35 hours, 30 minutes, 400 kilometers (240 miles)

N5 “Highway”?

Let’s just say bragging rights for life. Trucks have a hard time.

Daily Diary

So innocent and upbeat. So unprepared for what was about to come.

Switching Over to the N5

Not a big surprise, but it turned to mud. Light mud, but mud.

I can totally handle this. It’s not too hot and the road is pretty quick.

Ran into these guys, Wally, Justin, and Jusef. They told me no one takes a motorcycle to Oyem. No one.

Some tiny villages at the start. There would be nothing for another 150 kilometers.

Cute, a speed limit sign.

Some rain just to scare me off. I probably should have listened.

Stuck in the Mud #1

Drifted off the center track because it was so slick that I had zero traction and the weight of the bike just causes it to slide.

Took the bags off and pushed it out to more mud.

I was relieved that it was relatively easy to get out. Took me about 20 minutes because I had to move my bags about 250 feet up the road as I needed to drive through three more mud slicks.

Stuck in the Mud #? Who’s Counting Anymore?

Not my road.

A wooden road some villagers made. Probably could have done without that.

6 Hours Later…

So google maps. It constantly had me about 800 feet in all directions, so when I hit a fork in the road (which there were supposed to be none), I decided to look at the map and see what was what.

Well, downloading offline maps apparently doesn’t work. As I zoomed out, it just got more confusing and blurry. Great. The sun was setting and I didn’t know if I took a wrong turn somewhere – well, actually more like I missed a turn.

All of those lines are tracks. Some go loop back, some loop ahead, and others just dead end. The road to the right looked better than the road I was on, but I wasn’t trusting my instincts. I was already exhausted.

So, I decided to take the road that looked the most like the road I was on and the direction it looked like most of the tires tracks were heading. After 10 minutes in, up a slick hill, and around a bend I decided to check my watch. It said I was heading southeast. Now I know there was no way I should be heading southeast. No way.

I turned around and headed back towards where I just came from. Downhill mud sucks. I just wasted 30 minutes. Let’s just say at this rate, I’d be in the jungle for 3 more days.

There were a lot of logging roads that I wanted to avoid (watch the video), so I needed make sure I was still on the N5. I had a slight cell signal (3G edge), so I called Syd and Shel. Neither picked up. After another attempt to Syd, I got through. I really just needed to know if this was still the N5, or if I had already drifted off course. Syd confirmed I was on the road and heading in the direction I was supposed to be from looking at my Zoleo satellite map. Ok, fine.

One Night in the Jungle

It gets dark fast. Around 5:30 the sun starts to set and then it gets pitch black in 10 minutes. I decided that at 5:00 I would start looking for a place with at least one bar of cellphone signal, a flat, “dry” surface near water, but also elevated enough so I wouldn’t get washed away, not on a turn so I wouldn’t get squashed by a logging truck, near some dense trees so elephants wouldn’t get too curious – did you know Gabon has more wild forest elephants than any other country in Africa? Easy, right?

I managed to find a place on the side of the road near a very small creek. I had to get everything setup fast because I couldn’t see anything. I tried to start a fire, but the wood was way too wet. I gave up after 3 tries.

I was hoping to be able to boil some water for drinking because I only had about a liter left. By the time this all happened, it was dark. I had to get my tent setup and put my bags near the edge of the road since they have reflective surfaces.

My friend for the night. He was very boring, just talked about bugs all the time.

Yes, dark. Lot’s of animals to lull me to sleep. I had my travel fan too, which really helped move the humid air around before the temp started to drop. I managed to keep about a quarter of my bag of chips dry. That was my dinner.

Luckily, I had my trusty water purifier. I cannot understate the importance of this little device.

Good Morning Forest

Just as you imagined, right?

Found out last night that I didn’t have my cross pole, but I had my portable fishing rod which worked out perfectly.

It was misting all night long which didn’t allow my bike to dry or the roads. What I thought was a dry patch was just more mud.

Back on the Road

I had pretty much given up on the road conditions at this point. I got stuck about 100 feet from camp and had to take the bags off again and keep going. At this point, I was getting pretty good at it!

Graders ended up being a huge problem. They push the rocks and gravel to the side and uncover the slick clay beneath. This one actually helped me out by getting to the dry clay in one pass!

Looks like a truck tried to get out of the way and went deep into a ditch (zoom in).

Slowly but surely, the roads improved – or I was just so used to shit that I was happy to just have anything other than deep mud.

This was actually the turning point. As I found out from some guy on a bridge – he was standing in the middle of it waving me by. I almost ended up in the river on that one. The bridge had 3 deteriorating planks with wide gaps. My front tire went through one of the planks and jumped off. Luckily, the cross beams were there and I just gunned it. The bad part of that decision? The cross beams were rounded logs with moss and slime on them and I ended up crashing into the embankment where I just gunned it and made it up the side. That was definitely the closest call of the entire trip. One foot to the right or left and would have ended up upside down 2 meters under the bridge

Village!! The first sign o life in a long time.

Sun was finally poking through and starting to dry stuff up.

Half Way There?

This time it was just my legs that gave out. I stopped to take a look at my bag because I thought the cable lock had fallen off – you can see it dangling there. Unfortunately, I was on the hump and when I put the side stand down, the bike leaned and fell over. This one took me 45 minutes to get upright again because the lean angle was so bad I had to spin the bike to get it perpendicular with the hill.

https://satellites.pro/Gabon_map#1.017418,10.796562,18

I’ll take it.

The road got so narrow I started wondering if I went off course again.

Stranded with Zero Hope

Ok, so a large gap in time, but also goes to show you how quickly it get dark. And I mean DARK.

You can barely make out four figures down there helping another car out of the ditch. I was told to just camp on the side of the road and wait it out until morning. I started to unpack and those guys came running up the hill and told me there was no way they were going to let me sleep on the side of the road.

We guided my bike up the hill, down the other side, and about 500 meters more through 10-inch deep clay mud. The total time was about 2 hours to go 1.5km. They totally saved my ass. When they were done, they hopped in a car and yelled “bon voyage!” and rode off into the dark. Unbelievable.

The road after the construction part was still pretty slippery, but I only had about 70km to the highway. I made about 200 feet when my front tire locked up and the bike jerked to the right. I managed to put it down slowly, but some of my gear was thrown to the side of the road.

Turns out that all that walking the bike through the mud picked up some debris and started to dry as I rode. It was like concrete. I somehow managed to pick my bike up, get everything packed up and decided to look for a place to sleep. I was running on empty. I looked around and I was basically in a swamp, so I just got on the bike and figured at 25 MPH I’d be at the highway in 2 hours.

Turns out, the 70km was the distance to the hotel.

Wait for it…

Yes, the highway! And it only took me about an hour.

Oyem

Well, arriving in the dark, again. The road was under construction and I had to drive in circles for about 30 minutes to cross the construction. The road was torn up and the sand was about 18 inches below grade – there was no way across.

Time to find a hotel and get some rest as it was now 10:30PM. I was planning on taking a couple of days to rest…