11. The Guineas

 (Day 93-113, 8.103km cycled)

A Different World

It is early and I am riding on a smooth dirt road leading me to the Guinea-Bissau border. A truck passes me, announced by a brief honk of his horn, indicating his presence. Not that I would have not heard the loud engine anyway but regardless it was an act of kindness. Once the truck passed, silence returned. I hear the gravel under my tires gnash, the wind noises in my ears, my rustling chain that needs lubing and the ever present cicada calls. Women and children are carrying bundles of wood, large tubs with laundry they washed in a river or a clear plastic bin with snacks for sale in them on their head. They wave at me, I wave back, people here are friendly.

I hear a motorbike approaching from behind. The noise coming closer fast tells me its one of the restless drivers. As it levels with me, I glance over and see two kids, no older than 10, obviously without a helmet, riding on a 125cc TVS bike. The kid in charge of the machine slows down, both gaze at me with a huge grin on their faces, the worn out, dirty t-shirts waft in the wind and as the co driver starts gesturing me to catch up with them, challenging me to a race, the 9 year old rider turns the throttle to full and speeds up, blasting away.

For a second I had to think about a scene from Jumanji, where a monkey is riding on a motorbike and I wonder who in their right mind would trust their 9 year old with a full sized motorbike.

I had to shake my head while having a massive laughing fit, astonished by the odd sight of the kids.

I really am in a different world I thought, put my head down and sped towards the border of Guinea-Bissau.

Brrrrranco

The officer stamped me out of Senegal and soon after a Guinea-Bissau officer was eyeing the visa that I had acquired in Ziguinchor just a day prior. I was a bit sad that none of the officials at the border even attempted to get a bribe out of me but at least it made the process a bit faster. The gravel road turned into pavement and just like that I was now in a portuguese speaking country. Not that I knew any Portuguese but somehow I would manage, I convinced myself. I bought a sim-card and didn't even need to exchange money. People weren't calling me a Toubab anymore, I quickly learned that from now on I would be the Blanco. I don't need to speak any Portuguese to understand that simple meaning - "White".

1. Bird nests in palm tree

2. Abandonned truck

3. Dirt road after a rain shower

The ride to Bissau was a long one, the hills were tiring, constant ups and downs, no flats for hundreds of kilometers. The neat tarmac road turned into one peppered with potholes in a matter of the first kilometers of riding on Guinea-Bissau's roads and consequently got worse the further I rode. The sun was shining down on me mercilessly and the only contact I had with the villagers of the small, passing villages was the constant shouts of “Blanco”. The kids were the first to spot me, breaking into a shouting contest and turning “Blanco” into a harsh “Branco” with a distinct rolled R. There was no “Hello", no “How are you?” Only the barking sound of children shouting branco repeatingly, competing with one another about who can scream the loudest and longest.

It did not take long and I was already sick of it. Every village I passed, I hoped that people would not spot me and that I wouldn't grab the attention of the alarm-children. It got to the point where I would stop to lube my chain in an effort to stop it from making a sound while riding, so that I could better sneak past villages. I can say so much: It didn't work.

4. Praying Mantis wants to join me for the ride

5. The bad roads demand sacrifice of the few trucks that pass

6. Due to the lack of public transport in this region, even the Military/Police will give villagers a lift

7. Smooth roads after Bissau

8. Rio Campossa at Bafatá

What I did see of the villages when I dared to look, was that houses had a colonial and south-european touch. The brick houses had a tin-roof and something like a porch in front, still covered by the roof. The pillars were even partially decorated with an uninspired pattern. It seemed like a change from the plain brick houses I had seen everywhere in Senegal.

I passed seemingly endless fields of cashew trees that, unfortunately, did not bear any cashew fruits. Maybe this was also why most of the men seemed to be unoccupied throughout the day. Some were cutting down branches of trees to turn them into charcoal but the rest were just hanging out in a city square, glaring at me when I passed on my bike.

At least the roads were quiet. Not much traffic, seemingly not many Senegalese had any business going into Guinea-Bissau. Another thing I noticed was the presence of the catholic church. Clearly a leftover from Portuguese colonialism, muslims and Catholics lived side by side and suddenly, small bars where people would meet to drink beer appeared in towns.

9. Cashew trees (and a cow)

When I arrived in Bissau, I was surprised. After the initial busy outskirts of the city, the center and harbor area was relatively calm and clean. Old colonial buildings, both renovated and in a state of advanced decay, decorated the streets.

I negotiated hard for a 10€/per night room with a shared bathroom, of course no AC and neither a fan. But I was used to the fact that Hotels in sub-Saharan West Africa were always an absolute scam compared to their price. Run down, uncared for but prices kept climbing steadily throughout the years. Why should you reinvest into your Hotel when you can just ignore the decaying conditions?

Digitalization

My application for my visa for Guinea had to be made online. Guinea, the next country on my list, shares a name with Guinea-Bissau, yet is completely different. Once under French rule, it is often referred to as Guinea-Conakry, in reference to its capital city, to avoid any mix-up with its neighbor Guinea-Bissau. The online application was a leftover from the covid area. This was much to my liking because it meant I did not need to wait for my visa to be issued in Bissau but could already continue my journey towards the border.

I left Bissau the following day, taking a shortcut out of the city that led me ever further towards the Cana Do Impernal, where Komoot promised me a ferry crossing. The further I rode, the more scarce traffic became, to a point where there were no more cars, no more bikes and I found myself on a narrow gravel trail. I already had decided that this was a dead end and there would certainly be no ferry since nobody was coming my way for a long time. The gravel trail turned into a muddy track, just wide enough for people on foot with barefoot prints in the mud. And then I reached the river. I was standing in the water with my shoes soaking wet, unable to see the other bank and I couldn't believe that I now had to walk all the way back to where I came from because clearly the ferry did not exist.

But just when I wanted to turn around, I spotted a red shirt somewhere through the bush on the river. A boy in a dugout canoe. I made the “psssst, psssst” noise that locals use to grab my attention, and waved at the boy in the canoe as he spotted me. Slowly his boat moved over to me and to my surprise he agreed to take me and the bike to the other side. As we had heaved the bike in the canoe, my whole future travels literally rested on the edge of falling in the river. Stable was not a word I would use to describe the journey to the other bank of the river. 5 minutes long I admire the strength of the boy rowing the boat across against the current while I simultaneously had the job of sitting on the edge of the canoe, presending my butt to any potentially hungry crocodile in the river, acting as a counterweight and being in charge of not having the boat topple over. Needless to say I let out a big sigh of relief when the boat landed and my bike was resting on solid ground once more. Now, 240km of fine road separated me from Gabú, the town close to the border where I intended to wait for the arrival of my visa.

10. My whole setup resting on knifes edge

11. My savior in need

The only problem was, the road was not fine. It was by far the worst I had seen so far on this trip. What looked like a chocolate river from a Willy Wonka factory was indeed the muddy track, clearing its way through the reminiscents of the forest. The condition was brutal, not only for my bike but also for the cars and trucks sharing the faith of having chosen the same road. Every pothole, every bump was rock hard and shocked my bike from bottom to top. I feared for my equipment having to endure the never ending hits from potholes and bumps. Eventually something would have to break.

Every couple kilometers I would pass a truck with broken shocks or a deflated tire. The bush taxis transporting people all had stiff axles welded directly to the body because any other form of suspension would eventually break. However these “cars” were only a riding shell of a scrapyard purchase, stripped to the bone and with some benches for passengers welded to the flooring.

The horrible road conditions demanded their sacrifice of every traveler. After 50km of absolute dread, the road started to have a tarmac surface that was however so riddled with potholes, the cars and trucks would rather use whatever was next to the road and thus create a new lane of dirt road. Luckily I could weave through the net of potholes although progress was slow. To my relief, villages were now further away from the main road and the branco calls became less frequent.

12. More mud

13. Perfect road conditions

14. Rice fields

After two days of suffering, I reached Gabú. My Visa had not yet arrived and I settled in a guesthouse and began my wait for the visa that should arrive any day now. The wait quickly reached 4 days. By now I had already explored the sights that the city had to offer. The man that brews coffee on a small gas stove in an authentic italian coffee stovetop from real coffee beans, the two mosques that were brick buildings with an expansive shallow tin roof and a tiny minaret tower and of course the leftovers of the colonial era buildings that were slowly rotting to ruins.

With my dwindling interest in the town, my confidence about receiving my visa dwindled too. My emails to the technical support about my visa were left unanswered and an expensive call with the Guinean embassy in Brussels was equally fruitless. The manager in Brussels simply stopped answering my calls after a while because apparently he was unwilling to help.

15. Gabu market

16. Typical breakfast establishment

17. Kids infront of colonial-style house

18. Traditional circumcision (festivity) walk with kid in costume to fend off bad spirits

It was clear, I had to do what I wanted to avoid at all cost: travel back to Bissau.

I prepared a small bag, locked my bike at the guesthouse and departed in one of the rusty, rattly and uncomfortable “sept place” vehicles. A sedan that can transport seven people. My vehicle chose to cramp in another 2 people, making the ride ever more uncomfortable. The next 6 hours inside the car were hot, dusty, and with constant shocks and bangs from the car racing over potholes and bumps in the horrible road.

Feeling like I had been churned through the mangle, I seeked out the embassy of Bissau that kindly told me to fuck off because I was not wearing long pants. Did I have long pants with me? Yes. Were they on the bike in Gabú? Yes.

So I rummaged through the bustling market in Bissau to acquire a pair of 3€ pants and the next day I was sitting in front of the counsel, explaining that my visa was not being processed.

Long story short: After 3 days in Bissau, me and 4 other people that were trying to enter Guinea, who faced the same visa-issue, finally received their visa and I could make my way back to Gabú. I had a fever and I decided it would be more comfortable to take a bus instead of the rolling deathtrap “sept place”. Was this the more comfortable choice? No. Was it faster? No. But when I arrived after an 8 hour ride in Gabú and with over a week wasted, I could at least continue my ride the following. Overall not so amazed by Guinea-Bissau, I was happy to make my way to Guinea, where the Futa Djallon mountain region would wait for me.

Long live digitalization.

19. My sept place ride to Bissau having a breakdown

20. Bissau market (searching for long pants)

21. Bus back to Gabu

21. Gabu hotel decorations

22. Hotel shared bathroom, no running water. Water tub on the left for showering and flushing toilet 

23. Bathroom mirror

24. Breakfast stall in Gabu

Seeking Discomfort

I woke up to a frontier police officer blowing a whistle saluting the flagpole at which his colleague was now raising the Guinean flag. Neither of the two were wearing any kind of uniform. The shorter guy was wearing a black, sweat-stained baseball cap with a gray-ish t-shirt and black sweatpants. His colleague was wearing a worn out t-shirt clearly too large for him and gray pants with a holey seam at the bottom. Both wore the, for the region so typical, obligatory leather sandals.

The border crossing was quiet, situated south east of the larger main crossing. This also meant that the officials there were less official, serving in civilian clothes. The AK-47, which was only collecting dust in the corner of the border checkpoint, also indicated that there was rarely any trouble at this border.

I had slept under a round pavilion outside the border office after the officers suggested the day before, it would be a safe place to stay for the night as “they would be there to keep guard”. It didn't bother me that at 11pm, all of them went to bed and I was unguarded because when I woke up in the morning having slept under my mosquito net and on my mat, all of my things were still there.

25. Guinea-Bissau immigration office and official "Exits"-Book

26. Fever + Sport + Heat = No good

27. Guinea Immigration office (left)

28. Sleeping spot at the immigration office

Anyway, the criminal energy I witnessed during my travels to this point was minimal. No physical attacks, no attempted robberies, limited to no verbal harassment. The day prior, when I tried to buy a new sim card, the vendor at the border quoted me a price that was bizarrely high. He defended his price by saying “This is not Bissau, this is Conakry, things here are different.” But his high stakes pokering failed because I called his bluff and just bought a sim card further down the road for a reasonable price. This kind of attempted rip-off happens frequently as a white traveler. But as pitiful as it is, I don't mind it too much. Go ahead, shoot your shot, try to trick me but if I see through it, you will lose your game.

As the police officers started their service with the flag now raised, I began my journey into Guinea.

I was looking forward to making my way into the Futa Djallon region, referred to as the water tower of West Africa because its one of the most mountainous regions, thus attracting heavy rains and being the source of some of the biggest rivers in Western Africa. I couldn't wait to see this newly found lush green region from above. The last mountains on my route had been in Morocco.

But before I could reach the higher ascents, I had to go inland, grappling with some dreadful sandy roads where riding my bike was impossible. As frustrating as it was, I saw the first chocolate-bar like mountains protruding from the ground. Steep black cliffs looked like somebody had cut a piece of cake and placed it in the middle of the landscape. It was a beautiful sight with the round, clay houses with a thatched roof of the tiny rural villages pitted against the mountain in the back. I soon arrived in Gaoual where I would make my way into the mountains through Kakony and eventually all the way to Télimélé, a town beautifully built on the side of a mountain.

29. Hiding in tall grass

30. Sandy roads no problem for the bikes

31. Traditional houses in front of the steep cliffs of a mountain

32. Red dirt, dry grass, wide views

With all my excitement for the pretty and scenic views of this lush, green, exotic part of Africa that would await me, I partially had pushed the thought about the necessary sacrifice to get there to the back of my mind. The roads quickly turned even more sour, with steep inclines and gravel roads turning into rivers upon rainfall and subsequently transforming into a muddy impassable track. I left Kakony, a small town where I was kindly hosted in a private clinic on a hay bed at night, with a full stomach. The people there had taken good care of me, not seeing white tourists pass there often and so they gave their best manners for display. I was offered an accommodation, food, tea, a place to charge my phone and a trader even offered me his daughter for a wife. Nothing I couldn't turn down of course. Except for the African wife. I didn't even need to consult my girlfriend about this decision because I was sure that she would not appreciate the offer of the tradesman.

Anyway, back to the roads. Right outside of Kakony, I was met with agonizing inclines that promptly made me question my choices of ever abandoning the flat coast of West Africa. To make matters worse, half way into the already exhausting day, at lunch I recognized an unmistakable wall of thunder and rain clouds approaching. As the sky darkened, heavy gusts of cold wind swept across the land. An alarming sign that was the prelude to a violent downpour of rain while I tried continuously to scale the mountain. Villagers that had sought shelter under the roofs of nearby bars or restaurants were confused and laughed at the German in a raincoat, on a bicycle, crouching up the mountain at a snail's pace. While the rain did cause a welcomed drop in temperature, it also made it impossible for me to see anything through my glasses. At that point in time I regretted my decision to go for the mountains. Why did I need to go the hard way if I could have just stuck to the easier path?

33. Kakony market on a non-market day. All displays are put aside.

34. Mud roads through a mono culture forest

35. Approaching rain clouds

36. Ant trail

37. Close up of ants

38. My room in the Kakony clinic (no electricity)

The hard work did pay off in the end and I was rewarded with stunning views, eventually arriving in the town of Télimélé.

Here I had a short trip to a waterfall and soon I decided it was time to get a move on and aim for Kindia. The road to Kindia was a seldom traveled road that proved to be technically challenging. It was once more tearing on my bike parts, leaving me afraid of major breaks in the equipment while riding. I had it coming for a long while but eventually, I took a descent too fast and rushed my bike at high speed over a bump that had such a strong impact that it bent my front rim and punctured both my tires which immediately flattened.

At 35°C in the scorching sun I couldn't ask for anything more pleasant than having to fix two tires. And to make matters worse, the impact had also broken my rear rack on which I carry my heavy bags, leaving one side detached and dangling loosely around.

39. Dented rim after hitting a rock

40. Broken rear-rack

41. Me, my bike and a view

42. Beautiful scenery

43. A caterpillar taking a nap

44. Stunning views of the mountain cliffs

45. Télimélé

A nifty mechanic, just a 5 minutes walk away, managed to secure it in place for me to be able to find a proper solution in Kindia. The next night I spent sleeping in a school where the head of the village helped me to find some delicious rice with spicy pepper sauce and fish. The way up to Kindia, although I had rejoined a tarred road, made me question my decision to go into the mountains once more. The road heated up so much during the day that it felt like cycling on a stove top. The sun showed no mercy and tried to burn me to ashes that day while I was huffing and puffing ascending to Kindia.

5 seater cars, loaded to the absolute brim with bananas, having them strapped on the roof and stuffed in the trunk till the lid didn't close anymore, blew their exhaust fumes in my face as they passed. Massive, heavily overloaded trucks with people riding on top of the trailer, who waved at me and grinned at the sight of the struggling white boy, made their way up the mountain too. But I had no time to enjoy this spectacle of traffic safety negligence as I focused on not fainting from heat and exhaustion.

46. On the road to Kindia

47. Child labor - Kids working as mechanics for their father

48. Dirt roads to Kindia

49. Dinner and night-camp in the school

50. School from outside

51. Cloudy mountains

52. Men working at the river at sunset

Eventually I arrived in Kindia and luckily I hadn't fainted. Once again, questioning my sanity for choosing to torture myself through the hot and humid mountains, I found a mechanic that agreed to fix my broken rear-rack. For a measly 15€, the smith simply rebuilt a copy of the old rack out of steel and iron. On a piece of train tracks, used as an anvil, that had been stolen borrowed from the nearby old train line, they bent the iron rods into the pretty much exact shape of the old rack they were copying. The result was heavier than the original but it would surely not break again.

In Kindia, I also had the chance to buy some foods and vitamins that would help me ease my stomach, that was at this point solely running on rice, spicy pepper sauce and fish. A diet that was tasty yet left a burning mark in my stomach daily. I stocked up on any vegetable I could find at the local market with its familiar chaotic feel, reflecting the chaos I experience on the roads too. With walkways barely wide enough to fit one person, big Mama-Africas were displaying their partially rotting goods on wooden displays that had been propped up on plastic stools. Besides stinking fish and rotting tomatoes, the mamas offered a wide selection of spices, sweets, fake medical pills, self made soaps and a lot of unidentifiable other things. While trying to navigate the market without knocking over any of the product tables, the mamas offered me cassava-roots by the kilo, soap bars that were half a meter long, and once again their daughters for marriage.

53. Four mechanics trying to repair the rear-rack

54. Kindia market

55. A man riding on the back of a car

With drizzling rain, I started my descend down the mountain that Kindia was situated on. I was heading for the border of Sierra-Leone, driven by the outlook of beautiful sand beaches in Sierra-Leone and with a paved road under my wheels again, I set myself the target to arrive in Freetown in two days, covering 300km. Since I lacked a second seat on my bike, I had not been able to take any of the offered brides with me but I had my visa for Sierra Leone printed and safely stowed away in one of my bags. With yet another 1.000km in the books, I was sad to leave the mountains behind but when looking back at the pain and suffering during the numerous climbs, I was happily looking forward to flatter roads.

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