Bamako was a city of mixed fortunes for me. Upon arriving we found Jessica, the local Peace Corps representitive, and settled into her apartement quickly making a mess. Our first day in Bamako was productive as we searched the market for a new rear wheel for my bike and thankfully after a long time found an adequate replacement, nothing more than adequate though. We then headed to a local bar to meet some other peace corps personnel, we nick named this bar the 3am bar because even at 1pm with its heavily curtained windows little light made it inside giving it the atmosphere of a bar at 3am. We spent the rest of the day and night bar hopping and ended up rather drunk. The next day we headed to the immigration offices to get our visa`s but the process took 24hrs meaning we had to wait an extra day, ...
It feels like its been a very long time since we were in Labe uploading the last blog, the last few days have been a rollercoaster ride.
We spent 4 days in Labe filled with bike repair, washing, sleeping and dodging 2 political marches.
The first was a pro-democracy anti-government march through the town centre. 2 days later the military ruler of Guinea, Captain Moussa Dadis Camarab, came to Labe itself. He arrived in a massive show of military might with hundreds of heavily armed solders and a military fighter jet flying overhead. As we cycled out of Labe to a town 90 miles south called Mamou we encountered another march but decided not to hang around long enough to see what was happening. All the marches we saw passed without any incident or violence but after reading the news now we are in Mali it’s obvious that that was ... >>full...
Hi there everyone, Ian here. I would
like to start by appologising for the size of this blog. A lot has
happened in the past week or so. Due to the shear quantity of
incedients over the past week I am going to break it down into days
and bullet points.
Day 1
What broke today?
The stove refused to work
I started the day with a puncture
and finished the day with another
What happened today?
We left Kedougou and started our
journey towards Labe heading in the direction of Dindifellow.
We soon encountered puddles and
streams blocking our route. These puddles/streams where as deep as
chest hieght and stretched upto 100m. This forced us to carry our
equipment and bikes individually above our head. Taking upto an
hour to cross each puddle/stream.
Ian and I left the comfort of Anna‘s house a day later than planned as due to a heavy rain storm. As Ian mentioned in the previous blog we had intended to stay travel through the Gambia on different roads get a little space to ourselves and to get a feel for traveling alone. After 3 months on the road together it was a welcome change.
In Banjul Anna had told us that the northern road was a far better road than the southern but I after flipping a coin we had already decided that Ian would take the north road and I would take the south. I did get the stove though. Leaving Banjul the road had tarmac for 30miles but after that it quickly descended into a wide muddy track covered with holes. Despite the road I still covered over 70 miles that day and as the ...
A lot has happened since our last blog and I have a
fantastic story for you about our time in Dakar.After our last blog we went to a number of
bars in Dakar
and drank until we run out of money, it was still only 4pm so we decided to get
some more money out.At the bank we met
a nice local who offered to take us to a cheap local bar.This bar turned out to be basically somebody’s
house.We decided to stay ...
