Journals

After spending a few days with Amos in Beline, Isabel, Greg and I continued up the EN1 highway towards Chidenguele, a tiny roadside village from which a maze of deep sandy paths meanders to the coast.  Amos had told us that somewhere among these paths was a large freshwater lake with a camping-friendly sport lodge where we could spend the night.  It was about ten tortuous kilometers into this labyrinth, when we were hopelessly lost and with less than an hour of daylight remaining, when I experienced my first real crash.  With my companions riding ahead, out of sight, I lost control in the sand, swerved badly to my left and drifted into a low ridge at the road's edge.  The impact of this collision sent me head-over-handlebars, and jarred the bike back towards the sand, where it ground to a halt.  I landed hard but uninjured, and looked back to see my wheels in good condition--but minus the gear-shift pedal, which now lay beside me.   Not good.   Even with all the disastrous scenarios that I had dreamed up and tried to prepare for, the possibility of facing roads like this in gathering darkness, with only one gear, had not even entered my consciousness.  I leaned back on the ground, too shocked for anger or pain, contemplating the odds as I waited for Greg and Isabel to double back.  The sun was going down fast, but just as our situation reached its bleakest, a pickup truck--or 'backie' as many Africans call them--appeared over the hill.  The driver, a hulking young white man named Garreth, informed us that we heading in the wrong direction, and that we ought to come back to his parents' lodge before the mosquitos began to swarm.  Then, seeing the severed metal slab that I was holding, he picked my wounded motorbike up like a toy and lugged it into his truck bed.  Running into Garreth turned out to be a golden stroke of luck for us; his family's homestead was a rustic paradise, complete with hot showers, home-cooked meals and a blowtorch that successfully welded my broken gear lever back on.  After spending four days there, our small party departed for Tofu, a tiny peninsular beach town that was to be our final destination together.   Greg, Isabel and I spent the next three weeks in sedentary fashion, lounging on the beach, eating fresh seafood and taking leisurely motorbike trips into town through the hilly, lush countryside.  As our sixth week as travel buddies drew to a close, Greg announced that it was time for him to begin heading south again, back towards home.  Isabel, who had planned to stay in Africa for only a few months, fell in love with an American scuba instructor named Jeremy, and decided she wanted to stay (the two of them are still together, and now run a small environmental collective which coordinates local efforts to preserve Tofu's spectacular marine life and delicate shoreline).  And just like that, I was back on my own once more, heading north into the heart of Africa, where my courage and endurance would face their greatest tests yet.