - the deadline we've been working towards for the last month.

We were staying at a convent in Matadi, camping in the courtyard. All very pleasant, except on the Friday morning we were evicted at 6:30am as the kids were turning up for school. We returned that evening requesting to stay another three nights due to visa issues, they told us of some people who stayed for two weeks. On the Saturday morning we weren't evicted, although despite being a Saturday the kids still turned up for school. I guess they'd been told about us and the fact we were English as they kept walking past saying "Hello". They then got a little more brave and a few of them started saying "What is your name?", and "How are you?". I think this was the limit of their English however, and after half an hour of being asked the same questions over and over by the same kids it got a little tiresome!

Monday eventually arrived with a blazing sun, we got to the embassy at 8:45am, the secretary was in, but no sign of the chief yet, 10am, 11am, eventually at 11:45am "madame" turned up. In the mean time we'd made friends with the gardener who used to work on a British ship, and therefore spoke pretty good English. He kindly offered to get us some pawpaws. Eventually at 12:30 we were called into the office, got asked the usual visa application questions, and then the names of parents, all our brothers, sisters aunts and uncles - what do they do with this info?! We were then told we wouldn't be able to get the visa today and would have to return at 11am tomorrow.

We returned to the convent asking to stay another night, a little annoyed to say the least! Cheered up slightly when the gardener, Alfonse, from the Angolan embassy turned up with all the pawpaws we'd forgotten to get off him earlier, all seven of them! We had some to be eaten as you or I would normally eat a pawpaw, and some "green pawpaws", which we were told to use in the same way we would a potato. We'd had storm clouds brewing to the east every night in Matadi, we'd been clipped a couple of times, but the clouds tonight were looking a little more threatening. Alfonse said it was going to be the last rain of the year and rushed off as we listened to it slowly approaching over the roofs of Matadi. Yet another truly spectacular storm flooding the entire courtyard at the convent, and as we left the sunroof open it flooded Stanley too! That night we made a curry with fried green pawpaw, it was really quite tasty.

Tuesday came, we got to the embassy at 9am hoping they might be willing to give us our visas, no, we had to sit and wait. Madam was clearly up a little early, she dragged herself in for 10:30am. Eventually at 11:45 we were called into the office and our passports were returned with visas. We were cheered up slightly on seeing we actually had 6 day visas starting today, so with half a day lost we'd still have 5.5 days to rush through Angola rather than the 4.5 we'd been expecting. I do wonder why we had to wait 5 days for a sticker to be stuck in a passport and a couple of dates to be written on it.

We rushed out the embassy, into the car and set a course for Luvo, where we'd cross to Angola. Apparently the road is much better than the one from Matadi. May the great race across Angola begin.

Um Bongo, Um Bongo, we're stuck in the Congo

We arrived in Franceville, spent a day sorting ourselves out, washing clothes and preparing for the trip into the Congo. We'd been dreading the roads over the border as the wet season was drawing to a close, assuming they'd be terrible mud. Roy and Michelle, who we'd met in Nkambe has said there was nothing to worry about, they were sand and quite a fun drive, so we were a little more optimistic. Our guide book described the area as a cool, dry plateau, this sounded really quite pleasant.

The plan was to spend a night in Leconi, then zoom over the border, hoping to get as far as Oyo, then the following day set a course for Brazzaville. Everything went exactly as planned, as far as Leconi anyway. We had an incredibly uncomfortable bed that night, so both lay awake listening to the torrential rain hammering down on the roof all night long. Relieved it was sand and not mud we set off with the sun breaking through the cloud. Wet sand is better than dry sand as it's firmer, so we thought all the rain might even be a good thing. Tarmac quickly turned to sand as we left Leconi, eventually reaching the Gabon border about an hour later the sand turned into beautiful new tarmac, with a T-junction showing a sign to Leconi, 26km away down the new road. Kicking ourselves for taking the old road we went through the border post back onto the sand and into The Congo.

The going was slow but steady, some deep ruts and puddles but Stanley was taking it all in his stride, for a while at least until we went to drive through one puddle and the front left wheel dropped into a huge hole, we were then going nowhere. Out came the high lift jack and sand ladders, but before we'd got too involved we heard the distant rumble of a diesel engine. A Gabonese truck turned up, we threw them a tow rope and they dragged us back out of the puddle. With 45 minutes lost and the road being slow we were starting to doubt our chances of getting to Oyo.

We reached the Congo immigration post, a classically slow African border post where three different people have to all spend a long time writing down exactly the same information. We asked how many hours to get to Oyo, they looked at the car and said four or five, so still doable we thought. Once everything was done one of the policemen asked us for a lift to the next village, 45km away, where we'd have to go through customs. We cleared half the back seat, and the policeman, another woman and child all piled in. The road started to get worse, churned up wet sand with deep ruts created by the big trucks that mainly use this route. The sand had also become finer and more mud like causing further problems. Struggling for clearance it was only a matter of time before the car was stuck on its belly. So, stationary with all four wheels spinning off the ground out came the recovery gear again. We eventually got the car out of the ruts and on the ridge while being pestered by some amazingly annoying flies, another 45 minutes wasted Oyo was looking very unlikely.

We reached the village, dropped off our passengers and did the customs thing. Our first request for money since Togo, and only our second since Senegal. After a brief discussion Joel seemed happy to take our email address instead. He then went to search the car, but seemed to forget about that too when I reminded him I had to write down our email. We set off again, Joel said we wouldn't reach Oyo today as the road was "Disastrous". We were immediately stumped by a bridge that had been washed away, one lorry that had tried to go over the submerged remnants of the broken bridge and destroyed his wheel, another had tried to go through the stream to the side and got stuck. The second lorry was in the process off being rammed by a large digger to try and get it moving. On seeing us they immediately decided that we were the answer to all their problems and should tow the truck out. Not too surprisingly, Stanley was unable to tow a huge truck our of a river while driving up a steep sandy hill. My suggestion that they fix the bridge, get the digger over it and get that to tow the truck out was shrugged off, so we wandered off to have some lunch and the digger went off to get more help.

After lunch I decided I'd go and explain to everyone loitering around how to fix the bridge so we could get moving at least, even if everyone else was still broken or stuck. They agreed to help if I paid them, the planks were far too large for me to move on my own so I had a brief argument with them about how I'd tried to help them without asking for anything, but they weren't willing to help me in the same way. We eventually agreed on a packet of cigarettes, we'd bought cigarettes to help us with sticky situations and had just used one pack to buy some fish in Mali so far. Everyone sprung into action, and within five minutes the bridge was in a useable state - we were on our way again, joking about what the next problem would be.

A few minutes down the road we found the next problem, the digger that had gone to get help was sitting stationary in the middle of the road, "Un autre probleme?", I shouted to the guy standing on the digger. "Oui, la transmission". I looked down to see the drive shaft hanging out the bottom of the vehicle into the mud, he was going nowhere soon, there was a mechanic on the way apparently. To one side of him the mud looked far too deep and waterlogged for us to get through, the other side was a tight squeeze, although also waterlogged there was a dry bank we could use for traction. We went for it, a fine balance between slipping off the dry bank into the mud, and going too far up the bank and the car rolling. We had it perfect until a few metres before the end when we slipped off the bank and rapidly ground to a halt for the third time that day. There were trees around this time, so out came the winch. None of the trees were particularly large however and after uprooting the two largest we decided that wasn't going to work. Another truck then turned up, but the road was now totally blocked so there was no way he could get through in front of us to tow us out. Back to jacking, digging and sand ladders, we now had an army of Congolese drivers working on getting Stanley out. Then we heard a distant singing and chanting coming down the road, it was a group of mechanics to fix the digger. There was a good atmosphere while everyone worked together to sort out the stranded vehicles listening to the distant rumbles from another storm. After well over an hour of jacking, digging, rocking and sand ladders Stanley started inching forwards, slowly escaping the suction from the mud, eventually breaking free and back onto a dry patch. We exchanged email addresses and I threw them all a packet of cigarettes to cheers of approval. On our way again, with the sun setting and just 80km covered in 9 hours we certainly weren't going to reach Oyo so we pulled off the road for the night instead.

We lay in the tent listening to another night of rain, getting up and moving at 5:45am the following morning expecting the worst we returned to the road. The rain was still pouring down and the whole road was now a swamp, it truly was disastrous. We battled on through, rapidly gaining mud driving experience we soon learnt how important it was to keep momentum - we were moving ok. We reached the bottom of a valley and were faced with a 25m long puddle, waste deep gloopy mud in places, there was no way we could get through. We tried looking for paths off the road but the trees were too thick, so back to the puddle. After careful analysis we decided that the ruts were too deep and we'd ground our belly, they were also more silty and would provide less traction. There was one ridge that was much firmer and only about knee deep that I reckoned we could drive along, a deeply sceptical Hannah reluctantly agreed to help mark out the position of the ridge with sticks so we could try and use it. With everything in place a large truck appeared the other side of the puddle, they wanted to charge through first to show us it was ok, probably destroying the ridge that was our only hope of making it, then we could go. It was also useful having them the opposite side of the puddle to tow us if we got stuck. Eventually they agreed to wait for our delicate approach before they charged it. Slowly but surely, we crawled across the puddle balancing on the underwater ridges, making it across without a problem. The truck driver then looked at me, smiled and slammed his food down on the accelerator and they charged on through as fast as they could. Passengers clinging for dear life to the back and sides.

We chugged along taking two hours to travel 8km to the next village where we stopped to ask the police the way. After another immigration session we set off again with news the road from now on was better. It was better in places, and worse in others, but still generally terrible. We fought on through deep mud and water for most of the day, only getting stuck once. We eventually reached a village about 30km from Oyo at about 4:30pm where we saw a flat, grey surface with white lines down the middle. Thinking it was a mirage at first we went a bit closer, it really was smooth new tarmac. We set off to find a hotel with a shower in Oyo. Yes, the hotel owner assured us, the shower does work. Unfortunately he neglected to tell us that there was no running water, but hey, it was a nice idea. A bucket did the job.

The two days of difficult driving did however serve a purpose. Not only did they massively improve our mud driving skills, the road also provided a scenic point for us to stop and enjoy an Um Bongo (while being eaten alive by sand flies), and as everyone growing up in the UK in the 80's will know, that's what they drink in the Congo. (For anyone not in this age bracket, see www.umbongo.com for the TV advert from back in the day). We brought 5 cartons, but with a 40% fatality rate on the bad roads only 3 made it to the Congo.

The tarmac continued to Brazzaville, where we joined the hoards of overlanders at Hippocampe. Stanley was in desperate need of a wash. The lack of two front fenders meant that he was barely recognisable, and we attracted even more stares from the locals than we normally do. We found a lavage where we joined the queue of beautifully clean and shiny Congolese cars waiting to be washed, and enjoyed the look on the washer's face when he saw our car. Stanley has never had quite such a thorough wash, and two hours later we fitted in perfectly with the locals (almost) in our shiny car.

Next was the problems with the car, we noticed a clunking on the way back from the car wash. Back to swinging violently on the car to track down the cause. A bush on one of the shocks had totally disintegrated, fortunately we had a spare. We got that fixed and started looking into the horrible noise the brakes had been making since we left the mud. Brake pads had almost completely disappeared, so with the help of Florian, another overlander at Hippocampe we set about changing them. Three wheels fixed, I got to the last one and one of the pads had been completely destroyed by the mud, the result was the brake disc had been destroyed. So with more parts tracking and work hopefully we'll have that fixed soon and be on our way!

Into the Southern Hemisphere

After a couple of days dodging taxis in Yaounde, we had Gabon visas and set off towards the border. The taxis in Yaounde were terrible, dented, yellow, un-roadworthy scraps of metal zooming all over the place as if they owned the city, we were glad to escape. Out of the cities however it's been delightful, once we'd cleared the terrible roads near the Nigerian border we unexpectedly had beautiful smooth tarmac pretty much the whole way, snaking through the hills and forests of Cameroon with almost no other cars on the road. Such a pleasant change after Nigeria! As we knew was likely to be the case, we were stopped regularly by the police to tell us that right-hand drive vehicles are illegal in Cameroon. Fortunately we had our argument prepared and on telling them that it's fine for tourist vehicles in transit, most of them seemed happy enough. No idea whether this is actually true or not but it seemed to work!

Cameroon has been the first country in Africa where we have seen clear evidence of huge commercial farms. Mile after mile bananas, rubber, pineapple and palm nuts. Fields of tea stretching over the hills round the ring road and at the base of Mt Cameroon. I was very excited to have my Tole tea in Limbe in the morning, then drive past the Tole plantation later that day! The shops even stock packaged Cameroonian products such as tea and coffee. Most packaged products in shops usually come from Asia or Europe, even things they should be able to easily produce locally are shipped in from Indonesia or China.

The wet season peaks in May in Cameroon and April in Gabon, so we joked we'd be due to hit the worst of it on our journey across the border, and we did. The first time we'd had to drive through torrential rain, to arrive at a flooded hotel in Ebolowa, we had no electricity or running water due to the storm (We should have gone somewhere else on hindsight). Another hassle free border, customs was very quick the Cameroon side as the officials were playing a game and the guy dealing with us had to get back to it.

Across the border we headed for Oyem where we planned to stay the night. Accommodation is notoriously expensive in Gabon so looking for a cheap option we pulled into the Catholic Church. Approached by Victor, the local bishop, we asked if we could camp, "No problem", was the response so that was us sorted. We got out our table and chairs and he asked if we'd mind if his family joined us, so we all sat down and had a chat about the trip. Victor asked if I liked beer, and promptly sent a boy off to buy one, I figured I should probably pay so when the boy returned I gave him some money, and he went off again and came back with another two large beers. After a couple of glasses Victor started insisting that Hannah and I went to meet his mother, so we were marched across town to meet his mother and visit his fathers grave. On the way back he said we should go into a bar for some more beer as his father was there, we decided that we probably shouldn't be plying the local bishop with any more beer at this point and persuaded him to return to the church. Much to Hannah's dismay he told us that his dogs would guard us all night so we'd be very safe (Hannah dislikes dogs), and very obediently, they did, sleeping next to the car all night.

Setting off the next day, with the Equator just a few hours away the countdown to the southern hemisphere started, stopping for the obligatory photos at the sign. We carried on south, and it seems Gabon only makes good roads in the northern hemisphere, as it rapidly deteriorated then turning to dirt road again for the long drive to Franceville.

Gabon is one of the wealthier countries in Africa and relatively stable being run by President Bongo for the last 40 years, a great name, and an "exceptional man" if the posters at the border are to be believed. It is very rural, a similar size to the UK, and has a population of just 1.4 million. Once we started heading east towards Franceville the country just seemed deserted, few signs of life other than the road.

Bongo, being persuaded that ecotourism was the future turned 10% of Gabon into National Park overnight in 2002, in a country where no parks existed before. This has been the first country we've seen any sign of mammalian wildlife outside of parks since Mali - the Muslim north has an advantage as Muslims don't eat bush meat. Since then we've seen an amazing variety of dead wildlife for sale at the side of the road, from rats and snails to deer and monkeys. It's been good to see living monkeys and antelope again in Gabon. We had a night of unofficial camping in the Lope National Park in a quarry where we watched a troop of monkeys dance through the trees as we sat down for our evening tea.