Bonjour from Brazzaville!

Well kittens, this is a hot one from the Congo and you won't believe what a task it's been to get here. Sorry there are no photos, but the camera got trashed yesterday, as did my panniers, luggage rack, various bits of the bike and my mobile phone - mostly as a result of diving repeatedly into 4 foot deep mud pits (honestly - the bike actually vanished in one of them!). Note to self - never again ride across Congo in rainy season...

So, what's been going on? Well I settled into what I thought would be an 8 day wait in Yaounde for my 3 visas. Anyway, amazingly for Africa, DRC of all places has an express visa service where you can pay an extra tenner and get it in 3 hours rather than 3-4 days - result! The visas were eye-wateringly expensive, the worst being Congo at 70 quid! It made the USD100 visa for Nigeria look like a bargain. I mean 70 quid to visit a place with no roads - and I didn't even get a free t-shirt.

Anyway, banking my time-saving (as I'm missing the family, having been at this malarky for 57 days on the trot) I sped off at warp speed to Gabon, crossing the Equator and doing 650km on perfect roads through the most lovely rainforest in one day. I have the pics to prove it, if the memory card in the camera isn't trashed too. Sadly, there is a North-South divide in Gabon as was proven when the perfect road just ended the next day. Honestly, I thought I'd taken a wrong turn. One minute Alpine-quality road, the next minute the barest of dirt tracks.

I got to Ndende, the last town in Gabon on Saturday afternoon and foolishly though that would be a good time to cross the border. The Gabon police were very nice - the Chief drove around the town picking up his colleagues so they could open the station and do my paperwork! The last 40km to the border itself was down what can only be described as a dirt path! Anyway, once I got to the red, yellow and green metal pole indicating that it was Congo (Republic of) and filled in the same details in 4 different books it was getting a bit dusky. My map said that the next town was 50km, but the Gendarmes told me that it would take 4 hours. Luckily, I didn't scoff at the idea and instead took them up on their kind offer of camping at the border post and having a bucket shower in the head-Gendarme's house.

Sunday and Monday were the hardest days of off-road riding I've ever done. It poured down in that tropical way all Saturday night and I spent the next day slithering all over slimy clay, getting stuck in huge truck ruts and generally falling off as my road tyres were giving no grip at all. Yesterday (Monday) was, if anthing even worse. The ground has softened to deep deep mud and I drowned the bike once and got deeply mired more than I can remember (with luggage and fuel Naartjie weighs about 250kg, which is a lot to pull out of a muddy hole by yourself when you are waist deep in water and wearing leather trousers).

The upshot of all of this was that, last night, some 40km short of the nearest town, it was getting dark and I rode right into another deceptive mud pit just outside a village. I kid you not, it took the whole village to get the bike out - but the people were fabulous. They insisted I stay the night, which was just as well as I could barely stand and took me off to see the Cheif. He was great and told one of the Elders to take me to the washing place as I was filthy. There then followed a 20 minute walk with a kerosene lamp into the jungle (seriously!) to a place where the stream had been barricaded. The 'washing place' had a zinc board (to stand on, I think - well that's what I did with it!), a big round stone, a big pointy stone (no idea wht these were for) and 2 buckets. I can honsetly say it was the strangest shower of my life, as the Elder slipped modestly in the bushes to wait and I stood there in the buff with my Neutrogena and 2 oddly shaped stones!

After camping in my manky, waterlogged tent, I set off at dawn, having given the villagers a couple of little presents from my meagre surviving gear, getting the last 100km to Brazza by last morning.Gosh, what a surprise. It's really quite a nice place, despite recently being voted the second worse place in the world to live, I hear (after Baghdad). The rest of the day has been spent eating omelette (20 minutes) and doing repairs to Naartjie (six hours on a petrol station forecourt!!!). Until you've adjusted the valve clearances of a KTM 640 Adventure surrounded by a group of Congolese taxi drivers, you've never lived :-)

Remember folks, I'm doing this so that you don't have to! Tomorrow, I'm hoping to cross over to Kinshasa, capital of DRC (which from this side of the river looks also nicer than it's reputed to be) and from there head for the Angolan border where I hear I might get a 5 day transit visa - if I'm lucky...

Once final thing - Congo has the best-named beer in the world - 'Ngok' - which means Crocodile if the picture on the bottle is anything to go by! It's really very nice.