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.

Why the map was wrong

We were routing from Dolisie to Pointe-Noire, and the map showed a normal road. What it did not show was that the route had been dug up for a construction project at some point and never finished, so what we actually rode was fifty kilometres of exposed clay, over a mountain, on a single track that had been rained on for days.

Google Maps has no way to know a road stopped being a road. Ask before you trust a route through this part of Central Africa, especially after rain. Ask again if the first answer is from someone who has not driven it recently.

The good stretch. It did not stay like this.
This is not funny at all.

When to hire a local rider

Partway through, the clay got bad enough that Eddy could not keep traction with a loaded bike under him. We hired a local rider on the spot to take Max's motorcycle through the worst five kilometres while she walked behind it. It cost a small amount of money and a language we did not really speak, and it was the single best decision of the day.

  • If someone local offers to ride your bike through a section you're struggling with, that is not them showing off. It is usually the fastest way through.
  • Agree the fee before they get on the bike, in a number you can both say out loud.
  • Walking behind your own bike, watching someone else ride it through mud you couldn't manage, is a strange feeling. Let it be strange. It beats the alternative.

What it actually cost us

Eddy's back gave out from picking his loaded bike up out of the clay, over and over, and it stayed a problem for days afterward. We were both exhausted enough that neither of us pretended otherwise that evening.

“This is really hard,” Max said partway through. Eddy's answer, later, when someone asked if it had been worth it: “If you are seeking a real adventure then this is it.” Both were true on the same day, which is most of what we know about this kind of road now.

“I didn't enjoy it,” Max said afterward, and she was right to say so. Not every hard day earns a redemptive ending by the time you're back on tar. Some of them are just hard, and you ride the next one anyway.

What we would do differently

We would still ride it. Turning back after the first bad kilometres would have meant redoing them, and the road did not get any less rained-on by waiting. What we would change is smaller, and earlier.

  • Ask in Dolisie, specifically, whether the Pointe-Noire road is currently a road or a construction site. A map cannot answer that question and a person who drove it last week can.
  • Plan for a full day on anything the map calls fifty kilometres of unpaved road in the wet season here, not a morning.
  • Carry enough cash in small notes to hire help on the spot, without a negotiation that costs you daylight.

We stop in villages rather than past them now, partly because of days like this one. More on why in the afternoon we owed Gombe State a debt we couldn't repay.