We made it to Congo!! in Spanish, Congo, for whatever reason, has a special meaning, as the most freaking remote and obscure place you can imagine. For example, if you have to go to some really far away place, following the most complicated route, you will explain you had to go to Congo! It is funny, Kelly, our Nigerian brother told us in Nigeria, they refer to Congo Brazzaville as Australia.
So, now, we are in Congo! And, indeed, we are freaking far away, after following the most complicated route to the most remote place on Earth.
As a matter of fact, Congo turned out to be such an obscure and complicated place that we are now stuck in Brazzaville, because there is no reasonable way to cross some stupid 2kms-5kms across the Congo river, separating Brazzaville from Kinshasa. Yeah, the Congo river is big, but, C'mon! At first we assumed there would be some bridge, where we could easily cross. So naive of us! As soon as we got here, we realized, that was not the case. We thought then, there would be a ferry instead, ...obviously! In town, however, nobody knew about any such ferry. There is some fast ferry for people, but something for the car?: never heard such thing. We did some research online, and, voila! there were some stories about some crazy ferry to cross the Congo river between Brazzaville and Kinshasa.
So, we went yesterday to the port here in Brazzaville to get it done. Nobody seemed to know anything and it was rather difficult to figure out where to go and what had to be done. Finally they directed us to some little building: the white house. They asked us about the details of our car and were wondering if we had already found a boat to ship our car. It was all very confusing: we thought they were the boat that will ship our car! Then the lady showed me her calculator with the sum of 45000 CFA (about $75). We were freaking out and we could not even imagine what was still coming. The lady finished preparing the invoice, At the same time she called somebody with whom we could discuss the details of the shipment of the car. When the guy arrive, they explained me the 45000 CFA were for the crane to put the car in the 'barrage' (barge). I also had to expect to pay about 100000 CFA more to get it out at the Kinshasa side. I did not want to ask how much they wanted to actually ship the car. The security guy who was helping translating for me, broke in laughs when the guy gave his quote: he did not know how to explain it to me: the guy was asking for 1.000.000 CFA. He was kind to advice me, he thought that was a bit expensive...
Later, we got some other quotes, always over several hundred dollars. So, clearly, there is no reasonable way to cross this stupid 5km stretch across the river. Fortunately, we follow some other leads and one girl at the Hippocamp, here in Brazzaville, told us us it is possible to cross to DRC about 200km southwest from Brazzaville. It is a land crossing, so no rip offs. Then, once in DRC, we cross the Congo river, so a regular ferry ride. It is just that instead of jumping here 5km over the Congo river, from Brazzaville to Kinshasa, we have to traverse for 800km-400km, going around, over the land crossing near Boko, the ferry across the Congo and some really horrible roads.
The horrible roads in Congo are already well known by us. It took us one full day to do less than 200km from the border with Gabon to Dolisie. Then two more days to cover 400km more to Brazzaville. Most of the road from Dolisie and Brazzaville is an awesome, brand-new Chinese road. However it is not yet oficially open, so every 10km or so there is a barrier with a group of people (road workers) demanding money to let you continue. Obviously, they get really excited thinking how much money they can get from this wealthy white tourist people.
After all the horror stories we had heard about Nigeria, our journey through Nigeria turned out to be rather smooth and, even, enjoyable. In Nigeria, officer generally asked you for something, but, almost always, they were actually sweet and innocent, almost childish about it; like that commander how came running towards us: "Mommy, Mommy, we are your children, what did you bring for us!". Now, we were really surprised when we made it into Cameroon and Gabon and discovered how much worse the police and security forces are there. A few were good, but most of the time they would ask us for an endless list of papers, hoping they will find something they could question. Even if everything was OK, they will cast some doubt over something, hoping you would not be able to explain, hoping you will believe that paper was not valid over there, hoping you will get scared they were going to have to write you a ticket, so you will offer to give them some money to sort things out. In Nigeria, there were two times where they found us without the seat belt: "that is an infraction in Nigeria", they explained. We would try to justify. "apologies accepted, but you have to show appreciation". We all know what that means. Those two times in Nigeria actually turned out to be a funny play. After they waited for a minute for some move from us, as they realized our very depressed facial expressions, they took pity on us and told us we could go. In Cameroon and Gabon, they put us through quite a lot of much more hell. Those fuckers did not get anything from us though.
But back to Brazzaville... Although we believe we have been able to decipher how to cross over to DRC, we got stuck here one more day because of some political turmoil going on at this time. There were some political protest today and everybody advised we do not go out at this time. If Congo is not complicated enough in itself, we even found a complicated time to be here. Finally, we will try to leave tomorrow.
