-John Hope Franklin-
DAY 4
Hopefully our last day dawns today with the Guinea border
and a hotel at the end of the truck rainbow.
We survived another nights bush camp with no rain, which is great for
packing the tents, even though the raincoats were wet with dew, but I have to
say I had a goodnights sleep. I did wake
during the night to a scuttling noise at the head end of the tent. I knew (hoped it wasn’t inside) and decided
to let it go, whatever seemed to be burrowing outside and under my tent, but
the little critter just continued to do whatever it was he was doing, so after
making sure that I was still alone in the tent and there weren’t any beady eyes
staring back at me, I tapped the ground and rocked the tent and the animal was
gone. Just like that and I was able to
get back to sleep no problems. I checked
for tracks this morning and didn’t see any, so I’m not sure what type of
critter it was and what he was doing.
It’s always an early start to travel days from bush camps
and it makes sense. Once the sun starts
to rise, you are generally awake anyway and if you try and stay in your tent
past 10am, it just becomes a sauna, so you may just as well get on the road
ASAP, especially after 3 nights and 3 days on the truck. It was a bonza morning, a beautiful blue sky
was emerging from some clouds, Sam had cooked breakfast for us and we were on
the road again at 7.30am. We KNEW we
would cross the Guinea border today and make Nzerekore, but the timings were a
little up in the air with it all depending on the condition of the roads. We had it on pretty good authority that once
we crossed into Guinea and got to the border town of Lola that it was tarred
from there and easy sailing for the last leg.
It was another day of ‘country’ road driving and passing small villages
that lined the ‘main’ drag into Guinea.
The roads were in no better condition and were still muddy from
yesterday afternoons rain that made it all slow going. The upside of the slowness is we get to see
more of the kids that were always ready with waves and smiles and I keep saying
this all the time, but there is something special about a smile from a stranger
that just lifts the spirits and the kids today were that for me.
At 9.50am, we made the first checkpoint of clearing Madge
out of customs, finally the elusive Guinea border was in our sights and an hour
later we made it to the actual border. I
have seen a lot of borders in my time, and this one has to rank as one of the
most basic I have seen and also turned out to be one of the easiest as we
didn’t have to get out of the truck at all for Cote d’Ivoire or Guinea. Ivory Coast’s border consisted of a small
shed looking building and then the other buildings were the local huts made
from bamboo and palm fronds dotted around the compound. It only took Zoe 10 minutes to get us all
stamped out and it was with a small wave that we left the Ivory Coast after a
great 9 days, but I think they need to spend some money on their road
infrastructure, but then I am sure they have more worthy caused to spend their
money on and hence it is the way the roads are based on that logic. We then crossed a bridge than spanned a large
river and arrived into the territory of Guinea.
Their border was also very basic with similar buildings and they had a
staff quarters that was a proper building, otherwise all local buildings
again. This process took only 20 minutes
and then Zoe and Sam were back and at 11.30am in the morning we were finally
into a new country.
WELCOME TO GUINEA.
So based on the drive time this morning, taking out all
the delays that we had yesterday with the police checkpoints, there was no way
in hell we would have made the border last night, let alone Nzerekore, to which
we still didn’t know how far we had to go to get there this afternoon. This made me feel a little better about the
bush camp last night that it wasn’t done in vain. Imagine when we drove this morning and found
out the border was only 10 minutes away?
That would be funny-well maybe next week it would be!? As it turned out it was the best place to set
up camp where we did last night as there weren’t too many other spots in that
first hour where we could have, so it was a great call all round with the EBC
(emergency bush camp).
After all the paperwork had been completed, we drove a
few meters to clear the area and then stopped to get some money changed. A new county entails a new currency and we
are now on the Guinea Franc and the rate is 6000 francs to the dollar and 7000
to the euro. Luckily I got some euros
from Patrick, which he had left over before he headed back to Australia (which
I still owe him back for-I haven’t forgotten boofhead) I exchanged a 100EUR and
in return got 700,000 francs. Holy
cow!!!! There are a lot of zeros with
this currency and you will just have to make sure that you check it all when
you are given change. I was lucky I got
my notes in 10,000 notes, Ian and Suzanne got theirs in 5,000 notes making
their bundle that much thicker. You should
have seen the brick of money that the money changer had in his hand! It was like just off the movies with
gangsters and their wads of cash. But
when you look at the amount we now had, the brick that looked like a million
dollars was actually in fact probably only a few hundred dollars’ worth. But we are now all cashed with Guinea francs,
the CFA’s that we have been using for the last 2 weeks can go away, as we will
need them again for Guinea Bissau and Senegal in the coming weeks. The other great thing with the exchange if we
have done too much, it’s okay as we come back into Guinea in a few weeks’ time,
so at the moment there was no need for a triple exchange on any money-yet.
Before we got back into the routine of the drive, as it
was nearly 12 noon, we decided to have lunch before kicking on and there was
also a truck reccy needed as there was a river crossing that we had to do, and
while Sam and Zoe checked out the depth and type of bottom it was we cracked on
with making tomato and happy cow baguettes to an audience of about 20
kids. As the group is still so small, we
are able to allocated lunch to a few people on the truck to make the sandwiches
with the others getting everything we need and passing it up to us through the
windows. We make the sandwiches for
everyone and then hand all the stuff back, pop the dirty dishes into a bag to
be washed when we get a chance just giving us a shorter stop time, without
having the hassle of water bowls, chairs and the table. It is also handy on days like this when you
do have an audience, as you just want to eat and run and not have 40 eyes
staring at you hoping that you will leave something for them. Quick one is a good one and 40 minutes later
we were ready to cross the 15m wide river, with road workers stopping to watch
as Madge made it through with no worries and we were back on the road again.
Well it didn’t last long, 30 minutes after lunch; we
rounded a bend in the road and saw that there was a tip truck lorry stuck in
mud, and quite badly with the mud up to its axel on the right hand side. It was blocking the whole road and there was
no way we could pass it the way that he was stuck. There were a flurry of workmen around, there
would have been over 50 men, and some were trying to dig the back wheel out and
the other guys were cutting away some of the verge with hand picks and spades
to try and make a new road for vehicles to pass. Zoe and Sam got out to check the situation
and they reported back some 15 minutes later that the lorry was certainly stuck
and they offered that if we helped him out of the mud, he would help us to
cross over the boggy marsh. So the deal
was struck and Madge was turned around, a steel cable attached to her rear and
the 25m cable then attached to the lorry and we were ready for the emergency
save. We stood well back from the cable,
just in case it snapped and decapitated someone and I had retrieved my Bloggie
to capture it all on video out of decapitation range and crossed a set of
fingers that we get the lorry out so we can be on our way. So with everyone cleared, Madge started to
pull out the lorry, the lorry was in reverse mode and on and low and behold the
truck came out without any problems at all and in around 5 seconds. It seemed too easy and there was a cheer from
the 50 workmen, the 30 villages and the Dragoman team included. As Rich pointed out, that was the easy bit;
we still had to traverse the same mud that the lorry had been stuck in and hope
to come out the other side unscathed.
Hmmmm good point. At least we had
the lorry to save us if we happened to get stuck.
So Zoe backed up Madge, revved her and then moved
forward, but it wasn’t fast enough and she got stuck, but not so much that we
were stuck stuck. So she backed up Madge
again, conversed with Ian, threw Madge into second and as soon as she took off,
Rich said yep she has this, and he was right as Zoe zipped through the mud,
fish tailing at the end and it looked a little bleak just at the end that she
may get stuck again and then Madge just ‘popped’ out the other side. I was so proud of Zoe, as she had 80 pairs of
eyes on her, most of them men, and she proved to them that a woman can do that
kind of work and do it just as well as a man.
We were back on our way and the deal didn’t include to see if the lorry
was going to try again and if it was actually going to make it a second
time. We were out of there and with a
wave to all the people that helped we were back on our way after only an hour’s
hold up. Not too bad at all. We were lucky as it started to spit rain just
as we were driving off, and I think that if it had of rained before we cleared
the mud cess pool then we may have been screwed, at least for a few more hours
anyway. We found the customs point where
we had to stamp Madge in, and then the heavens really opened up, so much so
that at one point we were driving down a muddy hill and we just started
slipping and sliding our way down, and I am a nervous passenger in those kind
of conditions, but even Sam let out an expletive, so you know it was scary when
that happens!! The lorry that we had
saved over took us in the afternoon, so it got through the mud pool okay. It was actually sweet, as he stayed in front
of us for the rest of the afternoon and when there were tricky bits, he went
first, so we could see how slippery things were and if they were tricky, he was
out helping guide the truck up and down the hardest parts. I guess it was his way of saying thanks for
helping him out. I would say he would
have eventually got out without us, but it may have taken all day and a lot of manual
labor. There was one incident that we fishtailed and slipped the
whole way up an incline, but we made it and I also got that on video from the
comfort of my seat on the truck. I just
hope the footage will show just how tricky and a little scary it was.
We only had one more hold up for the afternoon and what
we thought was another car stuck on a muddy inclined turned into the car having
an alternator problem was moved out of the way and we could proceed up what was
going to be the last tricky bit of the afternoon. We continued to bounce and weave our way over
what was drier ground, and bump and weave and bump and weave. After our forth full day in the truck I was
starting to get a little truck crazy, actually we all were starting to get to
the end of our truck tether. It wasn’t
the end of the travel day and after it reached 5.30pm I couldn’t wait any
longer and I asked Zoe just how much longer they thought we had to go and the
reply was once we get to the town of Lola, we would be on tarmac for the last 45km
to Nzerekore and be on the home stretch.
Well Lola loomed at 5.45pm, the promised tarmac was there and then we
floored it for a further hour and after getting a little lost finding the
accommodation, employing a motor taxi to lead the way we arrived at the
promised land of showers and toilets at 7pm.
WHAT A DAY, actually what FOUR days of travel. Everyone was knackered, but we made it,
everyone was still on a high and just happy to be off the truck and not have to
be back on it for a whole day!!!
No one said that pioneering was going to be easy, they
just promised that it would be worth it!
We are the guinea pigs for this section of the trip and
quite fittingly we are in Guinea.
Finally.
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