www.leisurewheels.com |
Showing You Quality Articles…ShowMe and Leisure Wheels, the adventure motoring magazine, bring you some of this magazine’s top notch content right here on our site. And if that doesn’t impress you, wait ‘til you have a copy of Leisure Wheels open in front of you:
The Adventure Motoring Magazine See below for more info on the latest issues and find out how to subscribe |
Trans Africa 2010 – Part 1
Text by Dave van Graan. Photography by Anita Visser
Source: This article was taken from the April 2011 issue of Leisure Wheels
Dave van Graan from Masazane Expeditions recently embarked on a seven-month tour to explore west Africa, the Middle East and north Africa with a group of five couples, all set for the adventure of a lifetime
When everybody started arriving at Camp Africa, our headquarters in Louis Trichardt – all prepared, packed and double-checked for the umpteenth time – I began doubting the sense of what I had let myself in for. Would I get along with these people, and would they get along with me? Would they get along with one another? And what about the vehicles? Would they handle the rough roads? The pace? And what about unexpected challenges: all the border crossings, rebels and bandits, malaria and other diseases? My stomach was turning.
The local newspaper, the Zoutpansberger, visited us and after an interview and photo session (this is, after all, big news… especially in Louis Trichardt!) we said our teary goodbyes and left for an adventure – one of a lifetime that could very well feel like a lifetime, too.
Our group consisted of a bunch of very interesting people from all walks of life. Coen and Anita from the Piketberg area are potato farmers. They drove a new Land Cruiser bakkie. Frikkie and Fiona live on the south coast of Kwa-Zulu Natal. They travelled in a well prepared Land Rover. Frans and Carlien come from Delmas and are involved in construction, maize and cattle farming. Frans is a serious deep-sea fisherman with a massive boat anchored at their home in Richards Bay. Johan and Mariaan from Pretoria ended up as the trip photographers and did an excellent job. They drove a Land Cruiser. The very well-travelled Stanley and Lenie completed the group and arrived in their Land Cruiser VX.
It was the perfect group with whom to tackle a long expedition. Variety is the spice of life, as they say. Experience, knowledge and everyone’s happy-go-lucky attitude helped to set the tone for a very enjoyable trip.
Since our research showed that some of the roads were very bad, we decided to explore west Africa first. The reasoning was, “Do the rough parts first while our vehicles (and ourselves) are still in good condition.”
We decided to drive to the Ruacana border post in Namibia without doing any sightseeing en route, as everybody in the group had toured Botswana and Namibia quite extensively. Entering Angola is always a drawn-out procedure, and this time was no different. We were eventually “set free” after the vehicles were checked and all the paper work was done.
Thanks to the information supplied by Wouter Brand (Tracks 4 Africa), Johan Badenhorst (Voetspore) and Koos Moorcroft (African Bushcraft and Survival Adventures), we knew exactly where to camp and which sites to visit in Angola. Our first night was our first bush camp on this long expedition. We found a dry riverbed and drove some distance into the bush, away from the “road”.
Soon everybody was settled with a drink in hand and chatting around the fire. It had been a long day at the border, and after a sumptuous meal we headed for the tents, reasoning that there would be many other nights like this to enjoy around the campfire.
Next day we headed for Lubango, where we’d decided to take a rest day. We drove through the well-known Leba pass. It is really an engineering marvel, and the views are beautiful.
Stanley and Frans bought some seriously hot chillies from a roadside store. We crushed the chillies and put them in a Coke bottle with olive oil. The concoction was so hot we decided it was suitable only for people over 70 – and with their parents’ consent!
We visited the world-renowned Cristo Rei, a statue of Christ standing on a mountain overlooking the town. It is one of three such statues in the world, the others being in Rio de Janeiro and Lisbon. At night, it is quite an impressive sight.
We travelled to Lobito, where we camped at the Zulu Bar on the beach. It is not great, but the restaurant offered good seafood that we washed down with a few bottles of local wine.
Next stop was Cabeledo where we once again camped on the beach. The owner, Desiré, who speaks both Afrikaans and English, did her best to make us feel at home.
We bought fresh fish from the local fishermen and had a good dinner of fried dorado, spiced rice and salads, with paw paw for dessert.
That night we decided not to enter Luanda, the capital city, because of the absolute chaos on the roads, on which local drivers generally display suicidal tendencies. We saw plenty of wrecks on the way there. So instead we visited the Congo River mouth – an awe-inspiring sight. (The Congo is the second longest river in Africa, after the Nile.)
We then turned back to Lussenga and drove to the Mutadi border post. The Democratic Republic of the Congo was about to celebrate its 50th anniversary of independence, and the border officials refused to let us into the country. They were very friendly at first, but the attitude changed with the arrival of new officials.
I phoned my wife, Jacqui, who was looking after Camp Africa while I was away, and she put me in touch with Amelia Heneford at the South African Embassy in Kinshasa. Despite much negotiation and pleading, we were ordered back to Angola, and had to drive all the way back to Luanda.
At this stage, we thought we’d never get into the DRC, but with Amelia’s help, we obtained visas on the day of application. The DRC embassy personnel were surprised by the attitude of the border officials towards us. The whole process resulted in an eight-day delay, and we had not even left the southern hemisphere!
After our dreadful experience at Mutadi, we decided to cross the border at Banza Sosso. Initially the tarred road was in a good condition. It then turned into a good gravel road, and eventually deteriorated into a bad gravel road, and then into almost no road at all.
At one stage, we were travelling at an average of 1,5 km/h. This section turned out to be our “Camel Trophy” section of the expedition.
At least the border post was not busy. The officials were very surprised to see us because “there is no road” where we had come from. Our response? “There is one now!”
We were very apprehensive about entering the DRC after all the stories we’d heard. We contacted Amelia to check the situation. She reassured us, and went so far as to meet us on the outskirts of Kinshasa and escort us to a good hotel which had efficient security. We felt as if we were on the set of Men in Black, with all the guards in black suits and dark glasses. It was quite surreal.
Amelia booked us into the hotel and later took us on a stroll for some pizza. We really appreciated her help and concern.
The next day, Amelia and a colleague escorted us to the border with the Congo Republic, where we crossed the river by ferry to Brazzaville. On both sides we were forced to pay the officials to process our passports and carnet de passage – apart from the normal port taxes and entry fees.
We were standing in quite a remarkable place. This is the only place in the world where two capital cities are on opposite sides of a river and in full view of each other – Kinshasa (DRC) and Brazzaville (Congo).
The Congo Republic was a pleasant surprise, with friendly people and stunning forests. Two things were of great concern to us, however. The first was the tree felling by the Chinese. We drove past timber yards that were stacked three storeys high and stretched over an area equivalent to eight rugby fields. We saw convoys of 20 big trucks at a time, transporting huge logs – presumably to the harbour to be sent to China.
The second point of concern was all the bush meat on offer next to the road – anything from crocodile and antelope to a variety of monkeys, and even a small hippo.
Although the Chinese were cutting down a lot of trees, we had to admit that they had built some pretty nice roads that made our lives easier! Not to mention the lives of the locals. On one stretch of the road we were escorted by an army unit to ensure our safety. Apparently there are some bandits that hijack tourists (we never saw any other tourists) but we felt safe with all the soldiers and guns.
Although some border officials asked us for “presents” – requests that we declined in a friendly manner – we never experienced any animosity. The officials were generally friendly and efficient and we passed through the borders in good time.
We made plenty of bush camps and never felt in any danger. Our camps were normally in old borrowing pits next to the road. They offer an open, level area with some bushes to use for ablutions.
We crossed the border into Gabon and visited the world-famous Lamberene Hospital on the banks of the Ogooué River. The hospital was founded by Dr Albert Schweitzer and Héléne Bresslau. The two of them arrived by canoe sometime in April 1913 to establish an infirmary. In 1927, the hospital was rebuilt because the old one became too small to treat the large number of patients.
In the 1950s, Schweitzer used the prize money he received on being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to extend the hospital so that it could treat lepers. In the 1980s, a new and modern hospital was built. It was later converted into a museum.
We also visited Schweitzer’s grave. He died in 1965.
Another interesting fact is that the Tarzan novels and subsequent movies were set in the Gabon jungle.
We crossed into Cameroon and drove to the coast via Yaoundé to visit places such as Limbe, Kribi and the volcano, Mt Cameroon. Yaounde is a modern and bustling city. We were glad to find that the Toyota garage is a big, clean and modern place where we were able to repair the front hub of one of the vehicles. The staff were very helpful and although they were busy, the mechanics immediately helped us.
At Kribi we stayed at the Tara Plage lodge and campsite, from where we visited a pygmy village and a waterfall and took a long canoe trip on one of the many rivers.
Limbe has an incredibly high rainfall – apparently up to 11m a year! It rained hard and non-stop while we were there, so we can vouch for its reputation.
Mt Cameroon is the most active volcano in Africa and there is still evidence of the 1999 and 2000 eruptions. The national road near Limbe is still covered with old lava flows.
We travelled north and entered Nigeria near Mora, where we stayed in a luxury hotel called Tahir Guest Palace.
We were heading for Niger, which does not have diplomatic representation in SA, so it is impossible to obtain a visa for Niger in SA. A taxi driver showed us where the embassy/consulate was, and we applied for our Niger visas. The personnel were very friendly and helpful, and we got the visas the next day.
While we waited, we explored the city and visited the markets and a mosque that can accommodate 50 000 people. Although it was peaceful in Kano, we heard stories that hundreds of Christians were killed there by Muslims during 2009.
Kano is about 1400 years old, and said to be the oldest existing city in west Africa. It is the second largest city in Nigeria after Lagos, with notoriously heavy traffic. The police and especially the traffic police are notoriously corrupt, but after all our years of travelling around Africa, we came to expect it. Yet we never paid any bribes, politely refusing with a smile.
After the chaos of Kano, we travelled to the Niger border north of Babura. For the last 70km or so, we were escorted by police. We travelled through an area called Sahel – a desert region between the forested south and the Sahara in the north. We saw hundreds of camels and goats and their tough, nomadic owners. The area is known for its grave droughts, famine, locust invasions and infertile soil. We gained genuine respect for these people, who manage to make a living in this harsh land.
We experienced temperatures higher than 48ᵒC during the day and around 40ᵒC at night. During the day we escaped the heat through the air-conditioners in the cars. Night time was the worst – it becomes very uncomfortable when the tent has to be closed to keep the dust out. We slept under wet towels to cool us down.
We left Zinder in the late afternoon and made a bush camp just before sunset. It was not long before the local police found us and guarded us the whole night. They kept their cars running with the headlights on for most of the night to illuminate our camp.
The people were very friendly and helpful. We followed the Trans-Sahelian Highway, which is a good tar road to Niamey. There were plenty of road blocks which slowed us down, but the officials were friendly and really concerned about our safety.
We crossed the border into Mali north of Ayorou and followed the road along the Niger River to Gao. The road from there to Timbuktu is rough, and we encountered some very sandy sections and had to perform a few vehicle recoveries. It took us two days to drive the 400km.
We were very happy when we eventually arrived at Timbuktu. The legendary name means “the well of the woman with the big navel”, after a woman who looked after a well in the area around AD 1000.
We decided to stay in an upmarket hotel with air-conditioned rooms and a huge swimming pool. We felt we deserved it after all the heat and sandstorms. The food was good and the beer was cold.
We organised ourselves an English-speaking tour guide, Alibaba, to show us around. It was a proud moment for us when we visited the new manuscript library called the Centre de Recherches Historiques Ahmed Baba that was funded by South Africa. The architect was also South African and we thought the building was beautifully designed.
The museums and other sites were very interesting and we were glad we had endured the roads and heat to visit Timbuktu.
One of the highlights was the Flamme de la Paix (Flame of Peace) monument where a large number of weapons were ceremonially burnt after the Tuareg uprising in the 1990s.
We left Timbuktu with a feeling of accomplishment. This really was a case of, “Been there, done that, got the T-shirt”.
We drove via Douentza and Mopti to Bandiagara, where a guide took us into the Dogon valley, to see the massive Falaise de Bandiagara escarpment, which is about 150km long and 500m high.
We visited the cliff dwellings built in some almost inaccessible places. It is difficult to climb the narrow walkways, but once you’re up there the views of the plains below are stunning. The Dogon people are mostly subsistence farmers but they receive some money from tourism to make ends meet.
From the Dogon country we drove to Djénné, where we visited the Great Mosque – the world’s largest clay building. The three towers are 11m high and the building is 100m long and 40m wide. The mosque is one of Africa’s architectural wonders and a Unesco World Heritage Site – definitely worth a visit.
Our next stop was Bamako, where we stayed at a 5-star hotel with a view over the Niger River. The traffic was really bad and perhaps it seemed even worse than it was because we’d been driving on bush roads for so long.
We used the time in Bamako to fix some of the vehicles that were now showing signs of the rough roads behind us. Broken roof racks, faulty long range tanks and damaged shock absorbers were some of the things that needed repairs.
We replenished our stocks and left Bamako for the next stretch to Nouakchott in Mauritania. This section was extremely hot, dry and dusty, with wide plains of nothing.
Although Nouakchott is a big city there is not much in the sight-seeing department. There are good hotels and most other amenities, but after refuelling and buying a few odds and ends, we decided to drive through and camp in the desert.
The roads are good and we made excellent time to the border with Western Sahara/Morocco. We arrived a bit late and procedures on the Mauritania side were slow, which resulted in the Morocco side being closed when we eventually got there.
We camped in no-man’s land for the night. The area is dirty and dusty with a large number of stray dogs that barked most of the night. After a sleepless night, we were up early and ready to move on. This was probably our worst bush camp of the entire trip.
The border was, according to maps and GPS, with “Western Sahara”, but apparently it wasn’t. All went well until one of the Moroccan officials noticed the small Western Sahara flags on our vehicles. After much ado, we had to remove the emblems. The little flag stickers were confiscated.
The attitude towards us was aggressive, but after we showed the officials the map we had used and apologised profusely, they let us into the disputed territory. The vehicles had to go through a scanner to check for any weapons and explosives. It took six hours to finalise the border procedures.
The police monitored our progress all through the Western Sahara part of Morocco, but once we entered Morocco proper they left us in peace.
From the border, we travelled all the way to Dakhla, where there are a few campsites. Dakhla is situated on a beautiful peninsula. Due to the strong winds, windsurfing is popular and it was a colourful spectacle, watching all the tanned bodies doing their daring tricks in the waves.
After a dinner of “cheekon and sjeeps”, as it was written on the menu, we went to bed. Everybody was dead tired after our sleepless night at the border.
The following morning we drove to town and enjoyed coffee and cake at a modern and beautifully decorated coffee shop. Then we headed north to Laayoune, where we camped at Camping le Bedouin, a farm near the city. The camp is on the edge of a salt lake surrounded by small dunes. We struggled to cook in the strong wind, but we managed.
Next stop was at Sidi Ifni, at a campsite next to the sea. It was holiday season and the camp and beach were very busy. Once we had pitched our tents, we found a restaurant where we indulged in local beer and a local delicacy called tangine.
Now we were in Morocco proper without really knowing it, and proceeded to Agadir where we camped at the very modern Atlantic campsite. We decided on this camp on the advice of Voetspore’s Johan Badenhorst, who rated it the best camp on their west Africa expedition – and we totally agreed with him.
It was time to drive east and explore the Atlas Mountains. After all the desert driving we had endured, we enjoyed the change of scenery. The roads were generally in good condition as we drove via Quarzazate to the Gorges de Todra. This gorge reminds one of SA’s Meiringspoort, albeit on steroids.
We camped at Le Soleil Campsite from where we explored the area. The High Atlas starts at Agadir from where it sweeps in a north-easterly direction all the way to the Algerian border. The highest point, at 4167m, is Jebel Toubkal – the highest point in north Africa. This section is clearly seen from Marrakech, 60km away.
The route through the Atlas Mountains along Tizi-n-Tichka pass from Quarzazate to Marrakech is one of the most scenic drives in Africa. The winding road with views stretching forever is truly amazing, and a must-do at least once in a lifetime.
It also gives one some insight on how the local people, the Berbers, make a living in these harsh conditions. Looking down into the deep valleys, all one sees is thousands upon thousands of date palms. It is estimated that there are five million date palms in Morocco. Otherwise, every square inch is used to plant animal fodder, sugarcane, maize, wheat, marijuana and vegetables.
In Marrakech, we visited the vibrant and colourful souk (market). It is really fascinating to stroll through the narrow streets with all the small shops, selling everything from handmade leather articles to spices, dyes, perfumes and much more.
We tried the local cuisine in the little restaurants and were pleasantly surprised by the good quality and taste. Some of us bought presents for friends and family.
From Marrakech we travelled to Casablanca, Morocco’s largest and most modern city. We camped at Camp International that looks more like a parking area for a shopping centre than a campsite. It is situated 30km south of the city and close to the holiday resorts and beaches. It reminded one of the Margate or Durban beachfronts.
We visited the King Hassan Second Mosque, which is the most impressive of its kind. With a 200m minaret (the world’s highest), space for 25 000 people in the prayer hall and 80 000 outside, it is truly a magnificent sight. It is one of the few religious buildings open to non-Muslims, and a place that must be visited. It took 6000 craftsmen three years to complete the spectacular building.
The medina near the harbour – a typically walled-in part of the city with narrow streets and crevices – is another place to visit, though it is a bit “touristy”.
It was time to hit the road again, and we headed for Fez – the oldest city in Morocco, established in 789AD. The medina in the old city is one of the largest in the world and the most interesting in Morocco. The narrow crowded streets, the metalworkers making lampshades and other items, the smell of dye pits and the calls of the Imam all contribute to the vibrant atmosphere in the medina.
We found a small restaurant where we could watch the locals and tourists going about their business. Part of the fun is to bargain for everything one buys. It’s considered an insult if you don’t bargain.
Camp International is shady and big but very noisy, with parties going on through the night. The Fez people certainly know how to party and have fun – without alcohol.
We once again replenished our food stocks, especially meat, cigarettes and beer, as these items are very expensive in Europe. We drove north to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, through the scenic, cedar-covered Rif Mountains. This area is well known for the cultivation of marijuana and we saw plenty of fields of the “green gold”. Not surprisingly, we encountered many people along the road trying to sell hashish.
The Spanish authorities at the border are very strict and on the lookout for contraband. We saw a vehicle being searched, and the occupants arrested for trying to smuggle in hashish.
On the way to Ceuta, we bought our tickets for the ferry to Spain. The border procedures were completed in good time and we boarded the ferry.
It was the end of a very interesting expedition through west Africa and the start of our next leg – from Spain to Jordan, and then back into Africa. Leg III will take us home, via east Africa.
Until next time, hasta la vista, baby!
|
Subscribe to Leisure WheelsIf you enjoyed this article and would like to read more about adventure motoring, why not subscribe to this quality publication? Give a Gift Subscription to a FriendLooking for a gift for someone who loves off-roading and has an inclination for the bush – let them receive a copy of this great magazine from you every month. Latest issue of Leisure WheelsSee what’s in the latest exciting issue of Leisure Wheels. |