Turning Pointe

Need coffee.

Food.

Mostly coffee.

8:30 a.m. and I was doing a Groundhog Day-like repeat of yesterday. I woke up in an air-conditioned concrete square in Hotel Gabrielle in Dolisie, Republic of Congo. Hadn't I checked out of here? I pulled on all my clothes and padded down the hall to the toilet block.

There, that's the one with paper. 

I needed to figure out what to do, now that I'd fled the train to Brazzaville. Did I want to fly? I knew I didn't want to embark on a two-day hellish overland truck journey through the mud. Or did I want to go to Pointe-Noire on the coast? From there, lots of planes flew to Brazzaville, or I could apply for an Angola visa and transit the Angolan enclave of Cabinda to Democratic Republic of Congo. But tourists were struggling to get Angolan visas at the moment, and if I managed to get one, I'd be using a day of a five-day transit visa in Cabinda, which meant having four days to cross all of Angola.

The Ninja Express

I awoke to the sound of a terrific hawking and spitting down the hall.

I peeked out of my room at Hotel Gabrielle, which I'd crawled into late last night, after the long day's truck journey from the Congo-Gabon border to here in Dolisie. I vaguely remembered the night clerk being hopelessly inept. He'd taken a basket of keys, then counted the room doors. There were no numbers on the doors, so he had to count from left to right to figure out which door was which.

"Un, deux, trois..."

I wanted to tell him the rooms hadn't moved. Hadn't he done this before? But I didn't dare interrupt as he kept having to start over as it was.

By Road Through Congo

From Mali to Gabon, so many travel days had been relentless tests of endurance, the kind of days that left me grateful that most of my commutes involve 17 minutes on the subway. I'd heard the phrase "Now you are learning about transportation in Africa" more than once, which always made me wonder exactly how many lessons I really needed to be convinced that the roads could bear a bit of improvement.

But Congo...this was bad roads on a whole new level. Bad roads on a level I'd barely seen, and believe me, I've seen some bad roads. Congo roads make the legendary (and now repaired) Cambodian "road" from the Thai border to Siem Reap look like a suburban driveway. That's not because you couldn't park a truck in the potholes in Cambodia. No, there comes a point where one bad road can't be any worse than another bad road, and that point is once it's a mini-Grand Canyon, and all of those roads are equally horrific. No, what makes Congo stand out in the annals of legendary bad roads is the rainy season mixed with the mini-Grand Canyons.

A Slow Start

When my little travel alarm went off at 3:45 a.m., I felt for the clock next to me on the bed and hit "snooze." Why is it that now I wanted to sleep, after barely sleeping throughout the night? I'd woken up constantly—what if I missed the blaring horn of the truck that was going to take me through the mud away from the border?

There was really no chance of that. I was in rural Congo, in a tiny border village where almost no one had a car or even a television, where a goat's sneeze would probably have woken me up. Aside from the crickets and frogs, nothing stirred.

I pulled on the clothes I'd placed next to me under the mosquito net, unlocked the door, and went out into the dark night.

No truck.

Hmmm.

I went back inside until 4, then checked again.

Still no truck.

Into the Unknown

The omelet I was served at Hotel du la Lac in Mouila wasn't greasy. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen an omelet this well-cooked. Maybe at that amazing hotel I'd been to in Djenne.

Wow. More reason to love the cook, the grandma who'd startled me last night with the offer of antelope.

I was slack about getting out of my hotel on time. The food was great, the wi-fi good. Who knew when I'd next have a reliable connection? Certainly I'd have no access for the next few days, as I rolled with the peanut butter and mud into Republic of Congo.

Still, in spite of meandering, I got to the rendezvous point for Ndende-bound transport by nine.

Plenty of time, I thought, to make the two-hour drive to Ndende—where I needed to be stamped out of Gabon—and be there by noon before the police left for their three-hour lunch break. But an hour is never enough leeway in this part of Africa. I should know that by now.

At a dusty roundabout in the center of Mouila, two kids motioned for me to put my bag into the back of the next available transport for Ndende, a white Mitsubishi pickup truck covered in drying orange mud. I wrapped my bag in a plastic cover that I carry around, and then searched the nearby Lebanese-owned shops for a garbage bag (double protection!) with no success.

South through Gabon

I stored my new jar of peanut butter carefully at the bottom of my bag. That's traveler's gold when you're about to embark on several long transportation days into the unknown. Yes, it's full of fat. But guess what? Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches don't go bad in your daypack the way most things do. And even squashed, they're still edible and don't make much of a mess, even when the jelly bleeds through the bread.

I was packing at six in the morning at the Libreville Guesthouse. Alace, one of the people who runs the guesthouse, had gifted me with the Jif and a squeeze bottle of Welch's. I was set for food on my journey south into Republic of Congo. Alace does not, of course, randomly hand out jars of peanut butter to every traveler who comes to the guesthouse. In fact, not every traveler is able to stay at the guesthouse—it's a great, comfortable place, cheap for Libreville at $38 a night including free wi-fi, but they only have three rooms and operate primarily as a service for staff and visitors to Bongolo Hospital. I was lucky enough that when I e-mailed, there was plenty of room for a stray backpacker.

One of the staff affiliated with Libreville Guesthouse and Bongolo—a kind of local fixer—had explained to me exactly what I had to do in the morning if I chose to try the Dolisie route through Congo. I had to go at 6:30 a.m. to the Mouila Transport office. These buses were modern, air-conditioned and not oversold. The bus would not leave that early, of course, but Libreville rush hour traffic was to be respected. If I left too late, I'd end up sitting in traffic for ages, trying to get to the bus.

Contemplating Ninjas

"Maybe I should have bought a donkey back in Mali," I thought, depressed as I stared at my map.

I couldn't decide which way to go to Brazzaville, in Republic of Congo. Travelers had been going via Franceville and Leconi, from Gabon's eastern border, hitching on trucks to the city of Oyo, then taking the regularly scheduled bus down a decent road to Brazzaville. But the costs between Leconi and Oyo were high, and I could end up waiting for a lift for days. On the plus side, I could take a reasonable Gabonese train as far as Franceville. But all bets were off from Leconi to Oyo. The traveler without a vehicle is completely at the mercy of any ride they can find, because there aren't enough trucks to give the traveler a decent negotiating position. I could easily spend a hundred dollars for that day-long journey over dreadful dirt tracks.

The southern route would take me into Congo via Doussala or Mbinda. My friend Peter had gone the Mbinda way many years ago and reported being able to catch a train from Mbinda to Dolisie, Congo, and he recalled the border guard nipping across country lines to get them all some fried rat. But that was a long time ago and I could find nothing online about that train. If there was no train, I'd be really screwed on the road front. Most of the roads in Congo are dreadful, and some of the major highways are just pitted truck ruts full of mud. And this wasn't a major road route. I'd probably end up having to backtrack.

Lazing Around Libreville

I'd been carrying around free sample single-serving sachets of Nescafe "gourmet" coffee for months. A team of sample hander-outers had shoved them at me at Penn Station. Or maybe they'd been shoved at Michael Kraiger. Either way, we were both always being confronted by free samples on the way to work, and kept each other abreast of what was being given away where. The instant oatmeal in my pack I'd purchased before leaving home, knowing I'd need it eventually.

I'd woken up in an actual house, the extremely reasonably priced Libreville Guesthouse. I was the only occupant on the floor, though I could see a dog and a security guard if I looked outside. I had a bedroom and a shared living room, dining room, porch, bathroom, and kitchen (complete with washing machine). But the other two bedrooms were empty. There was no one to share with.

The relief I felt at being in a homey, secluded situation was massive. I made my breakfast. I caught up on e-mail. I padded around in my pajamas. Heaven.