DRC - Cabinda - Congo (Brazzaville)

After a quiet Christmas at the Catholic mission in N’Zeto, Angola, the German travellers we met in Luanda (Christian and Jessica) joined us and we set off along difficult roads out through the north of Angola and down into the Congo basin. We would be travelling up the west through the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Cabinda and The Republic of Congo to Gabon. Each of these countries has their political problems but it is isolated to certain regions, which we planned to give a wide berth. Even so, all four of us were pretty nervous as everyone describes this section as the difficult part of the great west-coast Africa driving trip, what with terrible terrible roads, oodles of red tape, trigger happy rebels and unpredictable police. In fact, it is this section of the trip that persuades overlanders to ship their car direct from Namibia to Ghana or to travel through East Africa instead.

So we were pleased to have some good company lolloping behind us in the shape of a vintage 1966 fire truck. Jessica gave me a tour, displaying continuing incredulity as to how much they could carry. In the cab there was an old work surface strewn with cooking debris and a buckled old gas burner (one ring working - the other defunct) and a long bench with a soft mattress and countless indian throws and blankets.The back wall was plastered with foreign banknotes and postcards from Asia and Africa and, cut out of the centre, a circular hole into the rear of the vehicle. There, apart from a single mattress which they slept on together, they stored bags of secondhand clothes (to sell at markets) and countless economies of scale including a hundred-odd toilet rolls. In the very back they carried two 200-litre oil drums filled with cheap fuel from Angola (along with the two on the roof and the two original tanks underneath they can carry 1000 litres in total!). On the back sat their spare wheel and a motorbike they were given in India (maybe in exchange for one of the dozen bikes they took to sell there).

After our first bushcamp together by the side of the road we hit the quiet Angola/DRC border at lunchtime on the second day. This was a mistake. Immigration was eating his lunch but the customs guy was not there at all (our vehicle carnet needs to be stamped in and out of the country) so we had to wait for two hours. Over on the Democratic Republic of Congo side of the border, a melee of rat faced boys and little men in oversized suits quietly hustled you as you went by. Once the formalities had fully satisfied themselves we finally caught sight of the mighty Congo as it snaked down through steep green hills to Matadi. After northern Angola, where nothing seemed to happen, suddenly there were people selling a hundred different types of fruits and vegetables, meat and fish cooked and uncooked and the place buzzed with cars and music, even the police were friendly and helpful. We immediately relaxed and began to feel that all our plans were possible. That night, we had beers in a trucker’s bar and ate something from a food stall that wasn’t mammal, fowl or fish. Maybe crocodile. Maybe turtle.

The next morning we crossed the river on the Matadi bridge (the only road bridge along its entire length), left the Congo behind and twisted down the Boma road; gigantic feathers of bamboo arching over the partially pot holed tar road. At an immigration check in Boma I dealt with the officials whilst Jackie checked the car. From a distance I watched Jackie being surrounded by local men as she pulled up the bonnet of the car. Without a greeting or an offer to help they simply stared. This seemed too much for our Bee who suddenly snapped, gesticulating wildly in her stripy low cut top.

All the blogs we had read in preparation for this stretch had left us with the impression that the road from Boma to the Atlantic coast is ‘hell on toast.’ Why does everyone make such a fuss? Well, it was good at first and then the road started to change: there were a few potholes, then a few more, then a giant one filled with crude oil! Then the road descended into nothing more than a truck track through open fields, the ruts dug deep and the earth between them a struggle for our clearance. And the villagers! We were shouted and scowled at all down the road until eventually we got stuck in the worst one yet. The dry road got suddenly very wet and with me shouting left, left, left (I most certainly should have said ‘Right’), I directed Jackie down into a deep grey mud hole. The wheels span and span and we sank.

Immediately the villagers surrounded us. On the driver side they spoke French, were from the DRC, and asked us if they could help us; on the passenger side the Portuguese-speaking members of the village stood and laughed, both at the attempts to free ourselves and at the Frenchies who tried to help. Of course we knew that the firetruck wouldn’t be far away so we refused help before a price was agreed without our understanding and the menacing commenced. One guy tried to pull the spade from my hand and another knocked it away from where Jackie tried to dig. ‘Arête!” she demanded as her stripy top sank lower and lower. Christian eventually caught up and pulled us out with the mighty red Fruerwehr.

At Muanda, the coastal oil-producing centre for the DRC, civilisation recommenced and it was populated with people going about their daily business instead of standing by the side of the road pointing and laughing (as a break from staring at the moon). We got a little lost but Alberto of the Muanda International Oil Company, Ltd drew us a great map and off to the north we drove (with unintended detours to oil pump 545 and 764 respectively).

Jackie said it would take four hours to pass from the DRC into Cabinda (the Angolan oil rich enclave between the DRC and the Congo) but after the DRC side took only 20 minutes, I was confident that we would make it to the yacht club in Pointe Noire that night. But Immigration were having a New Years Eve party out the back of their swanky new offices and we were not invited - Bom Fete! So this, combined with the usual immigration dastardliness, meant that we had to sit and wait for them to deal with our passports. Three hours and forty minutes later we finally got our visas. It’s not the beaurocracy that I dislike as much as Jackie being right again. It’s so dull.

So we drove on into Cabinda City and, having lost Jessica and Chris somewhere around a huge fuel station queue, we drove out of the city to try to find them further north. A few kms out we were stopped at a police block which was run by one plain-clothes chap and fleshed out by three uniforms and four soldiers. They were all drunk so I took the usual Burley approach to Central African police, i.e. pretend to not understand any French once a soldier or a policeman has asked you for alcohol. ‘Je n’ai comprend pas,’ you say, smiling nicely whilst your brain is shouting –‘Firstly, I am not paying any bribes, not even a beer. Secondly, I don’t have a fridge and/or carrying any warm beer and thirdly, you shouldn’t drink on duty and you’re drunk already’ etc… After dodging all the requests I followed the plain clothes officer over to his office (which appeared to be in a bombed out building from Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket), where he wrote our passport details down in a ledger whilst singing a song in the style of Daffy Duck.

I noticed that our German friends were not in Daffy’s ledger and so we turned around and returned to Cabinda City. We met the firetruck coming the other way and stopped at a local place for a beer or three, it was New Years Eve after all. That night we stayed at the Catholic Mission and Jessica and Chris shared their Vodka plus a small bottle of Champagne whilst we watched the city fireworks fly up over the top of the mission walls.

The next morning we had to run the gauntlet of post-holiday policemen and Daffy Duck and his assorted cronies were still on duty and still drunk. They complained that we had shouldn’t have returned to Cabinda City the previous night. We acted dumb and I followed him back to his ledger and listened to him make more duck noises as he transposed our details once again.

When we finally arrived at the Cabinda/Congo border we realised our mistake - trying to cross from one country into another on New Years Day. It was half day closing. Not just the shops or the bars or the food stalls but the countries as themselves. Closed. We managed to get stamped out of Cabinda but the Congo boys were not letting us in and besides they were half cut already. They offered to let us continue to Pointe Noire that night on the condition that they keep our passports and we return for them the next day. Not likely. Would they even remember us? Eeek, No! So we kept our passports and slept on the border, drinking in the one bar/whorehouse still open. The ladies were so nice to us that the following morning Jackie felt compelled to walk past two sets of border police to give them a returnable ‘Gintonic’ bottle she had promised to bring back the night before.

Next morning we drove across the no-mans land/refuse dump to the Congo immigration officer who proceeded to ask me complicated questions that I couldn’t follow. It turned out that he was asking for beer, and he continued to do so for 15 minutes despite his female colleague distracting him with seemingly endless photos of her grandchild dressed up in Christmas clothes. Next was customs. ‘Ou est le Chef?’ we enquired. He will be here soon, the other customs officer replied, cracking open his first crocodile beer of the day. 90 minutes later the Chief turned up with his rubber stamps and our vehicles could progress into The People's Republic of the Congo (immediately we noticed the change - out went the western artillery, in came the Kalashnikov).

A good tar road took us to the yacht club in Point Noire where we stayed for two nights. On arrival, I was so pleased with our journey that I felt compelled to film the beach. I had only just taken the camera out of the bag when I felt a hand on my shoulde and turned to see a soldier who said simply ‘I strongly recommend that you stop filming.’ I put the camera away. Congo is not really for tourists despite people referring to you as such (as much as ‘Les Blancs’). But we ignored the soldiers and for two days we enjoyed the relative sophistication of Pointe Noire with its attendant restaurants, shops and air-conditioned patisseries.

Then we were on the road again. Out of the city the wrong way (my fault) and concentrating very hard on finding the correct road north and not carrying on to Brazzaville along the so-called 'rebel road.' We knew the road we wanted wasn’t really a road but just the latest dirt piste made by the logging companies to get their vast quarry out of the forest. We stopped at a roadside bar for a beer and to ask directions, and we asked at the innumerable police blocks (not drunk and definitely not rebels) but always seemed to get inconclusive information. This was obviously a worry but after following logging trucks north through a 100kms of fantastic, full-on, deep-green tropical rainforest (what they haven't cut down yet) we started to relax. Then all we had to do was concentrate on finding somewhere to camp, which meant getting off the road and out of sight lest we get moved on by the forestry commission, hit by the constant flow of fully laden logging trucks or attract the attentions of mobile bandits/rebels/drunk soldiers. Our first bushcamp was poor, the cars went by all night disturbing our sleep, but the second was lush and well hidden. Shame it started to rain, panicking Chris and Jessica into moving onto the road in the middle of the night for fear of getting stuck.

At the Congo-Gabon border the immigration officer came round from the back of his hut, pulling a Hawaiian shirt over his singlet as he came. Within the confines of the small lean-to the air sat heavy with the humidity and great wafts of palm wine came at me as he shuffled our passports around his desk. But he was functioning and friendly too, fixing me with his bloodshot eyes as he smiled and shook my hand.

And at the border we saw our first overlanders since leaving Namibia five weeks earlier, one German in a Landcrusier and two English motorcyclists. Mike’s new BMW was faring a little better than Chris’s older bike but both were having far too much fun and were determined to drink beer and tell us all about it. It was at two in the afternoon that we made the local bar/shop’s day by ordering our first beers, it was late in the evening when we found ourselves still there so we slept at the border. Jackie and I pulled old Connie up in front of Immigration, the Germans in front of the bar and the English lads had pride of place at the police shack. Bring on Gabon and its deserted beaches.

Photos
There's a goat on the firetruck!
The only road bridge over the Congo
The Boma road's pot holes
Once again we were glad it wasn't raining
Oil pump 764
Gintonic!l
Logging bridge
Bushcamp
Germans, Congolese and Brits