Analogue Africa - Top to bottom just before the Internet

Where you've been and what you done
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gbags
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Re: Analogue Africa - Top to bottom just before the Internet

Post by gbags »

Great report again. Take your time.
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Re: Analogue Africa - Top to bottom just before the Internet

Post by P4ulie »

gbags wrote:Great report again. Take your time.
I'm going to second that, really enjoying this. Thank you for posting, I know this site doesn't make it easy (thumbs)
With enough profanity, you can accomplish anything
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Re: Analogue Africa - Top to bottom just before the Internet

Post by cadoganpier »

Fantastic writing, making me want to pack my panniers and go.
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Re: Analogue Africa - Top to bottom just before the Internet

Post by WIBO »

Super RR!!! Thanks!!!

:)


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Will It Buff Out?
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Re: Analogue Africa - Top to bottom just before the Internet

Post by richeyroo »

A long distance overland trip can have many phases, and ours now entered the "domestic bliss, isn't this better than constantly moving" phase. Not one perhaps that will have the publishers clamouring for a signature.

In our little hut, we started to enjoy life

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We sat around reading, washing bike, clothes and body.We cooked simple meals. A quick trip to the Ghanian Embassy for our visas made us think we ought to get moving again but inertia was proving a major influence on us and lulled us into a near comatose existence.

I think our map and compass was having a significant influence on us. From Day 1 outside my parents house and everyday thereafter, we headed south. With no GPS and often not being able to read (or see) road signs, we used our compass to get us to point south every day. If we kept doing that, we'd surely reach Cape Town one day.

But now there was a monumental change. We'd be heading East for the first time. Giddy times and we were too lazy to move.

But we returned from a trip to the shops one day to see our campsite occupied by invaders. Because of the time of year, there were very few overland vehicles on the road and we were surprised/annoyed when we got back "home" to see a white UK registered 110 Land Rover setting up camp. Harrumph.

But they turned out to be lovely people. Paul and Jill if you know them. Their trip was 2 years in the planning, and very well planned it seemed too. But once again we felt the benefit of travelling like vagabonds as they told story after story about customs hassles and border crossing agg. They weren't antagonistic people, quite the opposite but by virtue of the fact that they were carrying a lot of stuff, they received a lot of errrmmm ....attention. Tough times. Certainly they'd had different experiences to us.

But they did raise one interesting point. How did we plan to cross East to West across Central Africa during the next few months of the rainy season ? "Don't know" we said.

But they put the fear of God into us, so we procrastinated, rested and maintained our languid approach to expedition planning. In fact our domestic bliss in the little hut continued and the diary records that we invited Paul and Jill over to "ours" for dinner one evening. They bought proper glasses and red wine. Of a sort. We enjoyed our wonderful middle class dinner party and listened to the rain hammer down on our thatched roof.
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Re: Analogue Africa - Top to bottom just before the Internet

Post by richeyroo »

Neil and Simon arrived. Inevitably. They were trundling around but after the madness of Mauritania were finding things a bit quiet and were contemplating calling it a day. But at the very least they intended to potter on to the next door country Ghana.

We had a different plan. Head to the port, find a kindly Ship's captain and bum a lift down to Cape Town.

Now I know from experience that if one hangs around dockyards asking for favours, dark times occur. Strange experiences come your way that you'd rather not tell your mother about. But even so, this seemed a better option that the mud and horror of Central Africa. We spoke to agents, crew, prostitutes, stevedores, captains and worse. We were promised the world one day and told to piss off the next. It was equally exciting and dispiriting as our hopes were raised and dashed. But one can get an overall feeling when things aren't going to go in your favour and the days of romantically hoping on and off ships seemed to have been killed by the evils of insurance, health and safety, regulation and making the world of shipping safer for the people that worked in it. Bugger. Back on the road.

We had one more night in our lovely little house, said our farewells to Paul and Jill and had our last ever breakfast of rice and beans with the schoolchildren of Abidjan.

And as with so many things, it was the thought of getting going again that was killing us rather than the actuality. Within 100 metres of leaving the campsite we were singing loudly and stupidly and life was rosy once more.
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Re: Analogue Africa - Top to bottom just before the Internet

Post by richeyroo »

Getting into Ghana was a breeze. Aaah, the remnants of British colonialism. We may even have been saluted at one point.

In the mid afternoon we took a right, following a simple signpost down to a campsite. Serendipity once more. A magnificent stroke of luck, a campsite run by Paul from Sheffield and his Ghanian wife. I wish we kept more detailed records and taken better photos but at least what we have stirs the memories.

This is the bay where we camped.

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Simply glorious.

In the night (too many coca colas I fear) I got up in the night to visit the bathroom and tripped over a gentleman who was asleep immediately outside our tent. He was curled up around a shotgun and announced that he was our security guard for the night. I found it difficult to sleep after this little encounter. I hadn't realised we needed an armed guard
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Re: Analogue Africa - Top to bottom just before the Internet

Post by richeyroo »

Up and away and heading East into Accra the next morning, we got a couple of front wheel punctures. The Ghanians have done the same motorcycle lifting course as the Ivorians as each puncture garnered a helpful crowd of strongmen. I don't think you get that on the A40.

Accra was madness. Hot, wet and sticky. And not in a good way.

Our diary records that we found a campsite 10k out of town which was "quite nice and £1.25 with okay facilities". As one can nowadays, I've googled various names and towns and places that are recorded in the diary and Coco Beach Campsite Accra still exists today. Or so TripAdvisor tells me. Happy days. But it doesn't cost £1.25 and although it is much developed, the beach appears to be covered in rubbish and crap nowadays.

And it is the same for our next country. Robinson Beach, Togo. Still there, much developed. Perhaps there isn't a huge change, people find out about these places from the Internet nowadays and we found out about these places from a book or fellow travellers. Not better, not worse.

Ghana, Togo and Benin passed in a fairly orderly fashion. Perhaps we should have headed north and I wish we'd explored more of the voodoo madness that Benin in particular had to offer. But the trip was proving hair raising enough....

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But Ghana, Togo and Benin offered little in the way of adventure or great excitement for us. It's definitely there but we were devoid of much luck in finding it. Things just seemed to be going well. Occasional rain storms resulted in huge floods but we travelled, camped, travelled, camped and enjoyed the experience.

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Re: Analogue Africa - Top to bottom just before the Internet

Post by richeyroo »

I'm worried that I might be losing my audience here as Ghana, Togo and Benin were so lacking in drama.

At the time it was interesting enough. Neil and Simon sold the Land Rover for 1200 quid. They split the money half-half, Neil flew home from Togo and we never saw Simon again. He hitched a lift with 2 Norweigans in a Land Cruiser and was last seen heading East. We got Visas for the next few countries and huddled in the tent during rainstorms.

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Our diary seems to record such monumental events as having cocopops with chocolate milk for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Our pannier frames were absolutely knackered at this point and we spent many a happy afternoon hanging around welding shops.

We wrote home and went to the poste restante sections of the Post Offices hoping for news from home which never came. We ate custard creams and tried to buy off road tyres in the KTM shop that existed in Togo even way back then.

Sometimes we camped wild and sometimes we camped in proper sites

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Re: Analogue Africa - Top to bottom just before the Internet

Post by richeyroo »

There seemed to be a gathering of the Overland Trucks in the area which existed in various states of harmony. I'm not sure they still run today and I'm sure the guys who drove those trucks back in the day should have been paid a zillion times more than they got. We found travelling overland mildly stressful at times when it was just the two of us but these trucks were amazing little societies.

When you put alcoholics with teetotallers, tourists with culture vultures, party animals with hermits, carnivores with vegans, and Australian travellers with just about anybody, times are going to get interesting. We met plenty of folks who hopped off for a leg or two of the journey just to free their minds and get away from whatever it was that was bothering them. There were obviously good trucks and bad trucks but we found that animosity within the trucks was quite easy to come by.

We were quite happy with the independent nature of our travel and perhaps it was good that Ghana, Togo and Benin were so easy because we knew that Nigeria was looming large just around the corner and even in the days of limited research we had a feeling that Nigeria might be challenging.
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