Patching punctures in the soul
Text and photographs: Paul Morris. Article from the November 2012 issue of Ride Magazine.
In Angola, I learned that touring at a cycling pace is ideal for healing inner wounds and replacing bad memories with better ones.
As expected, a curious gallery gathered to watch. I’d pulled off the tar to buy water at a collection of shack shops but found only motor oil, brake pads and assorted things useful to two-stroke motorcycle owners. I noticed the rear-wheel puncture as I was pushing my bike through the soft sand back towards the tar. The shoppers had already stopped to stare at the sight of me and my fully laden bike. I pushed my beast to a ramshackle fence, laid it down in the sand and unpacked it. Although mechanically inept, I can handle a tube change, but the audience was growing and with it my performance anxiety.
Out of the foxhole
I was several days into a 1 500-kilometre tour from southeastern Angola to Tsumeb in Namibia. The last time I’d been in Angola was during the war in 1987 when, as a 20-year-old conscript, I’d spent three months in the thick forests between Mavinga and Cuito Cuanavale. I started the journey at Cuito Cuanavale because it had been an almost mythological place in my war, never really seen as I sat in a foxhole in the Angolan sand.
I had returned to Angola to enjoy the beauty of the bush and meet the people of a country in its 10th year of peace following 30 years of civil war. I thought about the ways I could travel and settled on cycling because I wanted to have the closest possible contact with the people and the landscape. It worked. I exchanged greetings with just about everyone along the road. Motorcycles would give me a friendly toot, people sitting outside the ubiquitous tavernas would shout greetings or laugh in surprise. Often I would stop for a chat. I don’t speak Portuguese so my contribution usually consisted of listing as many of the towns as I could remember between Cuito Cuanavale and wherever I found myself. The average response consisted of eyebrows shooting upwards at great speed followed by the Portuguese equivalent of “All the way from Cuito? On a bicycle?” Then there would be hoots of laughter. I couldn’t tell whether I was being judged to be strong and courageous or insane, but the latter seems probable.
Beauty and logistics
I rode for many hours through the tall trees of the beautiful forests that cover much of the southeastern comer of Angola. I crossed the wide Kuvango River that starts life in the highlands and ends in the vast swamps of the Okavango Delta and the Kunene at the vibrant, slightly scruffy city of Matala. As a conscript, 25 years earlier, I had swum in the same river at the Hippo Pools near Ruacana Falls. These and other rivers provide vital water for people to drink, bathe and wash clothes in. Next to the bridges I’d see women to the one side, washing themselves and their children, with clothes and bed-linen draped over bushes, while the men washed themselves, their motorbikes and their cars on the other side.
Evidence of war decreased with every kilometre beyond Menongue and my thoughts turned slowly from the past and its grim rusting reminders, to the beauty of the bush and the openness of the people I met. I became absorbed in my immediate task of journeying, feeding myself, finding a place to sleep and the further I travelled from Cuito, the less I thought about war.
My longest day came after I decided to push all the way to Lubango in what turned out to be a 126-kilometre ride. I knew the regional capital of Huila Province was up against the mountain but I hadn’t reckoned on the number of hills I’d have to climb towards the end of a long day. Then, looking forward to a hot shower and a cold beer, I was told that the place where I’d chosen to stay was halfway up the mountain. It was like arriving in Cape Town after cycling for nine hours, only to be told you needed to climb Kloof Street to get to your guesthouse. The infrastructure, though improving rapidly, is still ravaged by the war. Guesthouses are not always available and they are often full. In a R300-a-night pensão, my shower involved squatting over a bowl of cold water with only a candle for warmth and light.
Smooth with the rough
Road-builders are laying asphalt through Angola at an incredible rate and I enjoyed hundreds of kilometres of good tar. There was still a fair bit of old colonial tar too, and this was potholed or rather shell-holed. In a car, I would have had to slow to a crawl to negotiate the damaged sections, but on my bike I was usually able to find enough unbroken tar to cruise through comfortably without interrupting my rhythm. Once or twice, I found myself riding on a section of gravel that had been compacted in preparation for tarring and I flew along the smooth surface while cars and trucks battled the loose gravel and sand on the parallel detours. Later, I’d spend a good deal of time picking myself and the bike up after falling on old rutted gravel roads where the trees came all the way to the road’s edge, creating an avenue which tunnelled off into the green-fringed distance. Here, the ever-present minefields were closer and I clung to the edges of the road whenever I took a break.
When the going got rough, it got very rough. At the roughest point, both my good fortune and gut flora deserted me and I started to suffer from a bad bout of traveller’s guts. On a piece of road that was all loose gravel and sand, I eventually heaved my much-needed lunch into the sand. That day I managed nothing like the 100-kilometre average I had maintained earlier, and just over 50 kilometres left me feeling miserable, sick and very alone in Kuvango. I holed up in a friendly but threadbare pensão where the lack of a flushing toilet and the water that arrived in a bowl every morning only accentuated my discomfort. I spent three days there recovering.
Two-wheeled calling card
My bike is a source of amusement among my more image-conscious friends back home, but was viewed as a high-tech marvel by many of the Angolans I met. Near Xangongo, one very cool dude on a shiny Chinese two-stroke even offered to buy it. “Then how do I get home?” I asked with an exaggerated shrug. “No problem, no problem,” he said, without explaining how that problem would actually be solved. My only eguipment extravagance was a leather Brooks saddle and touring carrier. That cost double the R1 300 I paid for the bike. For touring, I figure that high-tech, is a liability. The nearest bike shop capable of fixing something like disc-brakes was probably in Windhoek, about 2000 kilometres from my starting point.
Now that I’m home again, my journey continues by other means. Where I once felt a constant pull to return to Angola and put some ghosts to rest, now I need never return. And if I do, it will be for very different reasons.
Need to know
Clothing
I travelled light and took just one change of clothes with a few pairs of socks, three pairs of Lycra cycling shorts and a bar of Sunlight soap to do my laundry.
Bike and spares
I splashed out on a leather Brooks saddle, but used an old aluminium Silverback hardtail with V-brakes and lugs to attach a carrier. My touring carrier and Ortlieb handlebar bag and panniers were expensive, but an excellent investment. I used Maxxis Crossmark tyres with tyre-liners and tubes, and carried four spare inner-tubes and some spare spokes. I suffered just one puncture in nearly 1 500 kilometres.
Other equipment
I took a tent, sleeping bag, Therm-a-Rest mattress and camping gear such as stove and fuel. If I do this type of dry-season tour again I would ditch the tent. A groundsheet is sufficient.
Communication
My wife insisted that I rent a satellite phone. It was expensive but brought peace of mind. On one occasion, I used it to call for a doctor when I was assisting at a road accident and out of cell range. You can buy a local SIM card for next to nothing and SMS home from the bigger towns where there is cell reception.
Medical
Go to a travel clinic to get all your shots up to date and obtain a supply of malaria prophylactics. I took a comprehensive medical kit including antibiotics, which I needed to sort out that very bad stomach problem.
Get proper travel insurance and make sure it has good evacuation cover.
Visas
You will need a letter of invitation from a resident of Angola for your visa application. Give yourself at least six weeks to apply. Don’t be discouraged if the consulate sends you away for more documents or information. If you are polite, humble and persistent, your effort will be rewarded.
Food
I took six days’ worth of food because I knew I’d be camping and wasn’t sure how readily available supplies would be. Many villages have small shops but often stock is limited to beer and tinned food, soft drinks and bottled water. Bigger towns like Menongue, Kuvango and Lubango have restaurants but they don’t have much to offer vegetarians like me. I stocked up at the Shoprite in Lubango, which had everything I needed.
Water
I was able to carry up to seven litres of water because at times I would camp for a couple of nights in a row and I wasn’t ever sure when I would be able to get water again. Carrying so much water was uncomfortable and probably overkill, but better safe than sorry. I took a small Katadyn water-pump filter, which I didn’t use but would take again in case I needed water from a river or puddle. I used water purification tablets a few times but mostly bottled water was available, although this can be expensive.
Currency
At the time of writing, kwanzas were about 11,50 to the rand, but Angola is expensive. You can exchange money in the Namibian border towns either at banks or with informal money changers – just be sure of the rates before you deal with the latter. Big towns have ATMs, but few are linked to the VISA network and the machines often run out of cash. I took a good supply of US dollars, which are accepted in most bigger towns. Small denominations are easier to change. You can always change dollars back when you get home.
Accommodation
I often camped next to the road after checking for minefields and tried to stay out of view for security reasons, particularly as I was solo. At villages and settlements, it is wise to find the mayor, administrator or soba (headman) and ask permission to camp. When I did this, I was usually offered a floor in a hut or a home and this made the trip more memorable.
Guesthouses are expensive at about R300 a night, and more often than not there is no hot or cold running water. Electricity, when available, is provided by a town generator that may only come on in the evenings. Charge gadgets whenever you get the opportunity.
The new lodge in Menongue has satellite television, hot showers and a nice restaurant, and I also stayed at a fancy place in Lubango. Both of these would even pass muster with my wife, so I can recommend them to the fussiest traveller, but bear in mind that they charge like a raging bull. Expect to pay between R1 300 and R2 000 a night in this type of establishment.
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