So its been a pretty incredible time. I loved every minute, storms in my tent on some random road in the forests of Sierra Leone. Random river crossings and eating crayfish on the beach. Dancing in arb clubs in cities you only knew by name. Driving, driving, driving, landscapes everywhere. We went in and out of the forest zone twice, saw arid savannah's, trees and birds. We fixed cars on muddy roads of Liberia, we got sick, we got better, we laughed and Don cried. We climbed trees in Nigeria to look at forest clearings. Smelly tents, smelly markets, sea, rivers, people, Colour and music everywhere. Cold beers, good food. Diesel tanks, smiles of people. Good people, new friends, West African flavour. Man….this is the life, I think I could go on forever.
And then, I was sitting on a beach, with a beer and realized that we had finished mapping. The next day was to Dakar, Dale’s house and finished. MAPA was incredible, and now its over.
we’ve spent the last few days sleeping on Dales couches, wrapping up logistics of shipping, inventorizing and laughing a lot. So, I’m done with this blog thing, although it does help me avoid writing fifty mails to update people on the trip; to be honest it’s a bit self indulgent. Not sure I’ll do it again, but thanks for reading chaps.
-Chris Out-
Friday, April 15, 2011
Monday, April 11, 2011
Mangroves mangroves mangroves….
So sometimes I would really like wrap around eyes. Like a fish maybe, or an antelope, either one, I’m not picky. Not to be more popular with the ladies mind you, I doubt that wrap around eyes will make you much of a hit, maybe with a weirdo, which is ok too I suppose, but that’s not the goal of wrap around eyes. The thing is you need to be able see more at times when there is so much to see. Like a fish eye lens for your eye camera, assistance for that mental photolab that allows you take images with your mind. Detachable fish eyes would be highly marketable I think. Just change the lens, get the landscape shot, then its back to bright blues. I went for a pirogue trip into the mangrove forests along the Gambia river, about 300km upstream from Banjul, and I needed fish eyes.
At one point, the Gambia river was so still that the horizon line blurred with the sky. Just a mirror of the sky, weird cloud formations in duplicate. There were hundreds of pink backed pelicans roosting in the riverbank forests; gargantuan bird flowers dressing the green. Our pirogue putt-putt putted along, across the hundreds of meters of river and straight into the green wall; it was mangroves, mangroves, mangroves. It isn’t even birding season, but there are birds everywhere, the guides voice an almost constant noise of id’s. Good guide, beautiful birds. The motor slows and you hear the high pitched whimbrelling of whimbrels, kinked beaks moving over. Fish eyes would help there, they’d let you keep up. The trees are heavy with western reef herons, dark form-white throat patch. African darters slide through the water, they dry in the trees. You see blue-bellied kingfishers, watch malachite and pied. Senegal thick knees populate the undergrowth, sandpipers dominate the shore. Purple herons, goliath herons, white backed night herons. Roseringed parakeets cross your bow, wooly necked storks on your flank. Goloneks in the savanna, royal terns on the river. A gymnogene looks for nests to raid, a cormorant dries in the sun. In the dying light, it was fields of brilliant green and contrasting red, the blinding white of a great white egret overexposing your eye camera. It can’t be captured on film. You need fish eyes.
The mangroves themselves are a sight to behold. Bigger than any mangroves I’ve seen. 12 meters high, buttress roots reaching down from five. You slice through the soup like water in the backwater calm, the rank smell of anoxic mud is just magic. A monitor lolls in a tree. Pencil roots form an organic nailboard, breathing air in the toxic ooze. There used to be dolphins and hippos here, apparently sometimes there still are. I’ve never seen a river this big, a lake really. Pirogues out fishing, terns and pelicans too… I need fish eyes.
At one point, the Gambia river was so still that the horizon line blurred with the sky. Just a mirror of the sky, weird cloud formations in duplicate. There were hundreds of pink backed pelicans roosting in the riverbank forests; gargantuan bird flowers dressing the green. Our pirogue putt-putt putted along, across the hundreds of meters of river and straight into the green wall; it was mangroves, mangroves, mangroves. It isn’t even birding season, but there are birds everywhere, the guides voice an almost constant noise of id’s. Good guide, beautiful birds. The motor slows and you hear the high pitched whimbrelling of whimbrels, kinked beaks moving over. Fish eyes would help there, they’d let you keep up. The trees are heavy with western reef herons, dark form-white throat patch. African darters slide through the water, they dry in the trees. You see blue-bellied kingfishers, watch malachite and pied. Senegal thick knees populate the undergrowth, sandpipers dominate the shore. Purple herons, goliath herons, white backed night herons. Roseringed parakeets cross your bow, wooly necked storks on your flank. Goloneks in the savanna, royal terns on the river. A gymnogene looks for nests to raid, a cormorant dries in the sun. In the dying light, it was fields of brilliant green and contrasting red, the blinding white of a great white egret overexposing your eye camera. It can’t be captured on film. You need fish eyes.
The mangroves themselves are a sight to behold. Bigger than any mangroves I’ve seen. 12 meters high, buttress roots reaching down from five. You slice through the soup like water in the backwater calm, the rank smell of anoxic mud is just magic. A monitor lolls in a tree. Pencil roots form an organic nailboard, breathing air in the toxic ooze. There used to be dolphins and hippos here, apparently sometimes there still are. I’ve never seen a river this big, a lake really. Pirogues out fishing, terns and pelicans too… I need fish eyes.
The Gambia
So we are in the Gambia with one week to go…
After a day down in the Casamance trying to find the Parc National de Bass Casamance we moved north, checking out some bird sanctuaries on the way. I'd spent some time on the phone with the Gambian consulate and through multiple iterations of the same conversation worked out that clearance equals proof of accommodation. No problem! Cbaz broke out his best German, organized us a few nights at a overlander place near Banjul and made the email document look very very official.
So we got to another road block with logs, just out of Senegal…there they were, a bunch of guys with logs..blocking the border. They weren’t very good at the road block… I did laugh though when C-baz pointed out that we are in a land cruiser and two logs aren’t going to stop us, the man immediately summoned his posse to deposit more logs in the way. So we jumped out, joined them under the tree and entered friendly discussions. We argued and played the game, eventually they confused each other.”Do you want money?”, “No , this isn’t about money” the one guy says, “Yes” says his boss”, oops.
And then we were at the Gambia and off to Banjul. Unfortunately the parks and “wild” places we have been to are little more than zoos. Places where they sell tourists peanuts to feed the monkeys. We went partying in the Senegambia, the resort section of the Gambia, just to see it…It's not my scene. Marco and Don, its exactly what you think it's like! So we left with a guy we’d met to find some Gambian people, not the package tourists and found ourselves in a local spot in the outskirts of town. ( I couldn’t get back there if I tried, dust roads and alleyways is all I remember). A really cool vibe, a rough, rough place! Not what my mum would consider a classy establishment, but we spent some hours listening to the local band, Djembe drums bashing away… a really good time. Sebaz broke out his dance moves, the local guys tore it up with theirs.
Today is cleaning day. Cleaning day is every second Saturday of the month. No cars are allowed on the roads and everyone has to clean the country. Police etc, will stop you driving and make you wait until 13h00 when cleaning day is finished. So we’re waited at our camp and will then made our way west to the national parks…I’m done with Banjul, but I’m keen to see the countryside.
After a day down in the Casamance trying to find the Parc National de Bass Casamance we moved north, checking out some bird sanctuaries on the way. I'd spent some time on the phone with the Gambian consulate and through multiple iterations of the same conversation worked out that clearance equals proof of accommodation. No problem! Cbaz broke out his best German, organized us a few nights at a overlander place near Banjul and made the email document look very very official.
So we got to another road block with logs, just out of Senegal…there they were, a bunch of guys with logs..blocking the border. They weren’t very good at the road block… I did laugh though when C-baz pointed out that we are in a land cruiser and two logs aren’t going to stop us, the man immediately summoned his posse to deposit more logs in the way. So we jumped out, joined them under the tree and entered friendly discussions. We argued and played the game, eventually they confused each other.”Do you want money?”, “No , this isn’t about money” the one guy says, “Yes” says his boss”, oops.
And then we were at the Gambia and off to Banjul. Unfortunately the parks and “wild” places we have been to are little more than zoos. Places where they sell tourists peanuts to feed the monkeys. We went partying in the Senegambia, the resort section of the Gambia, just to see it…It's not my scene. Marco and Don, its exactly what you think it's like! So we left with a guy we’d met to find some Gambian people, not the package tourists and found ourselves in a local spot in the outskirts of town. ( I couldn’t get back there if I tried, dust roads and alleyways is all I remember). A really cool vibe, a rough, rough place! Not what my mum would consider a classy establishment, but we spent some hours listening to the local band, Djembe drums bashing away… a really good time. Sebaz broke out his dance moves, the local guys tore it up with theirs.
Today is cleaning day. Cleaning day is every second Saturday of the month. No cars are allowed on the roads and everyone has to clean the country. Police etc, will stop you driving and make you wait until 13h00 when cleaning day is finished. So we’re waited at our camp and will then made our way west to the national parks…I’m done with Banjul, but I’m keen to see the countryside.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Southern Senegal
Today I saw a West African Manatee. Yes, a real live one, swimming in the Cassamance river. It is said that people explore the Cassamance and never leave. I can see why, the place has a romantic allure to it. Every day seems like a Sunday. The old French culture is still strong and bistros, restaurants and auberges are plentiful. People seem to sit and life seems to pass in permanent siesta. People have time to talk, time to relax. Beaches are beautiful and crowds are few, mangrove trees and birds are everywhere. Baracuda and Perch, crayfish and shrimp; the good life lives here, it’s easy to be seduced.
We drove along a spit of savanna in a sea of mangrove today, reaching the mudflats and sea grass beds. I had forgotten the magic of sea grasses. Vast space, mud, green and then there it was, a real life West African Manatee, breaching for air, then gone again. 400kg of underwater lawn mower moving along, doing what underwater lawnmowers do.
Now that’s not a bad sighting.
-Chris-
We drove along a spit of savanna in a sea of mangrove today, reaching the mudflats and sea grass beds. I had forgotten the magic of sea grasses. Vast space, mud, green and then there it was, a real life West African Manatee, breaching for air, then gone again. 400kg of underwater lawn mower moving along, doing what underwater lawnmowers do.
Now that’s not a bad sighting.
-Chris-
Deforestation
Beautiful forests filled my minds’ eye, carpets of green, thick, lush carpets. Green landscapes, beautiful landscapes. I’ve now seen the landscapes and the landscapes are leprous, the landscapes are gangrenous, sloughing. Once lush hills are now adolescent chins; a few sparse boughs in the ground. Everything is slashed, Mordor like, everything is burned. Too many people, too many mouths, slash burn, eat, slash, burn, burn. In ones minds’ eye we view West Africa as wild, the forests intact with a few sparse villages. We see images in the media of logging, we see images of deforestation…we mutter to our partner, “that’s terrible”. We may even think “if they don’t stop that soon there will be nothing left”, then we change channels to big brother 7 and forget. There are no more vast tracks of forest in West Africa, No more… None. I have now been there, I have now seen it. They are gone already, simply patches remain; Isolated little islands of fresh in the chaos. The reasons are many fold, no blame can be made…People need to eat, people need resources, slash burn eat, slash burn burn. The minds eye is myopic.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Cassamance
The car ready to go and we’re off on the last leg of our trip, Dakar-ward. This place is incredibly beautiful. I sat this morning, drinking coffee and looking over the mangrove lined banks of the Cassamance river that stretches for miles and miles. Birds abound and tomorrow I am going to a manatee sanctuary. Pirogues with colourfully dressed women are punted up and down; we eat barracuda and Nile perch. We have running water and are we are clean…it’s the little things. Life is good, oh so very good.
-Chris-
Plans just don’t work:
“Salaam alaikum”, the old woman said…stooped and shuffling, wrapped in blue material, she moved by me sweeping the ground. “Alaikum salaam”, I responded as is custom (and peace be with you). In the predawn cool, I looked around, making out shapes of cows, goats and sheep in the growing glow of dawn. There lay Sebaz’s tent next to the village well, our car, and of course…its tank, sitting once again detached, its bare arse facing the sky. We’d had another epic, and personally I blame it on poor diplomatic relations between Gambia and South Africa.
So we’d finished Niokolo-Koba, the major national park in Senegal. A beautiful place, it had taken us three days of solid mapping. We had a rather eccentric guide with a small bladder and flatulence, need I say more? Maybe I should make mention of the photo he made Cbaz take of him wearing just his underpants. So, our plan was to get into Gambia and see the river, the drunk Brits and the birds. Gambia is an amazing birding spot and so I was rather keen to see the huge mangrove forests and tons of migratory waders. However once out of Senegal, the Gambian authorities informed me that as a South African I need clearance. No one has any idea what this clearance may be but I can only get it in Dakar. Now Sebaz…he is fine, apparently being German means you are of less risk than a South African. I needed clearance for my mission, although C-baz is on the same mission he does not need clearance, again logic was not allowed in the room (as a side note, DRC, CAR and Somalia also need clearance, and arguments that we used to be part of the commonwealth didn’t help either, we were stuck and all due to bad diplomatic relations). So after being shouted at by Senegalese authorities in French for wasting their time we were back off to try get to Ziguinchor. The plan was simple, map the Park in the south, stick me on a boat to Dakar, Sebaz drives to Banjul, the capital of Gambia where I meet him after sorting my stuff out in Dakar and catching a bus/taxi/motorbike the few hundred km south…simple no?
No…
We missed a crucial turn off and so we got a ferry rather than a bridge, which wasn’t running as it was too late. So we were stuck on the wrong side of a river in rural Senegal. No problem, we would bush camp as there is a decided lack of hotels or pensions in rural south. This is where things went awry, being an area with travel warnings we decided to leave town a bit and settle in a quiet area near a still backwater. Beautiful! Except on route to our camp site I hit a rock with our oversized tank and popped the weld (People should no doubt remember the dubious tent peg welding incident of February 2011). So, we were once again on the road side, diesel peeing gold in the sunset as we came up with a plan.
Firstly, what we have learned in such situations is that first thing to do is have a cool refreshing drink. In this case a cold Carslberg. We find the cool blend of hops and barley helps stop any panic one may experience, more importantly the inflow of carbohydrates helps you to get ready for the manual labor ahead and the fluid hydrates you for your task. So we had out beers and started to work…taking off pipes and jacking the car up onto rocks etc. The local village chief spotted us as he drove by and lectured us on how it’s not safe there. He was insistent, so off we went, trailing a stream of diesel into his village.
We had an amused but very helpful audience as we removed a tank, filled all the buckets the village could muster with diesel and proceeded to pitch camp right next to the well. It was the Bulls on one side, us in the middle and chickens all around. My tent got a torrent of laughs as men and women alike inspected it. I don’t speak Wolof ( actually it is Diolo down here, but I don’t speak Diolo either) but I think it may have been to do with the size. But there we slept, among the array of African village life. It was pretty cool; although they have obviously imported roosters from further east because they crow about 4 hours too early.
By morning the epoxy was dry and we had a host of kids watching as we fixed the whole thing. Dr Schuhman and I are practiced at this now and so by ten in the morning we were back on the road, onto the ferry and off to Ziguinchor…problem solved. Alaikum salaam random village, thanks again for the hospitality!
But no… the problem wasn’t solved; you see the boat couldn’t take me until the fourteenth and to make matters worse the diff lock was stuck. In the dropping of the tank/ hitting of a rock process, some wires had been severed and now we were stuck in permanent diff lock on the rear axle. With no mechanics anywhere to be found on the national holiday it was back under the car for the two of us. We spent a few hours learning the ins and outs of diff locks, and the trickery of Toyota designers and their inconsistent uses of bolt sizes. In hind sight It’s actually pretty simple and we got it fixed; of course we rewarded ourselves with the ever present cool refreshing beer. This trip is too much fun, we don’t even plan anymore now.
So we’d finished Niokolo-Koba, the major national park in Senegal. A beautiful place, it had taken us three days of solid mapping. We had a rather eccentric guide with a small bladder and flatulence, need I say more? Maybe I should make mention of the photo he made Cbaz take of him wearing just his underpants. So, our plan was to get into Gambia and see the river, the drunk Brits and the birds. Gambia is an amazing birding spot and so I was rather keen to see the huge mangrove forests and tons of migratory waders. However once out of Senegal, the Gambian authorities informed me that as a South African I need clearance. No one has any idea what this clearance may be but I can only get it in Dakar. Now Sebaz…he is fine, apparently being German means you are of less risk than a South African. I needed clearance for my mission, although C-baz is on the same mission he does not need clearance, again logic was not allowed in the room (as a side note, DRC, CAR and Somalia also need clearance, and arguments that we used to be part of the commonwealth didn’t help either, we were stuck and all due to bad diplomatic relations). So after being shouted at by Senegalese authorities in French for wasting their time we were back off to try get to Ziguinchor. The plan was simple, map the Park in the south, stick me on a boat to Dakar, Sebaz drives to Banjul, the capital of Gambia where I meet him after sorting my stuff out in Dakar and catching a bus/taxi/motorbike the few hundred km south…simple no?
No…
We missed a crucial turn off and so we got a ferry rather than a bridge, which wasn’t running as it was too late. So we were stuck on the wrong side of a river in rural Senegal. No problem, we would bush camp as there is a decided lack of hotels or pensions in rural south. This is where things went awry, being an area with travel warnings we decided to leave town a bit and settle in a quiet area near a still backwater. Beautiful! Except on route to our camp site I hit a rock with our oversized tank and popped the weld (People should no doubt remember the dubious tent peg welding incident of February 2011). So, we were once again on the road side, diesel peeing gold in the sunset as we came up with a plan.
Firstly, what we have learned in such situations is that first thing to do is have a cool refreshing drink. In this case a cold Carslberg. We find the cool blend of hops and barley helps stop any panic one may experience, more importantly the inflow of carbohydrates helps you to get ready for the manual labor ahead and the fluid hydrates you for your task. So we had out beers and started to work…taking off pipes and jacking the car up onto rocks etc. The local village chief spotted us as he drove by and lectured us on how it’s not safe there. He was insistent, so off we went, trailing a stream of diesel into his village.
We had an amused but very helpful audience as we removed a tank, filled all the buckets the village could muster with diesel and proceeded to pitch camp right next to the well. It was the Bulls on one side, us in the middle and chickens all around. My tent got a torrent of laughs as men and women alike inspected it. I don’t speak Wolof ( actually it is Diolo down here, but I don’t speak Diolo either) but I think it may have been to do with the size. But there we slept, among the array of African village life. It was pretty cool; although they have obviously imported roosters from further east because they crow about 4 hours too early.
By morning the epoxy was dry and we had a host of kids watching as we fixed the whole thing. Dr Schuhman and I are practiced at this now and so by ten in the morning we were back on the road, onto the ferry and off to Ziguinchor…problem solved. Alaikum salaam random village, thanks again for the hospitality!
But no… the problem wasn’t solved; you see the boat couldn’t take me until the fourteenth and to make matters worse the diff lock was stuck. In the dropping of the tank/ hitting of a rock process, some wires had been severed and now we were stuck in permanent diff lock on the rear axle. With no mechanics anywhere to be found on the national holiday it was back under the car for the two of us. We spent a few hours learning the ins and outs of diff locks, and the trickery of Toyota designers and their inconsistent uses of bolt sizes. In hind sight It’s actually pretty simple and we got it fixed; of course we rewarded ourselves with the ever present cool refreshing beer. This trip is too much fun, we don’t even plan anymore now.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Freetown
Now Freetown is cool. We’re back in a city with a vibe. The city centre is one of the biggest and coolest markets I’ve seen. It is huge, and you can buy anything… the strawberry maidens have been replaced by these muscular guys with barrows full of coconuts. He hacks open a cold coconut brimming with milk, mothers milk. You walk around, drinking your cool refreshing coconut, checking out about an acre of shoe merchants. Sneakers, trainers, soccer shoes, glittery stripper heels, sandals, work shoes..you name the brand, the model, rip off, original..this is the place to be! Its really colourful, people all over, singing, shouting milling down the street. Cars edge along, walking pace, the speed governed by the shopping rate of local women. You can get anything there, the range is tremendous, and everyone wants to do business, we haggled over green converse shoes (didn’t have my size), we checked out the belt buckles. Electronics, clothes, food… its all there, spread on the streets, being moved for cars, making cars move for it. The call to prayer breaks the noise only momentarily, the crowd continuing to edge along the road. Freetown is cool.
They have cool bars and clubs to. We went partying with our new best friend Jo, a rather amusing Englishman we had met on Tiwai. Off we went to hit the clubs and check the local scene. Too much fun, riding around on motorbike taxis from club to club. Checking out the nightlife, music, people, dancing. Sierra Leone has its own sound I really enjoyed Freetown.
I did spend most of my time in Freetown in the police station. You see at the one beach we had a bunch of our stuff lifted from us. Being anal retentive I keep all my stuff together in a few bags, so when one of them is taken they get quite a lot. Unfortunately there was a heap of MAPA money in the bag too. So I had to spend some time at the police station, greasing palms along the way to lubricate the machine that is the Sierra Leone police. I need a statement for insurance you see, just a statement. Its pretty cool, once you have been there for 4 hours in a day you become part of the furniture, I saw the ends of a fight in the holding cell. I started running errands for the big guy, calling people for him. I pretty much met every person and went to every office. I’d sit and watch Cbaz down below as he fixed the roof-rack, contemplating how much I would not like to be incarcerated here! But it got it done and after lifting the one police lady to the other station, paying a beer drinking typist to type up a document for me and then getting the police lady to take it to the big cheese and getting all the official stamps etc, 2 days later, fourty thousand of the local currency and two days later, I had the report.
We moved on and are in the middle of Guinea somewhere.
-Chris-
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