Congo & Gabon
Congo Country 21 & Gabon Country 22
To cross the congo, we hired a ferry to take the 3 cars across. We were a little bit nervous when the cars were swinging in the air while they were loaded. Getting a car across the Congo River using this method can be quite expensive, especially on the Congo side when your cars are being held hostage….
After we crossed the Congo we stayed a couple of days in Brazzaville and then started the drive to Libreville to catch up with the rest of the team.
We were 3 cars and only 3 drivers for this leg so we all had to do a lot of driving. I did not enjoy the first part of driving through the Congo as the road is a big dust bowl full of trucks, most of the time you cannot see the end of your bonnet. The trucks did not give you a gap and at one stage one nearly ran me off the road when we came to a bridge. I found this more stressful than the DRC!
Once we turned started heading north and the trucks headed west to the coast it became a lot more pleasant the rest of the drive through the Congo.
When we crossed into Gabon we had about 80km of bad roads and then hit beautiful tar, oh what a dream I was in heaven…
Both the Congo (when the dust clears) and Gabon have the most spectacular scenery, lots of rivers, green and lush with HUGE tree it really is so beautiful. The one thing you notice in both these countries is the lack of people on the roads. The rest of Africa the roads are full of people, bicycles, motorbikes loaded to the maximum taking food, wood, coffins, sofas, in fact, anything you can think of are piled high and transported up and down. In the Congo and Gabon, no one is around, it is really weird some towns are like ghost towns.
When we stopped for any reason not one person took any notice – WEIRD!!! In this part of Africa, most houses are made of wood instead of mud, which gives some towns a wild west feel…
Libreville was a welcome relief and the chance for the team to regroup after being split for the last month while we battled through the DRC.
Gabon would also give us a major problem – one of the engines caught a light, luckily we caught it in time but were now without a car (would take 2 months to rebuild the engine!)
