tacugama

What a wonderful experience we had today in visiting the Tacugama Chinpanzee Sanctuary.  This not-for-profit cares for up to eighty chimps at a time, and is involved in education, social change, policy advocacy, veterinary care, and long term housing for severely traumatised chimps.   

The adult chimps are often shot for bushmeat and as part of land clearing programs, leaving orphaned baby chimps to be sold to Sierra Leonians as pets.  Of course, these pets quickly grow to 60+ kilograms and have the strength of five men.  

The Tacugama sanctuary is set in the midst of pristine rainforest and provided a perfect habitat for these animals.  They have access to fifty hectares of forest, and the option to return to an enclosure for food and medication.  

Despite their humanoid features and cuddly appearance, these are very much wild animals. This was brought into stark focus a few years ago when a group of more than twenty escaped from the compound, attacking and murdering a taxi driver enroute down the steep access road.   They had worked out that throwing a metal pole onto the electric fence would short circuit the current, allowing them to climb out of the sanctuary easily.  

One of the vets and several guides gave us a fascinating insight into the complex social structures of these animals and the difficulties that they face in co-existing with their human neighbours. 

interpol

Our ride from Bo to Freetown was fast and uneventful, a delightful pleasure to be back on sealed roads with some nice scenery enroute.

We arrived in Freetown within three hours and set the GPS navigators to a nearby hotel.  Gary's bike was still overheating, so we needed to stop regularly in heavy Freetown traffic to replenish his radiator with water.

On one of these stops a portly gentleman introduced himself to us as an Interpol officer.  We initially laughed off his approach, until he produced ID and became very very serious; instructing us to accompany him to the CID headquarters down the street.  We were not able to get away with just one or two of us going (standard procedure to separate in times of potential trouble).  So, all four riders accompanied this officer and a colleague down the road and inside the high steel gates of the CID compound.

While Ty and Gary stayed with the bikes, James and I were paraded past a bewildering array of officers, repeating our story multiple times.  All of our papers were checked, rechecked, and checked again; presumably looking for any inconsistencies.   At the heart of the problem was the officers reluctance to believe that we were genuinely in Sierra Leone for tourism purposes.

After more than two hours of questioning, the officers eventually determined that we were too much trouble for them to worry about, and asked one of the female clerical staff to give us a 'clearance certificate' for 60,000 SLL per person (about $18) and then release us.  this kicked of another round of farce, as the clerical officer had obviously never heard of this 'clearance certificate'.  It was just something that the Interpol investigator had made up on the spot to give them a little something for their time.  After she had finished explaining that there was no code in the computer for this, and he had finished berating her, she eventually wrote out a form for us longhand, collected 60,000 SLL from each of us, and we were on our way.

Still, we were very amused to note that we actually got off lightly.  On the way to the hotel we observed another poor Sierra Leonian chap having his head vigorously and repeatedly slapped by a female policewoman who was obviously aggrieved by something that he had done.

sayonara Liberia and Gary takes a tumble

Revisiting the SL border post this morning, it was smiles all round from the friendly officials as they stamped us out and wished us well for our onward travels.  These guys had been super helpful trying to resolve the issues with Liberia yesterday, and we genuinely appreciated the assistance.

The SL border commandant called the Liberian side to re-confirm yesterday's agreed course of action - that Liberia would provide a military escort into Monrovia in order for us to continue our journey.

Sadly it seemed that the Liberian Deputy Commandant had had a change of heart overnight, and had now decided that we would need to return to Freetown for some additional visa requirements (a round trip of 700km and three days).  The SL official pleaded our case with him, but there was no budging.  He eventually suggested that he stamp us out and we approach this Dep Commandand directly on the Liberian side to plead our case. 

The 500m stretch across no man's land brought us to the Liberian side where we went through the obligatory Drug Enforcement checks and Ebola cleansing, and then lined up before the barrier to ask to speak with the Deputy Commandant.  

Within a minute, said gentleman strutted up to the barrier in combat fatigues and shouted in our faces "Why have you come, I told you entry was denied".   We attempted to reason with him by explaining our journey and that we were keen to experience Liberia as tourists. This only served to inflame him further, and he literally screamed that if we remained there then he would arrest us.  Faced with the prospect of 350km of hellish roads back into Sierra Leone, this had the potential to escalate quickly as Ty was quite ready to open fire on this deranged mini-Hitler. 

There was no real option other than to give in to Liberia's tourism anti-Christ and turn the bikes around to commence a long long journey back to Freetown.  

We made it as far as Bo before flat tyres, mechanical issues and sheer exhaustion got the better of us and we decided to stop for the night.  A local dude on a motorcycle offered an escort to a good hotel with a restaurant, so we followed him through the maze of streets along with the usual entourage of assorted hangers-on.  

One of these got a bit excited and tried to get too close to Gary's bike, squashing another scooter between his bike and Gary's.  This threw the woman and little girl riding the scooter off onto the roadway, and knocked Gary off into the verge where his helmet bounced off the road with an audible crack.  Luckily he broke his fall with his head, so no real harm done.  The little girl was just bumped and scratched, so we left before the real action kicked off. As we rode away, the mum was already pulling the other scooter rider off his bike and lamming into him as a large crowd assembled.  

We've finally arrived at a secure hotel with a nice restaurant and are looking forward to a big meal and a long sleep.  

welcome to Liberia (almost)

Dawn was just breaking as we rolled out of Kenema this morning in anticipation of 130km of dirt roads before reaching the Liberian border.  A short hour on tarmac thereafter should have had us in Monrovia for lunch.  

After a discrepancy between GPS device directions, we ended up taking a series of wrong turns and becoming hopelessly lost amidst the jungle trails.  Great riding though, with deep jungle on either side and narrow fast trails, log crossings, and all sorts of other fun stuff. 

It's amusing how you know that you can ride a motorcycle in a straight line, but faced with doing so along a rounded log over a drop into a murky river really gets the adrenalin pumping.  Every second that we spent training for this trip has paid off a thousandfold.  

The national highway between these two countries is an absolute disgrace.  Deeply rutted in places, it has eroded into an endless series of muddy undulations that send the bike swooping off the lip with a gut wrenching rush and then powering up the far side until the front wheel dances and skips for traction on the opposite side.  This process is repeated thousands of times along the length of this highway.   It is impossible to build and sort of rhythm to the riding as some of the dips contain dust, some contain water, some deep mud, and some a thin veneer of mud over visciously sharp rocks.  Each dip is deep enough to conceal a small car. 

After a minor sequence of issues (Ty hitting a rock and ripping off his footprint and centre stand, Gaz getting a flat tyre and taking a mud bath) we ended up arriving at the border around 5pm.  

After ten hours continuous riding, we arrived filthy and exhausted at the border post - only to be denied entry into Liberia.  It seems our data about visas on arrival for Liberia was flawed, and we may have needed to return all the way to Freetown along the same road in order to secure Liberian visas.  

The Sierra Leone exit official took pity on us and sought to intervene with the Liberian official, and they argued until 6pm when the Liberian official declared the border closed and went home. 

We have since been informed that there is an option to pay for an immigration escort from the border to the city for a visa, so we will go back again first thing tomorrow to try our luck again.  Any other option involves hundreds of kilometres in detours. 

The options in the border town are simple.  The guest house or our tents.  We have booked into the guest house, but I'm not sure it was the best deal. It does make you appreciate western infrastructure though, when you are taking a ladel shower from a bucket as a kid pumps water furiously from the well outside the window to fill the next bucket.   

nothing to report

It is pleasing to note that absolutely nothing happened today.  An early rise had us on the road by 7:30am and faced with a beautiful ribbon of tarmac all the way to Kenema in eastern Sierra Leone. 

The countryside here is dotted with large palm trees that lightly cover endless rolling green hills.  Whilst the flora is different species, you could easily mistake the region for Borneo, Nicaragua, or any other tropical climate.  Vegetation crowds the roadway closely, and small animals are very much evident.  

Our entry into Kenema was made in grand style after a pleasant chat with the police commandant checking papers on the outskirts of the city.  After a few minutes of pleasantries and posing for photos on the bikes, he decided that we warranted a police escort all the way to our planned hotel, so we raced through the streets unimpeded and in fine style.  

Kenema is a diamond rush city that has sprung up from the rich alluvial soil found in this region.  Diamonds are easily found here, and this has attracted the inevitable mix of big and small players, along with the service industries that accompany any boom town. It has a distinctly Wild West feel about the place along with a reputation for blood diamonds finding their way into the world market.  

 

  

lovely leone

We encountered an interesting issue when preparing to leave Conakry this morning.  All of us needed some additional local currency to carry on, so two of us attended an ATM (one of only three in the city). 

I inserted Gary's card first, but there was no response from the machine.  James then observed alarmingly that the card hole had been butchered, and the card basically just fell into the machine. He placed his eye to the slot and exclaimed "hey, there's someone inside the machine."  

As it turns out, he was inside to repair the machine and quite cranky about a couple of white men raining cards on him.  He was muttering at us as he handed the card back. Surely an 'out of order' sign might have been a good idea, because a Guinean woman did precisely the same thing as we left.  

We eventually did find an ATM, and successfully withdrew two million (yes, two million) francs each.  Of course, our hotel room cost 800,000 and the remainder has gone on fuel and food over the past 24 hours. 

A slow ride along a terrible road surface led us to the Guinea - Sierra Leone border.  What a pleasant surprise this turned out to be, as we were greeted with unrestrained joy by everyone from the customs staff to the border police. The Sierra Leonians are loud, boisterous, mischevious, and fun-loving in the extreme.  We told our travel story a dozen times to a dozen officials throughout the process, each one calling in colleagues and guffawing with laughter.  

One of the gendarmes asked who was the boss, and we replied "no one".  He struggled with this concept, and quizzed each of us regarding our age, marital status and children.  After careful consideration, he declared that Ty should be referred to as the 'chief' because he was the fattest and had the most children.  Yeah, right .... not going to happen.  

Sierra Leone was one of the countries that we had been quite concerned about, given a lengthy civil war, the Ebola virus, and the level of general poverty.  In fact, the town that we are staying in tonight was the epicentre of the Ebola contagion in Sierra Leone (now completely cleared by the World Health Organisation).  

Despite this, the government is now stable, infrastructure spending is going towards roads and other economic multipliers, and the people are upbeat about the country's future. 

It has been interesting to speak with some of the locals (creole English is the norm here) about how the virus has shaped their cultural norms.  Right across Africa, any human encounter opens with a hearty handshake. In SL, in deference to the Ebola virus, they simply punch hands near one another without actually touching. Several people have been apologetic for the lack of handshake, noting that they were extremely pleased to meet us anyway.  

our reward

Today must have been the reward for struggling through yesterday.  Road conditions were absolutely excellent and we raced along on beautiful tarmac all the way from Boke to Conakry. 

Crossing a series of quaint arched metal-paved bridges, we were treated to African life on the river edges below as kids played in the water and women beat washing dry on the rocks.  It looked idyllic. 

Our destination for the night was Conakry, the capital of Guinea.   

As we rode into the city outskirts, Gary's radiator gave up entirely.  It had been leaking for some time and Gary had been stopping every 50km to refill the radiator. Fortunately a roadside mechanic directed us to a radiator doctor who (after three failed attempts) managed to braze a patch over the leaking section. 

Whilst this was underway, Ty entertained the locals with a series of ever more outlandish lies, not realising that many of the group were face-booking his comments live.  As a direct result, nearly three hundred people showed up to meet this superstar in the flesh.  The police attended to quell the mob (literally) and he barely escaped with the clothes on his back. 

James and I had escaped earlier to find a hotel for the night, so Ty and Gary were left to ride together to our nominated coordinates. This should have been an easy activity had the pair not encountered a bolshy taxi driver who ended up clipping Gary's bike deliberately and pitching him into the street.  The taxi bolted quickly, leaving Ty and passers-by to pick up Gaz, dust him off, and put him back on two wheels. 

Despite a minor bingle, this was a lovely day on the bikes and we are looking forward to entering Sierra Leone tomorrow.