THE WAITING TRIP

As you probably know, we took a little trip to Franceville in the south of Gabon. It was our third big African escapade and in many ways the most extreme one: as the travel agent's offer was way out of reach financially, we organised it all by ourselves. I have many things to tell and it will definitely take up more space than just one entry. I've thus tried to divide the events into chunks and I hereby offer you Part 1: The Waiting Trip.

On Wednesday evening we got on the train to Franceville. The Transgabonais is a big deal out here, as there is only one railway in Gabon. The trip lasts 12 hours and you go at night. Our experience shows that it's impossible to get there in less than 14 hours. Getting on a Gabonese train is surprisingly complicated. Every five minutes a voice with a fake French accent informs you about the boarding time. You must check in oversize luggage. Then there are three controls: policemen and train station officials (oh yes! there are train station officials!) control first your ticket, then your ID and then your ticket and your ID. Finally, you are allowed to get on the train. It's not bad but there are no beds, so it's not very comfy to travel by night. And the air-conditioning is set to 12 degrees, so, in spite of our polars and sleeping bags, we were simply cold. It didn't matter much though, we were ready for our adventure! We got off the train, showed our IDs yet again and were allowed out of the station.

We had called up a guide to meet us at the station and, shockingly, it all went well and he was there. It took only about an hour for the 4x4 car to show up too (do you now get the idea of why I called this "the waiting trip"? if not, read on, there's more) and we set off to Kessala, a tiny village in the wild. Originally we were going to camp by the river to go and see the elephants early in the morning. However, the moment we picked up our backpacks it started to rain (heavy tropical rain) and it continued throughout the whole afternoon. We were thus stuck in Kessala, waiting for the rain to stop, awkwardly sitting in the villagers' huts and listetning to teke, the local language of which we understood nothing. They ate our peanuts and offered no food in exchange. Terrified that they would also eat our precious cans of tuna (we did not have enough food to share with the whole village!), we retired to our minute tent to have the most uncomfortable dinner ever. The rain continued throughout the night but we were surprised to discover that our little chez nous remained dry.

Early in the morning we were going to set off to see the elephants. We were all ready at 5 am but it took one of the guides 30 minutes to show up ("I live far away"). We hiked through the jungle, got terribly wet and saw a big herd (is it?) of elephants bathe in the river, it was awesome! We got back to the village, were fed a local specialty (sandy African aubergine with a plate of manioc), promised to send photos through a thing called "the internet" and went away, escorted by three men, to meet the car that was going to pick us up at 10 am. Of course, he was not there. We called the driver and found out that his car had broken down and that he'd sent another one to meet us. He wasn't lying, only that the other driver showed up three hours later. We sat on the road with the three villagers, chatting, taking silly pictures and waiting for our boots to dry (they didn't throughout the whole trip). Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Finally, a pickup truck in a very bad condition arrived and we were ushered inside. We took the two seats in the front next to the driver, while the back was occupied by around twenty people, a lot of manioc, our backpacks and two smelly sacks of smoked wild hog. (I will get back to Kessala in a separate post.)

When we finally got to Franceville it was too late to do anything (we had planned another trip), so we just looked for a decent hotel, didn't find one in our price range, chose the smallest evil, left our stuff and had dinner with the guide that picked us up at the station. We chose a typical African maki (cheap, tasty and very shabby), where the very pregnant waitress totally checked out my boyfriend. The waiting for the chicken completed our waiting trip. We hoped things would take a more energetic turn the next day. Luckily, they did.


The top left picture was taken by Jandro.