34. Fragments from the forest

The rains finally stopped after twelve hours and almost instantly the clicks, warbles, and whoops rise to a crescendo. I stop plodding through the torch-lit mud and around the lake and squelch to a stand still. The volume and variety is truly extraordinary.

Jesuit ruins at Santa Maria

Ramshackle timber houses remind me of other scenes. Another continent. Smallholdings carved into the dense subtropical forest. Mate plants pruned short for easier harvesting. A barefoot father out with his brood. He points down a lane. I can camp down there he says.

Mural in Jardin America

I search the sky for signs of a nocturnal downpour. The father of the six children who has come to view the spectacle assures me that it won't rain tonight. Not much anyhow. After I have pitched the tent on the bald football pitch I have an intense Spanish lesson with the smiling kids grilling me on the English word for this and the English word for that. I try to give as good as I get and silence momentarily ensues while I search the dictionary. Murmurs of agreement when our seven fingers find the word. Then eruptions of laughter at my pronunciation. They are the best teachers in the world.

Slow motion

I return from breakfast to find someone in the shower of the two-bed room. A girl's belongings scattered across the bed I slept in last night. My own pushed neatly to an invisible line dividing the room in two. A half eaten English novel. Hours later we swing in the shaded hammocks, cold beers amongst the breached tree roots. Stories flowing easily.

Through the trees

Nacho maps out the local political landscape on the back of a aerial view of the town. He is attempting to reform and expand the public spaces in the vicinity of the Jesuit ruins. However, he laments the local politicians and business people who don't share his vision. He laments the degeneration of essential services. Social housing that costs four times that of privately built homes as a result of corruption.

The devil's throat, Iguazu falls

El Dorado. Silvio overhears my attempts at Spanish in the internet shop. He has worked in a hostel in Iguazu for three years. Then BA. Now he has returned to the family home and has been trying to find work for the past five months. There is none. Why not camp in his garden? he says. We go to his home, and I take a cold shower and pitch the tent. I sit reading my book. His father returns from work and I can hear an argument. Silvio returns and says I cannot stay, his father does not want me too. No problem, although it's a first. He directs me to another part of town where he has phoned ahead and arranged a bed for the night. I find the Club Social but there was no arrangement, just a query. More telephone calls to higher authorities. No, I can't stay. What about a cheap hotel? There are none. I climb back up the rough cobbles to the main street and spot a guesthouse. It's the same price as the youth hostels elsewhere, only here I get my own room and TV. I fall asleep after midnight, midway through The Aviator.

Finally I arrive into steamy Puerto Iguazu. Home to the world's largest waterfall by volume, apparently. They must have been pretty big measuring cups. I arrive early to the falls and am the first on the lower boardwalk. A magical place. It's also a traveler's mecca, one of the nodes where travelers congregate as they travel the region. Time to relax and meet new people, time among some kindred spirits, refueling for the road ahead. I enjoy the contrast.

Puerto Iguazu, Misiones, Argentina
Trip distance: 23,815 km

33. Red moon rising

I am in Misiones province in northeastern Argentina, the bit that sticks like a finger between Paraguay to the west and Brazil to the east. If you've ever seen the 1986 film The Mission, this is the region that it was set in. The film, set in the 1750s, chronicles the period when the secular Spanish and Portuguese colonial governments were seeking to remove the Jesuit missions that had been set up in the area to convert the Tupi-Guarani peoples to christianity. The Jesuit's focus, unlike other missions at the time, was primarily on proselytizing but not forcing European culture and values onto the Guarani. Missions, or reducciones, were ruled by indigenous leaders and hospitals and schools were established. At their height the missions numbered approximately forty settlements and had a total population of over 150,000 people and spread across present-day Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil.

Heading north on Ruta 14

The missions were usually self-supporting and became both economically successful as well as providing some protection against Portuguese slave raiders. The extent of their economic and political independence, however, threatened the Spanish and Portuguese regimes and once the Jesuits were expelled in the mid 1700s the missions slowly died out, with the people either becoming victims of the slave raids or being absorbed into European society.

Street kids in Monte Caseros parking their horse and cart

The past week has been spent slogging along Ruta 14, the main road heading up through the northeastern Argentinian provinces of Entre Rios and Corrientes towards Misiones. The idea was straight-forward enough. After several days of rural Uruguay, we were wondering if there was something other than flat green fields and cows across the River Uruguay in Argentina. Of course, there isn't really. Once across the river and heading north we were faced with the option of braving the busy and narrow Route 14 or slogging along deep-gravel backroads. We tried both and neither were particularly enjoyable. On Route 14 a dual-carriageway is in the process of being built and for the most part we were able to ride on the new scar that tears its way alongside the existing two-lane highway. This at least kept us well away from the endless convoys of sixteen wheelers ploughing north and south along the shoulderless highway, but with holes where bridges had yet to be built and mud where the unsealed road was wet, it made for tiresome riding.

Horses in the swamp

At night Paul would read aloud from his Philip Larkin anthology and, as I cooked another delicious dinner of pasta a la julian, he would explain the rationale for combining hitching with cycling. It sounded pretty sensible really but I was going to stick to the bike and Paul was going to stick to hitch-cycling, two stubborn idealists. By the evening of day four on route 14 we were sharing a much needed bottle of beer in a petrol station and Paul was preparing to stick out his thumb in the morning. In fact, he didn't have to wait until morning as a New Yawk-accented lady asked if she could help as we poured over the map. She had grown up in the US but lived with her Argentine husband in a town up north and they were on their way home. She looked exhausted and had apparently just lost the senatorial election for the province. Half an hour later Paul and his bike were going northbound in the back of the lady's car and I was pitching my tent up behind the station.

Herding cattle

I think the only weather phenomenon that I haven't experienced in my first two weeks in South America is snow. And I know when I go far enough west I'll find that too. From freezing nights and mornings in Uruguay, to hot, humid and windy days in northeastern Argentina, to the thunderstorm that had me repositioning my tent at 4 am this morning, it has been a bit of a climatic extravagansa. As the rain poured down this morning I started reading Nadine Gordimer's, The Conservationist, and found this extract of Richard Shelton's poem The Tattooed Desert in the prologue. According to Rita Barnard Shelton's "poem offers a surreal evocation of the mis-adventures of a colonial-dogooder ... [who] ends up discovering nothing but geographical and emotional disorientation". I liked it because he was riding his bike.

From The Tattooed Desert by Richard Shelton

I must have been almost crazy
to start out alone like that on my bicycle
pedalling into the tropics carrying
a medicine for which no one had found
the disease and hoping
I would make it in time.

I passed through a paper village under glass
where the explorers first found
silence and taught it to speak
where old men were sitting in front
of their houses killing sand without mercy.

brothers I shouted to them
tell me who moved the river
where can I find a good place to drown.

Azare, Misiones Province, Argentina
Trip distance: does it really matter?

32. From Ire-guay

Seven thousand kilometres in eight and a half hours. Not a bad day´s average as the plane touched down in Argentina. Minutes later I was reunited with Rocinante who had also survived the journey relatively unscathed and I boarded a bus to downtown Buenos Aires. Any doubts about the wisdom of embarking on another trans-continental bicycle journey faded away at the sight of another city, another country and a whole new variety of cultures.

Jose, our first host in Uruguay

For the first few weeks in South America I´m sharing the road with the witty Paul Tuthill. Despite knowing many of the same people (we are Irish after all), the first and last time we had met was in Benin, when Paul was heading out of central Africa and I was heading in. In the meantime Paul has had a few months to build up a collection of entertaining stories from back home and I´ve worked on the African tales, and now we talk our way along rural Uruguayan roads, past the unending green fields and ubiquitous cows.

Main street in Rosario

We escaped from the Argentinian capital by catching a ferry across to Colonia del Sacremento, an old Portuguese smuggling base and we were soon trundling along rutted but peaceful backroads. Uruguay was badly hit in 2001 with the financial collapse of its larger neighbour, Argentina, and the agricultural industry has also been affected in recent years by bans due to the spread of foot and mouth disease. Wild camping has been no problem and on a couple of occasions we have stayed on farms and been invited to drink mate and eat some food, whilst building sentences one word at a time with my Spanish phrasebook.

Which way Paul?

Paysandu, Uruguay
Trip distance: 22,587 km

31. Out of Africa

The Cedarberg mountains, Western Cape

Yesterday morning I did quite a spectacular somersault off Rocinante along the main street in Stellenbosch. Over 22,000 kilometres from home and perhaps my last kilometre in Africa and it took a momentary lapse of judgement whilst jumping a curb on an unloaded Rocinante to go sprawling across the road followed by bits and pieces of the bike. Ironically I was on the way to the bike shop to get Rocinante kitted out for the next leg of the journey, so I just added a couple of new items to the bottom of my fix-it list when I handed the bike over to Leonardo the bike man.

Having failed miserably in any attempts to find passage on either a yacht or cargo ship to South America, I chucked in the towel and with one quick swipe of my credit card I enlarged my carbon footprint, cut a nice dent in my ever-dwindling financial resources, and had a plane ticket from Cape Town to Buenos Aires, Argentina. I fly out on Sunday 20th September, just under one year to the day from when I landed in Tangiers and began to run the stone-throwing gauntlet into Morocco. What a year. 22 countries, 2 tyres and a million experiences.

Spring flowers in the Cedarberg

After over a week in the Cedarberg mountains, I descended to the winelands of Western Cape and now I'm staying with Bennie and Elsie in Kuilsrivier, a suburb in northern Cape Town. We last met on a sandy track in southern Angola, where they saved myself and Peter with water and sandwiches as they toured the country with some friends. We kept in touch and they very generously offered to host me for the final few days in the country. After the visit to the bike doctor yesterday I bought a Spanish dictionary and phrasebook and every night I will sleep with them under my pillow and hopefully I will learn the language by osmosis.

Finally, as you may be aware, I decided a few months back to use the journey to raise money for the Dublin-based charity, the Peter McVerry Trust, which does fantastic work in supporting young homeless people. I just wanted to make it clear that if you choose to donate any money to the charity via The Slow Way Home link on the mycharity.ie website, your donation goes to the Trust immediately (and not at the end of the journey - whenever that may be!). Many thanks to those who have already contributed very generously to the fund.

To all the people at home and along the road who have made this journey be what it has been so far, a very warm thank you.

Gydo Pass, Western Cape

Cape Town, South Africa

Trip distance: 22,153 km

30. (Almost) Spring in South Africa

Having failed to reconvene with Peter at the annointed hour in Windhoek my itchy wheels and I decided to head on alone towards Botswana. The last entry in my journal ends almost one month ago in the village of Kang in Botswana, midway along the trans-Kalahari highway. The title of the road may sound romantic (it did to me), conjuring up images of the bushveld and the San's ('bushmen') well-documented culture in this arid expanse of southern Africa, but really, it's not that romantic. At least on a bicycle. It can be windy (it was), there were the longest distances (almost 200 km) between water sources so far encountered on the trip, and a seemingly endless journey through sand, bush and scrub. Well it seems I'm still bitter but I'm beginning to think that perhaps there is some merit in saying that once you've pedaled through one desert you have pedaled through them all.

Kalahari sands

At some point during the Kalahari cycleabout the magnetic force of Cape Town began to draw me in and a more direct route to the end of Africa was embarked on, rather than a detour back to Lesotho. Many South Africans had by this stage taken time out of their driveabout to stop and chat with me along the roadside and I began to get really worried about the size of my genitalia when the tenth South African opined that my balls were bigger than my brain if I was seriously thinking of riding through their crime-infested homeland. They would then jump into telling me all sorts of nasty stories about cyclists getting shot at, robbed and beaten to death, whilst assuring me that in the very least I should be prepared to walk to Cape Town as it was a foregone conclusion that my bike and gear would not survive the journey.

Somewhere in the Northern Cape, South Africa

Well, I entered South Africa from Botswana three weeks ago at McCarthy's Rust into the vastness of the Northern Cape province and so far I haven't had to start walking towards Cape Town. The Northern Cape is primarily an Afrikaans-speaking area in South Africa where pride is taken in a slower pace of life and considerably lower crime statistics than other areas in the country. The reason for this is because almost nobody actually lives there and any illusions I had about more human-scale cycling distances were soon put aside. I was met with extraordinary offers of hospitality and rarely was I let sleep outside in my tent but instead taken into farmhouses, fed enormous portions of six different animals in one meal and sent on my way again. One memorable morning a fellow sporting an enormous flaming orange mullet, pulled over and told me he worked at the local mine and he wished to get a photo for the local paper, the Kalahari Bulletin. He was late for a meeting and had to rush off, yet half an hour later he returned toting a cheeseburger, chips and Coke and insisted that if I needed money it was no problem.

5,000 year old hand-prints at a cave in Eland's Bay

Yet since entering from Angola into Namibia, history seems to permeate every contact that occurs between people of different races. Here in South Africa you can visit a town with a population of 5,000, all the services you need, and yet three kilometres down a dirt track lives the other 15,000 people who also live and work and try to survive in this town. While segregation may have officially ended 15 years ago, the reminders of the Apartheid era are buried deep in both the physical and psychological landscapes that you encounter in South Africa. Yet one thing that I have learned to appreciate more than ever is the importance of reserving judgment on those who are ordinarily held responsible for the current state of affairs.

Seals take five on the rocks at Eland's Bay, Western Cape

I followed a route that led me across the top of the Northern Cape and back to the coast, passing through the Orange River valley at Upington, Keimos and Kakamas, before continuing on to Springbok. It's springtime in South Africa and the annual pilgrimmage for those with both a caravan and an old age pension to witness the Spring flowers in Namaqualand had begun in earnest. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. The moisture from the nearby Atlantic is the reason for the normally arid landscape turning a variety of bright hues but unfortunately the flowers had arrived early this year and by the time that I arrived most of the disappointed white-haired flower season veterans were packing up their deck chairs and heading for home. From Springbok, the N7 brought me quickly closer to Cape Town. And yet the closer I get the slower the pace has become and the wider the meanders. I rode down along the green coast before tacking inland to the impressive Cedarberg mountains where I have been pitched up in an orange tree orchard for the past few days, ripe fruit ready to fall like an citrus nuclear bomb on my tent below.

Cedarberg Mountains, Western Cape, South Africa

Trip distance: 21,947 km

29. One year on in Namibia

Day three hundred and sixty-five started a little earlier than most, the southern hemisphere's chilly winter morning rousing me to a state of frigid consciousness at 4 am. An hour later I decided that a warm shower and hot bowl of porridge was preferable to slowly succumbing to frostbite in my lightweight (i.e. useless) sleeping bag. For the past couple of weeks I have been warding off the early morning chill with the remarkably effective solution of sleeping inside an empty 50 kilogram maize sack. As the nights continue to cool down, however, with a corresponding increase in my latitude reading I may have to get more sacks.

On my way south to Namibia's capital, Windhoek, I spent a couple of nights at the Kai-Oms (Our House) hostel in Outjo, a small town that lies south of Etosha national park. Peter wanted to make a detour, a 500 km detour to be exact, to visit Swakopmund on the coast. Having visited the town on a previous trip to Namibia in 2001, I decided to forego the pleasure of an extra few days in the saddle and reunite with Peter in Windhoek for the final stage together in the Tour d'Afrique, along the trans-Kalahari highway in Botswana to South Africa. Our last few days in Angola had been somewhat challenging with a bout of malaria for Peter and then, following some bad advice, we found ourselves pushing our bikes along a sandy track that led south from Cahama to the border town of Calueque. The moral of the latter being: never listen to someone driving a Landcruiser about which roads are passable on a bicycle.

Eh, look behind you Peter

We crossed into Namibia on 17th July and with tar on the roads (well the main ones at any rate) and food in the shops, a love affair with Namibia was all but guaranteed. Following two days off in the northern hamlet of Ruacana, most of the time being spent marveling at and eating the food for sale in the BP service station, we rode south to Kamanjab. As we skirted the western boundary of Etosha park, we were warned by a concerned policeman that lions "operated" in the area and that they might well take a fancy to two passing cyclists. In the end we only spotted varieties of antelope, zebra and giraffe - fantastic to cycle past nonetheless. On arrival in Kamanjab we learned that our proposed route south to Swakopmund would be hampered by sand and I lost no time in deciding that the tarred route to Otjiwarongo and on to Windhoek was the road for me. Namibia is undoubtedly endowed with many magnificent and awe-inspiring landscapes and natural features but unfortunately many are not accessible to bicycles, at least loaded ones, and especially so if you have developed a deep-seated aversion to fine particles of sand.

Mind the elephant

And so it was that I found myself alone in Outjo, taking a first time trial separation from Peter since our several months traveling together. By mid-afternoon Day 365 I was being first cajoled and then harangued into declaring where my loyalty lay in the pending Tri-Nations rugby match between New Zealand's All Blacks and South Africa's Springboks. In between shots of Jagermeister and bottles of cold Tafel lager I surveyed the small sports club bar that I had come to with Deon, the very hospitable and friendly owner of the hostel where I was camped up. The handful of customers in the bar were all Afrikaaners from either Namibia or South Africa. Many from the latter appearing to have emigrated north in recent years to escape the rat race and crime epidemic of South Africa's cities. The roof of the bar was adorned with large flags of the famous rugby clubs in the region. Amidst the collage hung two old South African flags from pre-1994 and along with the rescued street sign of 'Voortrekker Str' that hung above the whisky and brandy bottles, it wasn't hard to imagine which direction many of the patron's political sympathies lay.

Another day ends, near Otjikondo

Fortunately, a lot of the little I do know about rugby was gleaned from John Carlin's (2008) recent book, Playing The Enemy, which focuses on the political build-up to the rugby world cup that was held in South Africa in 1995. In the final match, against the odds, the host nation beat the All Blacks as they were cheered on by the recently elected president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, who was famously repleat in the No.6 Springbok jersey. Carlin's aim in the book was to demonstrate Mandela's inspirational ability to see the bigger picture and to break down the barriers of fear of the new regime that many of the white South African's felt. As the favourite past time of white (male?) South Africa, Mandela recognised the role that rugby could play in uniting his fractured nation. By embracing the world cup and genuinely supporting the Springbok team, Mandela was supporting what most of the black population in South Africa undeniably viewed as symbols of the oppressive and brutal apartheid regime.

Prior to 1994, rugby had been very cleverly used by the anti-apartheid movement to bring international attention to their cause by ensuring that boycotts were placed on the Springbok's ability to compete internationally. As a result of the boycotts, the Springboks were unable to play in the first two rugby world cups in 1987 and 1991. And yet here was their beloved president embracing the game and even wearing the captain's jersey. What Mandela magnanimously realised was that it was only through such gestures of acceptance and solidarity that he could begin to unite the nation's divided racial factions and assure white South African's that they need not fear retribution from the ANC government. When the Springboks won the world cup in 1995, celebrations were memorably and unprecedentedly held across all of the various communities in South Africa and the episode is fondly remembered as both a great sporting result and a political masterpiece in conflict resolution by Mandela.

Windhoek, Namibia

Trip distance: 19,346 km

28: High and dry in Angola

An MPLA flag in northern Angola

As another fiery sunset engulfed the western horizon last night we found ourselves squeaking into Lubango in southern Angola. Angolan roads have finally forced all the bearings out of Rocinante's left pedal and she now sounds like every other village bicycle in Africa. After crossing into the oil-rich Cabinda province from Congo Brazzaville three weeks ago, we made an "exciting" ten and a half hour boat journey along the palm-lined coastline of the Democratic Republic of Congo and across the 20-kilometre wide mouth of the Congo river, experiencing multiple engine failures enroute, before arriving back on terra firma and mainland Angola. From Soyo we bumped south through N'zeto and into Luanda, where after a brief layover, we continued south along the coastline to Lobito before climbing up onto the cold plateau where Lubango lies. From here it's just a four day ride to the Namibian border.

Toys of the wealthy getting washed in Luanda's sailing club

Angola has been a fascinating country for me. A country that has made a remarkably swift transition from the chaos and brutality of a 30-year civil war that ended just a few years ago, into a country that is now busily preparing for its hosting of next year's football competition, the African Cup of Nations. With a newly exploited oil wealth fuelling the economy, there is little sign of the global economic crisis in Luanda. Construction trucks from Chinese, Brazilian and Portuguese firms clog the city's arteries as they build more skyscrapers, motorways, and football stadiums. And yet, so many of Angola's fifteen million population remains outside of these changes, facing the task of daily survival without access to clean water and other basic services. Vast amounts of money are being spent on rebuilding a road network, while almost every village we passed through lacked a water pump.

Sumbe

Talk of corruption and the 'resource curse' abounds and witnessing the incredible displays of wealth, particularly in Luanda, now one of the most expensive cities in the world, the wealth gap certainly feels oppressively vast. As one expatriate worker in Luanda put it to me, there is so much potential here to get things right and yet, there is so much potential to get it all wrong. Yet, it's also easy to make these comments as an ignorant passerby and much harder, of course, to rebuild a country that has suffered the history of Angola. Like other countries in the region, the major party, the MPLA enjoys vast popular support, winning over almost 90% of the electorate in the last elections in 2008. Such statistics certainly don't make for healthy democracy but hopefully with time things will change, wounds will heal, and people will be ready to trust and place their confidence in a wider political field.

Another great road...

When we arrived into Lubango last night we found our way to the Catholic mission and after asking if it was possible to pitch a tent for the night, we found ourselves invited to first a dinner, and then a priest's ordination party, and we were then given a room and bed for a couple of nights. Such hospitality, from both Angolans and foreign workers, has been the norm during our time here. At dinner last night we chatted with Father Jacinto about his time campaigning for rural land rights, and how after he had brought the spotlight of international human rights organisations to the cause, he had to flee to Europe when death threats were made against him. He still can't return to the parish where he was based. Later on at the party though he turned out to be the finest dancing priest that I've ever met.

Lubango, Angola

Trip distance: 18,086 km

27: A short note from the Congo

Near Alembe, Gabon - happy days

Greetings from Pointe Noire in the Republic of Congo. That's the smaller of the Congos, capital Brazzaville. We've been tracking southwards with a vengence since leaving Yaoundé in Cameroon about three weeks ago. After Cameroon we continued into Gabon, where there was a lot of speculation about the fate of the country should President Bongo, Africa's longest serving leader, die in the Barcalona hospital where he was being treated for suspected cancer. A Liberian refugee who had already witnessed the implosion of Liberia in the early 90s and migrated to Gabon to start another life, was pessimistic about Gabon's political future and stability should Bongo die and his adopted son attempt to succeed him without holding elections. A French expatriate was making preparations to leave in case there was going to be unrest.

Bongo died on our last day in Gabon and initially it appeared that we wouldn't be able to get through the border to Nyanga in Congo-Brazzaville, as all borders into Gabon were closed. But we made it, despite being told not to attempt to cross the border by a military officer in Ndendé, the border officials let us through without a problem, since we had already received our exit stamp in the passports. We plunged gratefully into the mud and then dust of southern Congo. We rode through Nyanga and Kibangou before spending five days ascending and descending along a logging road through the Foret De Mayumba and emerging into the oil-rich economical capital of Pointe Noire.

Internet is as rare as hen's teeth in this neck of the woods, so you'll have to wait for more, but all is going well. Next stop, Angola.

A logging truck in Congo

Pointe Noire, Congo
Trip distance: 16,686 km

26: Yaoundé Redux

On the Ring Road

I'm suffering from a rare strain of tropical blogger's block here in Yaoundé, capital of Cameroon. Yesterday I attempted to write a post on the highlights and lowlights of the past three weeks of pedaling through Cameroon, but I wasn't satisfied. Waking up with renewed enthusiasm this morning and fuelled by some of the finest pastries this side of the Cameroon highlands, I thought I'd make another stab at an update...

A lot of tea

After our weekend sabbatical in Nkambe, where we recovered from the Great Trek across the Nigeria/Cameroon border, it was hoped that progress might improve. It remained rather pedestrian, however, as we headed south along the eastern section of Cameroon's Ring Road - a 340 kilometre track, at times passable, that dips, bends, and more often than not rises its way around the western highlands. By the evening of day one out of Nkambe, we'd covered a bumpy 37 kilometres to the small town of Ndu, home to Cameroon's largest tea plantation. For all the tea in Ndu, I couldn't find a cup to sample, but I did make another profound discovery - fried 'Irish potatoes', as the tubers are referred to here. Combined with roasted fish, I had found the two culinary staples that would leave a happy and lasting impression on my mind and stomach as we pedaled and pushed our way through the highlands. Meanwhile Peter was off discovering the locally-brewed bamboo wine, which can also leave a rather long lasting impression on the mind apparently.

Boys on a hill

From Ndu we rode on to Kumbo and Jakiri, the latter a British army garrison post in the years leading up to independence. The North West and South West Provinces of Cameroon, form the core of the area that was formerlly British controlled. The result is that Cameroon is split into two distinct areas of anglophone and francophone populations, although the latter easily dominates the former in terms of its influence and geographic spread. On the evening of the third day out from Nkambe we arrived into Ndop, in time to sit out yet another afternoon of rain. Ndop marked a return to tarred road and the following day we headed on to Bamenda for a couple of days rest at the Baptist Mission.

The Ndop Plateau

Opting to follow the tarred route south, we headed via Bafoussam and Kumba to Buea, the town that serves as the base for organising ascents of Mount Cameroon. On a rainy Monday afternoon in Bafang, we ate some great beef stew and beans while Raphael, a pineapple exporter, explained the intricacies of the trade to us. Two days previously he had harvested four tons of pineapples. That same evening they had been driven to Douala airport and flown to Paris from where they are taken to a wholesale fruit market in time to be on the shelves of retailers by Monday morning. So right about now, when I was tucking into my beef and beans and lamenting about the state of the tropical fruit market in Cameroon, someone has just returned home from a trip to their supermarché or local fruit and veg shop and is cutting open a ripe and juicy pineapple in Paris. Comprehension of the timeframes involved, in comparison with myself and Rocinante's voyage, momentarily stunned me. For a moment I thought what it would be like to travel at the speed of a pineapple.

Young lads in Muea

A dusty road led us from Loum junction over to Kumba and late one afternoon we had our first and only problematic roadblock in Cameroon. The police and gendarmerié being very kindly disposed to traveling pedalists thus far. I arrived at the crest of a long hill to see Peter in animated conversation with the two officers on checkpoint duty. They could not assure us of the road ahead and given that we would not make Kumba before nightfall we should stay in their village, which coincidentally had a hotel that they could recommend as being up to our quality. We began to insist that we would be fine asking for accommodation in the villages that we would pass through ahead, but then the more rotund of the two began yelling that the road was notorious for armed robbers and that they would surely cut our heads off if we were captured by them. With miraculous timing, the manager of the nearby establishment that they were gesticulating at, bounded down the path and also began arguing and saying it would be foolhardy to go on. In the end Peter discovered that he had left some money at the junction and he had to return there anyhow, so after we negotiated the room down to a reasonable 3 euro per head we had a bed for the night.

Buea is situated on the slopes of the still volcanically active Mount Cameroon and serves as the base from which to organise a trek on the volcano. Having already a contact number for a guide, we bypassed the more expensive agencies that organise the treks. Shortly after dawn on a pleasantly cool Saturday morning, with not only Joseph to guide us up, but Peter No.2 to act as our porter, we felt like a proper pair of colonials as we set off up the so-called and clearly marked Guinness track that leads very much veritically to the 4100 metre summit. Guinness sponsor the annual suicidal marathon up and down the volcano, called the Race of Hope, hence the trail's name. It took over four hours to reach Hut 2, at 2850 metres, the preferred place to overnight on the mountain. After some lunch, however, I developed some stomach cramps and resigned myself to spending the afternoon at the hut, whilst Peter went up to the summit. The night was cold and immediately after our dinner of spaghetti and cabbage we both dived into our sleeping bags. A few minutes later my head torch was on again and scanning the bare and graffiti-lined room for signs of furry creatures that I could hear running about. A large rat emerged with a dazed look from the remnants of our dinner in the cooking pot and dived off the wooden ledge as he was followed by my flying sandle. The following morning, deciding against an attempt at the summit, we trekked back down to Buea and then more-or-less rolled the 60 kilometres down to Douala, Cameroon's largest city. On the outskirts of town we found the Hotel de Bojongo and opted for the nightly rate as opposed to the cheaper and obviously popular two-hour 'siesta' option.

Soldiers climbing Mount Cameroom

With a quickly expiring Cameroonian visa in our passports, we had to push on to Yaoundé to ensure that we could pick up a visa for Gabon. It was muggy riding at sea level and my daily water intake was back up to pool-sized quantities, interspersed with sufficient doses of Coke, which I'm assured cures all manner of ailments.

On the eve of Cameroon's Independence Day we found ourselves at the junction village of Boujeyem. After a row with the manager of the only sleeping establishment in the village, who assured me that the police would arrest us and fine him if they found that two men were sharing a double bed in a hotel, I headed downtown with my newfound friend Bisso, a chef in Douala who was visiting his homeplace. The town was hopping and Bisso displayed his impressive dance moves whilst Yvette held my arm and tried to secure a husband, job and home in Ireland, where she has always wanted to live.

After a night of dancing at the crossroads - Cameroonian-style - it was back on the bike to Yaoundé. The political party banners were out in force on Independence Day and it appeared that those celebrating most vociferously were clad in political party t-shirts, or had Paul Biya's head printed on their dress. Biya is the head of state and has been since he came to power in 1983. The celebrations were winding down as we rode through the capital to our refuge in the Presbyterian Mission.

Yaoundé, Cameroon

Trip distance: 15,130 km

25: Into the clouds in Cameroon

10.30 a.m. Wednesday 22nd April - thunk thunk - a smile spread across our faces as we heard the faceless, nameless clerk in the consular office at the Angolan embassy in Abuja pound the embossing stamp onto our one-month long tourist visas. With only a visa for Gabon left to collect in Cameroon, and visa-free passage through southern Africa guaranteed, it looks like the great African visa hunt may be drawing to a close for this part of the trip. With the bureaucratic barriers enroute to the Cape cast aside, we were back in business. All we have to do now is cycle there.

Beyond the thoughtfully planned and comparatively pristine streets of Abuja, lay the sprawling eastern satellite towns of Nyanyan and Mararaba, where many hopeful souls have gravitated to, aspiring to urban fortunes. Minibus taxis and okada riders wove perilously close as they tried to attract clients by honking their horns. Soon the urban din receded, however, and we were passing through the agricultural states of Nassarawa and Benue. We camped in fields that had been washed green during our layover in Abuja. The rains had now begun in earnest and the occasional thunderstorm broke out during the night, sending us out to hammer down tent pegs. Strong winds usually give warning of impending downpours. Then the rain starts and shortly thereafter the water typically breaches the first and only line of defence, my outer fly-sheet. From then on I'm confined to a the small dry portion of an already rather small tent. Tucked up into a fetal position I avoid the worst of the inundation. Tomorrow there will be sun. Before nine the evidence will have evaporated into another hot day.

The beginning of the rainy season also heralds a return to the fields for the farmers who are now busy ploughing and planting next season's harvest. Makurdi marks our midway point to the border from Abuja and we stopover for Nigeria's answer to McDonald's, Mr.Bigg's, and a couple of bottles of Star to celebrate life on the road. As we search for a guesthouse at sunset, Peter is accosted by a member of Nigeria's notorious State Security Service (SSS), as Peter asks for directions at a junction. The man has no identification, however, and encouraged by passersby, Peter rides off. Moments later we're both pulled over by several motorbikes and a crowd gathers as our documents are examined and we're asked several inane questions that only the truly suspicious, truly bored, or truly dumb could ask. The encounter is brief, however, and soon we're on our way again.

Leaving Makurdi a mangled motorbike lays in two separate sections across the road. The driver couldn't have survived. We find out later that he didn't. Twisted metal carcasses lie all along the roads in Nigeria and the combination of ancient trucks, fast cars, overloaded minibus taxis and often poorly maintained roads, leaves conditions ripe for wholesale carnage. Later on the same day we find ourselves caught out in the darkness, trying in vain to find a secluded spot to pitch our tents. We're invisible to the oncoming vehicles, overtaking two or three at a time. We roll down a lane as lightning over the mountains to our east sporadically lights up the night sky. We find a clapped-out Peugout pick-up parked under a mango tree and Jacob is talking with a neighbour as we ask if we can be put up for the night. Of course it's no problem and once the rain arrives, a couple of other passersby also run into the compound to seek shelter. Jacob farms oranges and dinner consisted of a biblical quantity of vitamin C. The following morning we're served up with pounded yam and a piece of tender, unidentified meat. Such kindness and generosity. We're sent on our way with the blessing of God.

The road to Bissaula

From Takum, in Taraba state, we begin our final trek out of Nigeria. A rough 80 kilometre track brings us to the small border village of Bissaula. We stamp out in the evening at the candlelit immigration post. Then we're asked to produce our international vaccine certificates. After meticulous examination of the yellow book, including the Gaelic script, the officer announces with great authority and a swelling chest that our certificates are indeed valid. Peter tells the man we realise that and if he's done there's a UEFA semi-final starting in a few minutes. "What can you give me?", the officer asks with a greedy smile breaking across his face. "Our friendship" Peter quickly adds, using a now well-tested phrase, as we grab our yellow books and go to seek a hot and airless room to rent for the night. Peter wanders off to see if he can watch the football in a nearby house where a generator and satellite dish brings the match live to this small, remote outpost in west Africa, while I chat with Sunday, a Cameroonian living in the village with his young wife and daughter. His daughter dribbles on my shoulder and cries when I smile at her.

Lizard for dinner?

The official border is a few kilometers further down a progressively narrower track. After a mango and banana break in Agabi, the last settlement in Nigeria, we splash through the shallow River Donga and into Cameroon. The first settlements we pass through appear no different than those on the other side of the river, except for more tattered Cameroon football tops in evidence. Like many of the borders that resulted from the colonial carve up of Africa, the same ethnic groups found themselves divided by an international border that means little to the people living in the area. Shortly after crossing into Cameroon we begin to climb into the north western highlands, beginning a three-day epic journey that marks the toughest stretch of the journey so far. The track rose up at gravity defying angles making cycling impossible on the steepest sections. Initially we could push or pull the bikes, but then I settled for removing the bags and carting items up, then the bike, and then doing the same all over again. Progress could be measured in inches per hour. Descending was no less challenging, down the deeply rutted and boulder-strewn track. Bemused and friendly villagers greeted us with benches in the shade and asked about our trip, while we asked about life in the village. "Why were we doing this?" Damned if I know.

Things got steep

We stumbled into Ako at sunset, the first immigration post into Cameroon. At the police station, a man with a large tooth on a chain around his neck, and scars from numerous fights that deformed the right side of his face, told us he would fetch the chief. The commissioner was a jovial fellow and after a cursory glance through our passports, said there was no problem if we wanted to camp outside the station. Later in the evening, while Peter caught the second UEFA semi final, I sat under the night sky, drinking a beer with the commissioner as we discussed topics from Chinese imports to what the Obama administration might mean for relations between the US and Africa.

After a breakfast of rice and kidney beans we were on our way to Nkambe, one of the larger towns in the highlands, and at 1770 metres one of the higher ones too. We were assured that the road between Ako and Nkambe wasn't too bad and the distance was approximately 40 kilometres, but we would be climbing over 1200 metres. After a couple of hours of cycling it was clear that the previous day's exertions had taken their toll. As the road rose once more into gravity-defying ascents, it looked increasingly unlikely that we would be able to make to Nkambe before evening. By 2pm we had collapsed beside a water pipe in the hillside village of Jeyu, wincing at yet another vertical slope that lay before us. There was no food prepared in the village, but I was able to buy some rice in a shop that someone had in their bedroom, and a smiling girl offered to cook for us. By 5pm we were staying the night and we spent the evening chatting with worldly men who farmed the steep slopes of the surrounding tropical forest. Our host, Exodus, was a carpenter who had returned after a decade in the cities to his native village to raise his family and grow the best pineapples in Cameroon. He studied our map of west Africa and then we went through all of the African heads of state, pictured on a tattered poster on his wall, trying to decide which were still in power. Most of them are.

Kids in Jeyu village, Cameroon

It was with dismay that I noticed the hill was still there when I looked outside into the slowly brightening morning the next day. A couple of hours later, after a breakfast of pounded soya beans and cooked bananas, we'd said our goodbyes and were waved off by a group of villagers who stood to watch our progress up the hill. We pedaled about ten metres before being reduced to pushing the bikes again. Several more kilometres of vertical ascent and the shouts of Polish swear words began to die out as the road levelled out. We'd made it. We looked back down the green, mist-covered valley and I marvelled how similar it looked, albeit on a grander scale, to landscapes much more familiar to me.

Wicklow or the Cameroon highlands?

We finally rolled into Nkambe on an overcast and chilly first of May. Labour Day was being celebrated with unbridled fervour and the shebeens and bars around town were filled to capacity and pumping out loud beats. A taxi passed me in the centre of town, its engine on fire and the driver oblivious to the warning shouts of bystanders. We've taken a couple of days off to see if our legs will work again and yesterday, as I began checking my emails and typing up this posting, Miina and Kristiina sat down beside me in the small internet cafe. We had actually passed them by on our way out of Ako, returning their wave, but not stopping to talk. They had been visiting the Ako area from Finland, in order to assess the needs of disabled children living in the area. They downloaded the photos they'd been taking over the previous couple of weeks and they told a much different story from my own. Untreated infections that had been left for years, causing kids to live with great pain. Whole families almost blind because there were no glasses available for them. They represented a Finnish organisation, Jaatinen, that was set up to monitor the rights of the disabled, and they were setting up links with a Cameroonian partner, but it was their first time in Africa and the two weeks had clearly taken a great toll as they realised the scale of the problems that they faced. They spoke of searching for a clean bandage in Ako, so that a child's leg that had been left infected for three years, could be dressed before they arranged surgery for him. They were only able to find one bandage after visiting the two pharmacies in town. There were two hospitals in Ako but only one had running water and neither had any electrical power.

When such stories are told and I recall the scale of problems that many communities face in the areas I pass through, I often find myself questioning the value of travel in such regions. What purpose does travel provide in such situations? Is it merely voyeuristic to pass through such places? Would it not be far better to work in a capacity that could help make change rather than merely being a silent witness? Ultimately, however, regardless of the unease that I sometimes feel, I still believe that travel has a higher value than simply being an experiential activity and that the interaction that occurs between cultures can, in its own small way, be a positive force for greater understanding between people. Or perhaps not. Yet Stevenson was right, the great affair is indeed to move. Even if there is the odd tempest, it still floats my boat.

Nkambe, Cameroon

Trip distance: 14,266 km