Some of it is practical and some of it is just what happened. All of it is written after the fact, from notes taken somewhere with no signal.
Guide · Luanda, Angola · 5 min read
We spent five days in Luanda and most of them went on errands. Two embassies, one of which turned out to be a dead end, a visa payable only in dollars we did not have, and the thing that quietly ate the most time of all, simply getting hold of Angolan kwanza.
Story · Ntam, Cameroon to Ouesso, Republic of Congo · 4 min read
Cameroon into the Republic of Congo in a morning, with a free passavant and a plate number written on a scrap of paper. Then no fuel in town, and an afternoon walk to the river that ended with a gate shut behind us.
Story · Benguela, Angola · 3 min read
Max's rear wheel bearings were destroyed by the time we understood what the noise was, and a bolt at that wheel had been loose for three days of riding before it. What we remember about Benguela is not the workshop. It is the stranger who spent two days getting us out of it.
Guide · Mole National Park, Ghana · 4 min read
Mole is the safari on almost every northern Ghana itinerary. Ours came to one male elephant, a few bush deer, and baboons standing on the track in the distance. What we had not expected was that the better half of the day happened after we left the park, in the village we had driven in through.
Story · Cotonou, Benin · 4 min read
We rode into Benin to collect three visas and left more than a week later. The piece we had been missing on the Nigerian one was not something the embassy told us. We heard it from another applicant sitting in the same waiting room.
Guide · Cabinda to Soyo, Angola · 4 min read
Cabinda is cut off from the rest of Angola by a strip of the DRC, so the way south is either through the DRC or on a boat. The crossing to Soyo takes about two hours. Getting our two motorcycles onto it took three days, and none of that was the paperwork's fault.
Story · Yola, Nigeria to Garoua, Cameroon · 6 min read
A dry season shortcut from Nigeria into Cameroon, ridden in one day. Seven river crossings, seven falls, an exit stamp we rode straight past, and a border stamp locked in a room whose key was two and a half hours away.
List · Ivory Coast, Ghana, Angola · 3 min read
None of these five stops were the reason we planned this route. A church too big to photograph properly, an elephant that didn't care we were there, and free viewpoints in Angola that beat paid ones we'd seen elsewhere.
Guide · Calandula, Angola · 2 min read
Often ranked as Africa's second largest waterfall by volume, and a five kilometre tricycle ride from town. Getting to the bottom cost us a slippery trail, knee deep water, and a real negotiation. Getting back up cost more.
Story · Richard-Toll to Dakar, Senegal · 3 min read
A land crossing that worked for one passport and not the other, a flight neither of us had budgeted for, and the better part of a week not knowing exactly when we'd be a team of two again.
Guide · Sossusvlei, Namibia · 4 min read
Eddy turned Sossusvlei's tallest dune into a competition before his knee had a say in it. What we found at the top, and later in a canyon most visitors to Sossusvlei never see, stuck with us longer than the climb did.
Story · Gombe State, Nigeria · 2 min read
A bent rim and a hammer got us to the Gombe State boundary two hours late. What was waiting there had nothing to do with the bike, and there was no way to pay it back before we crossed into Cameroon the next day.
List · Morocco to Namibia · 3 min read
A route south is mostly a line you have already drawn. These are six times we rubbed the line out, lost a day or more, and never once regretted it.
Guide · Republic of Congo · 3 min read
The map showed fifty kilometres to Pointe-Noire. What it didn't show was that the road had been dug up for a construction project and never finished, and that it had been raining on the clay underneath it for weeks.
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