“A major disadvantage of taking this route is that you must pass through awful customs officials who demand stiff matabribes (bribes) and often delay travellers for hours on end.” (Geoff Crowther: Lonely Planet, Central Africa 1991)

The information might have been twenty years old, but it was still accurate. In hindsight I’m not sure which was more of a hassle: leaving the Central African Republic, entering the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), or leaving the first town in the DRC? We were, as I feared, delayed for hours.  Read more... (2034 words, 3 images, estimated 8:08 mins reading time)

Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South America or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map (but they all look like that) I would say ‘when I grow up I will go there’. (Joseph Conrad)

My entry into the Congo has been delayed by a Japanese construction company here in Bangui.  They’re helping to build schools – eleven of them I think. One week down with the job and another to go.  Read more... (325 words, 1 image, estimated 1:18 mins reading time)

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” A traveller who has just arrived in a new country where everything is new to him is held up by the difficulty of making up his mind” (Andre Gide: Travels in the Congo)

I continue to keep a hand-written journal of my journey and may include a few more of these excerpts as blog posts over the coming months. Here are several entries from the last 10 days.

02/02/11: Distance cycled 44km.

Location Godeambole:   04°04.274N  016° 05.157E

Judging by the colour of their clothes I had a good idea what the road ahead was like. And they were in a vehicle. The tohelandback duo, two young English guys I’d briefly met in Yaounde, who are driving around Africa in a sponsor-emblazoned Land Rover, met us for lunch and kindly donated their dust masks before wishing us well for the road out of Bertoua.

They were welcome gifts. Once we passed a rare sign post showing Bangui, Central African Republic’s capital to be 841km away, the town’s tarmac soon ended. It wasn’t long before we disappeared into a cloud of red dust, then another, and another, and so on.  Read more... (707 words, 6 images, estimated 2:50 mins reading time)

Should you want evidence that central Africa’s jungles are being destroyed I highly recommend driving between Douala and Yaounde in Cameroon. Actually I don’t recommend driving, even less so cycling. Just stand on the roadside, but not too close, and observe. This is a highway dominated by trucks. Trucks transporting enormous tree trunks – their 20-metre long trailers loaded as they hurtle towards you and the coast and empty as they journey back towards what remains of the continent’s equatorial rain forests. It’s a sad and scary sight, these speeding monsters helping to bleed Africa of its lungs, but it’s been going on for years and seems unlikely to stop or be reduced any time soon.  Read more... (755 words, 5 images, estimated 3:01 mins reading time)

Up until quite recently I’ve not given much thought to how I will cross Central Africa. By bicycle obviously, but on what roads and through which borders and countries.? There aren’t many roads, which kind of simplifies things, and those shown on maps are probably no more than muddy tracks through the jungle. Not so simple.  Read more... (1648 words, 3 images, estimated 6:36 mins reading time)