Journey of a Lifetime: Part 3

Fred Von Hoyer is driving up Africa, from Cape Town to the Tangiers. This is his Journey of a Lifetime. To read the story of the journey so far go to Journey of a Lifetime : Part 1 which documents his trip from Cape Town to Windhoek, and Part 2 which follows Fred from Windhoek to Angola. Here we continue with Part 3.

After a long and gruelling ride to Benguela, Angola I managed to get some rest and got prepared for the next leg of the journey. I left Benguela and headed to Luanda, but the going was tough and I ran out of time and had to stop at the little coastal town of Port Ambioum, about 200 kilometres from Luanda. On the way into the town I saw two guys trying to fix their car, and pulled over to give them a hand. We got their car going, and the one guy, who was from Portugal, offered me a place to sleep on his veranda. I got set up but it was tough to get any sleep with a nearby club blaring music til late into the night.

The next morning as I was leaving for Luanda I saw a point break, and someone was surfing the great waves peeling left. I took some photos of the surfers, and some of the guys came up to me and invited me to join them for a beer and lunch. I met surfer after surfer, and some of the guys lent me their boards and I got a chance to catch some waves in bath-warm Angolan water. We ended up surfing till the sun had set, eventually building a bonfire on the beach, hollering and full of stoke. It was a perfect day.

The next day I said goodbye to my new friends and headed off through Luanda to Nzeto. The road was awful and I ended up having to stop short of Nzeto and slept on the side of the road. The next morning I found a tarred road and was able to make up some good time eventually reaching the border between Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) by late afternoon. It took a while to get through the Angolan side of the border and by the time I was through I had an hour or so of sunlight to travel the 260 kilometres to get to Kinshasa.

Eventually the road got too dangerous to drive at night, and I was forced to take a dirt road and set up camp under a pipeline. It was just as well I stopped as a huge thunderstorm started up on the horizon. I pulled out some bread and my little bottle of Jack Daniels and sat watching the lighting strike in the distance.

Suddenly from out of the darkness behind me I heard “Permit!” in a French accent and the click-clack of a weapon cocking. I turned around and could just make out two figures. I stood and turned; bread in one hand, Jack Daniels in the other. I heard another cocking of a weapon followed by more shouts in French. I could make out a face in the dark and two AK 47s aimed at my head.

I lifted my arms and told them I didn’t speak French and that I was from South Africa. One came closer and with one hand pushed me to the ground. He spoke a little English and told me to strip down, and asked me where my money was. I couldn’t see much as they were shining torches into my eyes, but I slowly started taking my shirt off. They saw my knife and leatherman and took it away immediately. Next they started dragging my bags out of my tent asking where my money was. I could now see these men wore camouflage and were military.

The English speaking one found my waist bag and made me open it. He took out the five dollars in the bag and counted it off in front of me. Up to this point the fact that they were asking for money made me think I was being hustled or mugged by soldiers, but then he counted the money in front of me making sure I knew the amount. This gave me the impression that it was routine procedure.

He then looked at my passport and visa and started to take the passport away and put it in his pocket. I tried to hold onto the passport and yanked it away from him saying that I go wherever the passport goes. He got aggressive and so I decided to let him take the passport. In retrospect it was a foolish move to try and hold onto the passport, but I was concerned about letting it go.

Every time I moved they would get nervous and bring their weapons up and push me down, so I sat quietly watching them go through my things. He asked if I had weapons, I said no, he asked again, I emphatically said no. After they were satisfied with my bags they allowed me to put my clothes back on.

He now started repeating that they were no problem, and made me pack up the tent and drive the bike over to their post. The English speaking one jumped on the back with me, while another walked beside me as I drove down the pipeline to the guard post. When we got to the post they made me sit down on a bench under a mango tree, they cleared the chamber in their rifles and made their weapons safe. The soldiers became friendlier and started chatting, but I was still definitely under detention and couldn’t move freely.

At about midnight the Commandant arrived and asked me a few questions. He made a call, and after the answer came back the atmosphere completely changed and I was given my money and goods back. The soldiers escorted me to a nearby town called Kimpese where I would stay with the police until morning when I would be free to go to Kinshasa.

I spent the rest of the night between policemen and ‘criminals’ who weren’t kept behind bars but in a corner of a veranda, cordoned off with benches. I was told I could sleep on the floor in between this small crowd, but couldn’t; five days of dust and sweat made me uncomfortable enough, and the people were noisy as well. The next morning I was free to go and sped off to Kinshasa. I was very tired and ended up in a traffic jam for three hours with a bike that was now giving oil problems. Eventually I arrived in Kinshasa very hot and tired, and found a convent which offered a place to sleep and a place to wash.

What an adventure it has been so far. Every day is totally unexpected and filled with highs and lows. I look forward to the coming months as I travel up the rest of this continent.

Images of Journey of a Lifetime: Part 3