Thursday, February 02, 2006
The Stingray's Horizon (Third Week of January 2006)
Gazoil draws us a map from the Gabonese bordertown of Lekoni to the Congolese border town of Mbie. This map includes two possible junctions and at least three unindicated, radically different scales of distance. Since none of the towns that he uses as points of reference are included on any of our other maps, we do not know, as we begin this journey, that this postcard sized child's map represents hundreds of square kilometers, fails to mention dozens of large intersections and is functionally useless.
We stamp out of Gabon into nowhere and thank Gazoil for his assistance with a couple of dollars; then we speed into a sparsely populated semi-desert of weed tufted sandhills. At our first unanticipated major intersection we stop and look around for some indication of where to go. We are on a hilltop that commands an impressive view; no sign of habitation or vehicular traffic presents itself. Tuuli runs in search of an old lady that we passed half a kilometer behind and I walk ahead to scout the road, encountering, hidden by the tall grasses, a second old lady, laden, like them all, with an overloaded woven stick back pack that curls over her head and stoops her low. She doesn't speak a lick of French. I have never heard of or encountered her language before and we both play miserable charades. I understand that the Congolese town that I am seeking can be found to the right; but that Congo is to the left. Tuuli gathers little more. We head right and are quickly mired in sand less than half way up a hill we have little chance of surmounting.
We work at removing ourselves, get soaked by the daily thunderstorm and roll back down the hill to inaugurate our essential strategy of driving completely offroad through waist high grasses. When we try to rejoin the road later on, we get stuck on the towering central divider-nemesis of low lying cars. We are growing more skillful at extrication techniques: jack and push, dig and pull, winch and curse. It is an unprecedented opportunity for strenuous daily exercise.
After freeing the car from its second spot of trouble we adopt the exhausting strategy of jogging ahead of the cautiously advancing Stingray while shouting warnings and directions to the driver. This enables us to safely advance at approximately two miles per hour and it makes short stretches of semi-improved road much more tempting. The strategy does not work when laziness causes a scout to give the all clear on a long curving road that devolves into a trough of deep soft sand nearly fifty meters long. Such behavior results in a Stingray as useful as a grounded sea turtle flipped on its back.
We use the complete stories of Evelyn Waugh to jack the car up so that we can remove hundreds of pounds of sand from beneath it; we use a small shovel to create an offramp through the wall of sand preventing our escape to the weedy tufted area where we at least have a sliver of traction. I use a machete to cut down a twenty-five foot tree and make two ramps that tuck into the roofrack like battering rams. After nearly three hours of toil, when we are about to put our road construction to the test, a convoy of trucks belonging to a road construction company discovers us. They are traveling with an enormous Caterpillar that wields the power to construct roads. It instantly demolishes our handiwork and replaces it with a bypass of superior quality: a special road just for us.
Every one of the drivers tells us that we will be unable to reach the next village and that it would be better for us to turn around. The Caterpillar is returning the following day and can help us along. We say we'll forge ahead and be grateful for his help whenever he catches up with us. As far as the governments of Central Africa are concerned, this night we do not exist. This is far more thrilling than the temporary nationlessness of air travel because it is obvious as we eat instant mashed potatoes, franks and beans and hide our lantern from the two passing trucks that we are on land and out of anyone's sight. It feels fugitive good. As we contemplate the big dipper turned upside down and Orion on his side like a butterfly (I have never been in the Southern Hemisphere before), Sean tries to spread fear of lions and horned Gabonese vipers of extraordinary venom; but Tuuli and I are too tired to care.
We set the alarm for a dark hour and rise with the intention of outpacing the incredible machine and arriving in Congo unassisted. This nearly comes to pass. Tuuli and I run for a combined twenty kilometers, at most one of which is actually on the road. We dodge termite mounds, trees, ditches, ponds and the ruts of heavier off roading vehicles. By approximately one pm we arrive at Kabala, the final stationing point of Gabonese authority and begin to tackle the most impressive obstacle that we have faced so far. This mountain of sand seems doable at first and we burst upwards in calculated, cleared and memorized hundred meter sprints. However, the second half of the hill is going to be impossible, a word that I have never before applied to any road that we hoped to take. All of the deviant avoidance tracks converge between dense forest into a rut dug two to three meters deep into the soft earth (from the roadside, you wouldn't see the Stingray passing). At the bottom of this trench are tracks that only the strongest 4x4 trucks could hope to traverse.
Gazoil draws us a map from the Gabonese bordertown of Lekoni to the Congolese border town of Mbie. This map includes two possible junctions and at least three unindicated, radically different scales of distance. Since none of the towns that he uses as points of reference are included on any of our other maps, we do not know, as we begin this journey, that this postcard sized child's map represents hundreds of square kilometers, fails to mention dozens of large intersections and is functionally useless.
We stamp out of Gabon into nowhere and thank Gazoil for his assistance with a couple of dollars; then we speed into a sparsely populated semi-desert of weed tufted sandhills. At our first unanticipated major intersection we stop and look around for some indication of where to go. We are on a hilltop that commands an impressive view; no sign of habitation or vehicular traffic presents itself. Tuuli runs in search of an old lady that we passed half a kilometer behind and I walk ahead to scout the road, encountering, hidden by the tall grasses, a second old lady, laden, like them all, with an overloaded woven stick back pack that curls over her head and stoops her low. She doesn't speak a lick of French. I have never heard of or encountered her language before and we both play miserable charades. I understand that the Congolese town that I am seeking can be found to the right; but that Congo is to the left. Tuuli gathers little more. We head right and are quickly mired in sand less than half way up a hill we have little chance of surmounting.
We work at removing ourselves, get soaked by the daily thunderstorm and roll back down the hill to inaugurate our essential strategy of driving completely offroad through waist high grasses. When we try to rejoin the road later on, we get stuck on the towering central divider-nemesis of low lying cars. We are growing more skillful at extrication techniques: jack and push, dig and pull, winch and curse. It is an unprecedented opportunity for strenuous daily exercise.
After freeing the car from its second spot of trouble we adopt the exhausting strategy of jogging ahead of the cautiously advancing Stingray while shouting warnings and directions to the driver. This enables us to safely advance at approximately two miles per hour and it makes short stretches of semi-improved road much more tempting. The strategy does not work when laziness causes a scout to give the all clear on a long curving road that devolves into a trough of deep soft sand nearly fifty meters long. Such behavior results in a Stingray as useful as a grounded sea turtle flipped on its back.
We use the complete stories of Evelyn Waugh to jack the car up so that we can remove hundreds of pounds of sand from beneath it; we use a small shovel to create an offramp through the wall of sand preventing our escape to the weedy tufted area where we at least have a sliver of traction. I use a machete to cut down a twenty-five foot tree and make two ramps that tuck into the roofrack like battering rams. After nearly three hours of toil, when we are about to put our road construction to the test, a convoy of trucks belonging to a road construction company discovers us. They are traveling with an enormous Caterpillar that wields the power to construct roads. It instantly demolishes our handiwork and replaces it with a bypass of superior quality: a special road just for us.
Every one of the drivers tells us that we will be unable to reach the next village and that it would be better for us to turn around. The Caterpillar is returning the following day and can help us along. We say we'll forge ahead and be grateful for his help whenever he catches up with us. As far as the governments of Central Africa are concerned, this night we do not exist. This is far more thrilling than the temporary nationlessness of air travel because it is obvious as we eat instant mashed potatoes, franks and beans and hide our lantern from the two passing trucks that we are on land and out of anyone's sight. It feels fugitive good. As we contemplate the big dipper turned upside down and Orion on his side like a butterfly (I have never been in the Southern Hemisphere before), Sean tries to spread fear of lions and horned Gabonese vipers of extraordinary venom; but Tuuli and I are too tired to care.
We set the alarm for a dark hour and rise with the intention of outpacing the incredible machine and arriving in Congo unassisted. This nearly comes to pass. Tuuli and I run for a combined twenty kilometers, at most one of which is actually on the road. We dodge termite mounds, trees, ditches, ponds and the ruts of heavier off roading vehicles. By approximately one pm we arrive at Kabala, the final stationing point of Gabonese authority and begin to tackle the most impressive obstacle that we have faced so far. This mountain of sand seems doable at first and we burst upwards in calculated, cleared and memorized hundred meter sprints. However, the second half of the hill is going to be impossible, a word that I have never before applied to any road that we hoped to take. All of the deviant avoidance tracks converge between dense forest into a rut dug two to three meters deep into the soft earth (from the roadside, you wouldn't see the Stingray passing). At the bottom of this trench are tracks that only the strongest 4x4 trucks could hope to traverse.
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