The Epic Journey 100k (60mi) to Scott's Site

Pictures courtesy of John (linked on right).

It all started one morning when John, Ian and I went to the taxi gare at John's site ready to get into our taxi to Scott's site, about 100k away. Having bought our tickets the night before, we had only to identify the taxi, put our stuff in it and wait for it to leave. First up, identifying the taxi. When the dude pointed at it the same thought went through all three of our heads: "really?":














It was an Army green, late model Mercedes which would carry eight people, a dog, a cat and luggage spilling out the trunk down a road we had been previously told was "pas bonne" aka "not good". As it turns out, all the people who told us this have never been on my and Ian's road because if you REALLY want to see a bad road, come visit us.

So after a shared plate of rice and sauce we piled in and took off for what we were expecting to be a 3-4 hour journey. And boy were we wrong. Now, while this is one of the taxis that requires being pushed to start, that's not really all that uncommon. Even having to stop and fill the radiator is not uncommon. What's uncommon is the bottom of the car SCRAPING THE ROAD for pretty much the entire journey. The car during one of the unfortunate radiator fillings:


















Early on in the journey, the car stopped and we were told to get out and walk. We have done this many times before and didn't think it was anything special until Ian rounded the corner, looked back at us and said, "Now THIS will be interesting!" There's a river and this is how you get across it:














John really wanted to crank it for awhile and the dude-who-cranks-the-ferry-across-the-river was more than happy to let him. Guineans took pictures on their camera-phones of the porto cranking the ferry:














Not long after this, the car broke down at the bottom of a hill (making it difficult to restart because, as I said before, this was one of the "push me or I won't start" cars). After an hour or so of kicking it on the side of the road watching Yogi and Pagaille fight, Ian decided to invent a game which consisted of setting up a tripod of sticks, balancing another stick on top, standing a few yards away and throwing rocks to see if you could hit the balanced stick off the top without knocking down the tripod. One of our Guinean taxi-mates joined the fun. Action shot:














Eventually a nice NGO happened by in their Land Cruiser and offered us a ride. At this point the taxi was moving again and we looked at each other weighing our options. We decided to stick with the taxi as the NGO would be stopping at all the towns along the way to do their work and at this point we still thought it might be faster in the taxi. When Ian told this to the Land Cruiser driver he "looked at me as though I had just signed my own death warrant."

So we piled back into the Mercedes and not five minutes later, as were going over a particularly rough patch, we got back out and ran after the Land Cruiser and begged for mercy. So we took the ride with the NGO, even though we had to stop in several towns for them to do their work. In one such village, it appeared as if every resident were collecting mangoes and putting them into big piles by the road. As we were stuck there for about three hours, we were gifted more mangoes than we could eat in a month and John taught a gaggle of petites the Chicken Dance (among other favorites). A kid getting mangoes:














The NGO dropped us off at Schwegel's site which is about halfway to Scott's site (Schwegel had taken off on his bike hours before and was probably already in Labe by that point). We had some rice and sauce (with some surprisingly good fish balls!) and then piled back in to be on our merry way. And by merry, I mean tortured. I would say that all told, we walked 1/3 of the journey, rode with the NGO 1/3 of the journey and actually got to ride in the taxi that we paid for for about 1/3.

By the time we were even getting CLOSE to Scott's site, it was dark and the taxi was breaking down every ten feet or so. We seriously considered strapping our packs on and walking the rest of the way (and are sure glad we didn't because it was a bit of a hike). Then we heard a car coming and it stopped next to us and it was...the NGO we had parted ways with six hours before. I was like, "you mean we could have hung out in ::Schwegel's site:: for a few hours, spared ourselves the frustration and STILL gotten here faster???"

Needless to say we got back in the Land Cruiser and were dropped off right at Scott's feet minutes later. We don't know what ever happened to that old Mercedes, but I hope to never see it again. All told, it was pretty much exactly 12 hours to go 100k (60mi), fueled with just a little rice and sauce and mercifully cold coke halfway along the way.

Praise Allah for cold cokes. And sunsets that nearly made the journey worth it: