Road to Luango

I knew my planned alternative route to Louango had the potential to become quite a trek, but just how hard it was to get there and then back to the main road I could have never imagined.  Even the ferrry from Libreville to Port Gentil, turned into a mission, and that was supposed to be the easy part.

Ferry to nowhere

When I booked the ferry I was very specifically told a few times to be there at 8 am sharp.  Ouch.  So much for a lie in, but I was keen to get moving so I even set my alarm clock to make sure I’m up on time.  When I arrived at the port the next morning their whole story changed, the ferry was now only leaving at 7 that evening and they increased the fare for my bike massively.  Not a good start to my day, but I managed to haggle them back down to a reasonable price and  now had a whole day to kill.  Very frustrating when you actually want to be on the road, but I had odds and ends to do so the extra time came in very handy.  I was told to be there at 5pm, to give time to load my bike and learning from that morning I arrived around 6.  I thought I learned my lesson about African time, but I was way out.  They only just started to load up the boat and it wasn’t until about 9pm that I finally managed to load my bike and go on board.  The boat was chaos,  there was sitting place for about 30 people, but more than 60 passengers.  Everyone was scrambling around for the little space available.  I was getting ready for a very uncomfortable night out on the deck when one of the crew came looking for me.  It was a guy from Ghana who I chatted to while waiting to load up.  To my great surprise him and his brother cleared a berth in the staff cabins for me to sleep in.  How nice can you be?  My expected night of discomfort turned into relative luxury, with my own bed and two guardians fussing over me. Whoop whoop.

The warm seats

During the night I discussed my route to Luango with my two Ghanaian friends.  To my great dismay the said the road I wanted to take didn’t exist anymore.  Port Gentil is one of Gabon's biggest port cities, but there is no road access in or out of town.  WTF?  I was basically traveling to the equivalent of an island.  They did say I had some options to get off Port Gentil.  There should be a ferry going to Ombou (closest town to Luango), there maybe one to the next port on the coast, Gamba, and there might be some smaller boats ferrying goods to Ombou.  Plan Z was to get on the same ferry and go back to Libreville, would hate to do it, but at least I had a couple of backup plans.  I would be a bit stuck in Port Gentil but the situation wasn’t hopeless.

Sand, Sand and even more sand

Arriving in Port Gentil things started to go wrong straight away.  I couldn’t get off the ferry.  The immigration officer was a sourly, angry man and as soon as he saw my passport he blew his top.  He was extremely unhappy that I didn’t have a Gabon visa.  No matter how hard and nicely I tried to explain that South African citizens don’t need a visa, he just wouldn’t see the light.  The idiot even took my passport and made me stand in the corner, waiting for him to finish.  Like I was some naughty school boy about to be punished.  In the end my new Ghanaian friends came to the rescue.  They found out what happened and went and spoke to a police friend of theirs.  He quickly set the sourly guy right, and I got my passport back.  PHEW!  The sourly guy even made an half hearted apology.  It’s good to have a some guarding angels.

Like any  pig headed explorer I wasn’t read to give up on my planned route.  I promised my Ghanaian friends I would head straight for the ferry port, but before I did that I had to give the non existent road a try.  I gave myself 2 hours to see how the conditions where and then I would reassess.  They turned out to be so right.  The first part of the road was nothing more than deep, loose sand with dozens off small tracks branching away.  I came so close to getting badly stuck. Again and again.  I also had no way of knowing which track was the right one.  I would pick the whatever looked like it was rideable and going in the right direction.  Whenever I met up with some locals I would then ask directions.  Sounds easy enough but people where so few and far between that I did long stretches before I could get my route confirmed.  And half the time I chose the wrong track, forcing me to backtrack big stretches on the bad sandy terrain.  After an hour I knew I made the wrong decision, but being pig headed I kept on trying.  Idiot.  After two hours I’ve only managed to do about 5km of the actual route and to put the cherry on the cake some locals confirmed that the route ends at the next village.  So much for riding out of Port Gentil.  I actually made so little headway that I was back in town looking for a boat in less than half an hour.

Ready for a sea crossing?

Looking for a boat of off the so called island turned into a disaster.  No ferries untill after the Christmas weekend, and supposedly the smaller boats aslo stopped running until after the festive weekend.  Aw man,  I was stuck in Port Gentil, and I was desperate to make it to Luango for Christmas.  Luango was my reward to myself for working so hard on the trip.  A few days of pure luxury, after 4 months of roughing it. I really wanted to get there before Christmas, but the more I asked around the more it looked like all doors where closed.

Captain of the boat

Feeling a bit dejected I stopped for a some lunch at a beach side cafe, my first proper meal in 24 hours.  While sitting there and wondering how I was going to get out of Port Gentil, I saw some of the small boats unloading close by.  They where quite small, but I decided to give it a try anyway.  No luck, everyone I asked said they where finished until after the Christmas weekend.  It was only Friday and I hated the idea of being stuck there for the whole weekend.

As I was walking away, one of the captains came to me and said he was willing to make a trip to Ombue. WHOOP WHOOP.  His boat was very small, nothing more than a fibreglass pirogue with a small engine, but his price was very reasonable and he promised to get me there before dark.  I was so excited about getting away form Port Gentil that I really didn’t think things through properly, but I was committed.  We quickly loaded the bike and set off.  The route is supposed to be 100km up river through dense forest and estuaries.  What I didn’t know is that we had to cross a big bay to get the river mouth.  It’s in this bay that I nearly drowned my bike…

Gorgeous rain forest

As soon as we left the calm water of the harbour, the sea swell picked up significantly.  Our little boat was being rocked from side to side, and my poor bike was soaking wet from the boat’s spray.  Soaking wet with corrosive salt water.  Not a clever thing to do after the problems I had with my electronics.  I could just see days of meticulous hard work going up in a puff of smoke.  I was so angry at myself for trying to do a semi sea crossing on such a small boat, but there was not much to do, I could only cross my finger and hope that the electronics would be ok.  As luck would have it things became worse before they became better.  The swell picked up even more as we headed further out and our boat started rocking quite violently.  With the bigger swells my bike was rocking even more than the boat.  We where listing so far over that the bike was threatening to fall over.  Into the ocean!! In my minds eye I could already see the newspaper articles : ‘The winner of the 2011 Darwinian awards’ is…’  I couldn’t do anything to secure the bike more either.  As soon as I tried moving on the boat I only magnified the rocking.  All I could do was watch and pray.  My only salvation was my Captain, he wasn't fussed in the slightest.  He was happily singing away while driving the boat.  The harder I tried to signal to him that my bike was trying to take swimming lessons, the more he signalled ‘it’s ok.’
 But it’s not his bike.

Sunset on the boat

In the end I did the only thing I could.  I turned around, looked ahead, and prayed my bike would be ok.  I had no choice but to trust my singing captains’ boating skills.

After what felt like an eternity we reached the river mouth and the water became glassy smooth.  I don’t know how the bike stayed on the boat, but it did and that was all that mattered.
The next few hours where breathtakingly beautiful.  We lazily made our way upriver, traveling through thick equatorial jungle.  We barely saw any other boats, and only a couple shacks every now and then.  It was only me, my bike and our signing captain lost in a mountain of jungle.  The feeling of extreme remoteness was unbelievably intense.  It looked like I was in my own episode of National Geographic.  I loved every minute off it.

Choices?

Our supposed three hour journey turned into a six hour epic.  Never believe an African when it comes to time.  Darkness came way to quickly and we finished the last half of the boat trip in the dark.  Initially I was sceptical about traveling in the dark, but my singing captain was more than happy to continue.  It looked like he knew the river very well, and seemed to anticipate the sharp turns and forks along the way. I could only trust him, so I spend the rest off the journey looking at the gorgeous stars.  It was a near cloudless night and there where no other lights for miles.  What an amazing sight. 

Creeping insanity?

We didn’t reach Ombue until about 10 that night.  I was shattered and really dreading having to look for accommodation in total darkness, but my all singing captain dropped me off at a hotel on the waters edge.  After the initial panic of crossing the bay, the rest of the boat trip was phenomenal.  Definitely one of the highlights of my trip, and I was on track to reach Luango before Christmas.  I couldn’t help smiling from ear to ear when I went to bed.

Ombue was only about 70 kilometres from Luango, and I was keen to reach it early the next day, but I first had to sort my gear out.  My bike needed a wash after the salty shower, and half my stuff was soaked.  I spend the next morning trying to dry everything and cleaning the bike.  It was less than 24 hours after the sea expedition and already the chain was starting to show rust.  I was dreading what the corrosive salt was doing to my the electronics, but as usual I could only do so much and then cross my fingers and hope everything will be.

I arrived at Loango late in the afternoon, shattered and very nervous.  It took all of 3 days intense and hard travel to reach the lodge.  It is in a very remote part of Gabon, I had no idea what the one and only road out would be like and I didn’t even know if I would be able to stay there.  The lodge caters for the well off market and is extremely expensive.  About $400 a night.  A few nights there is equal to a month’s survival money in Africa.  I couldn’t really afford it but I was willing to wing it and see if I could wangle something.  Worse case scenario I could just skip Loango, the journey there was so amazing that it would be reward enough.

Paradise!

All my worries where completely unfounded.  At Loango I met another one of my guardians.  The manager there, a South African called Wynand.  I barely started to explain my situation when he stopped me and said: ‘Don’t worry we’ll sort something out.’  Ten minutes later I was booked into Luango Lodge.  WHOOP WHOOP!!

Loango Lodge