Another country, another challenge.
Actually, the people at the Gabonese Embassy turned out to be the best – ever!
Wednesday
Got up early and walked to the embassy. All I needed that I didn’t have was a copy of my hotel booking and my Congo visa.
Probably not getting copies here at the embassy 🙂
Now that it was Wednesday, I was worried that with the 72-hour hold I wouldn’t be able to get it back before I wanted to get on the road Friday.
Found this guy on the street who made me copies of my visa, now where can I get someone to print something? Well, the Radisson! What a great staff!
Grabbed my copies, jumped on a moto taxi and ran up to the gate ….They said they closed at 3PM, turns out they can close whenever they want.
Some bikes mysteriously appeared in the parking lot!
Thursday
Got up early and went to the embassy.
Turned in all my paperwork and sat and waited for someone to tell me when I could pick up my visa.
They brought me into another room to get my fingerprints and pay my fee.
10 minutes later – got my visa for Gabon!!!!! What an amazing experience.
Got back to the apartment and I received a message from someone on WhatsApp. Seems my travels have made me rather infamous…in facebook groups.
Can’t seem to find the comments anymore, facebook sucks. I’d like to give a shout-out to Johnny Scheff from Motoworks Chicago about his comment, something like “Tim Hunnewell is travelling in Africa, make and model look right”. Come on Johnny, I’ve been sporting the MW hat for a month now, and you don’t even know my plate? 🙂 Aside from the fact that there are only about 7 foreigners right now on motobikes in all of Western Africa – and only one (stupid?) American, your comment was still pretty dead on anyway.
Got to meet the original poster – Silke. Her partner, Jan, was laid up after a long ride along the Congo river without an inflated sleeping pad.
(I grabbed this picture from one of their posts) We met in the parking lot and we walked so she could pick up some italian food from this place down the street for her and Jan. Silke and I discussed having dinner at this place I eyeballed near the Gabonese embassy – The Butcher Block. Kinda funny, almost every place I’ve been to has a restaurant called this.
The Italian place had some good looking sweets, but not for me….
Stopped by a local place to find some food and watch some soccer. I’d have to travel pretty far to get anything Congolese, so burger. Western food has totally dominated most major cities. Makes me miss Cabinda!
Later that night the skies opened up and it rained like crazy. I was pretty happy I wasn’t out in the middle of that shit.
Friday
Got up and did some bike maintenance. I wanted to be on the road early knowing that the gas stationed opened at 6AM. I also had to make sure that the security guard would be there to open the gate that early. That seems to be a recurring theme of this trip.
I walked over to Paul, the chain that’s everywhere in French-speaking parts, and passed the tower of who knows.
This structure was damaged during the last West African War (2nd?) and cost millions to renovate – even more than it’s original construction. This did not sit well with the people. I saw you could take a tour, but nah. Not for me.
No matter how many times I see it, seeing women carrying heavy loads on their heads and a baby on their back still impresses me. Such strength.
Silke, Jan, and I had dinner at The Butcher’s Block.
I had the hangar medallions with potatoes and a tiny salad. Actually, we all had the tiny salad. It was fantastic. So was the $4 glass of whiskey.