Ok, let’s try that again: We awoke to swarms of mosquitos and the sounds of hands slapping faces. And palm trees swaying gently above us.
Luis, aka Pogachar, one of our young cyclists from yesterday, came to join us for the day’s cycling and was devastated to learn that today was an uplift day as we needed to get to Baia Farta which was roughly 270km away. If we had time at the end, we planned to cycle into Baia Farta, but knowing that the roads are unpredictable, we were starting with an uplift first.
We hadn’t traveled far when excited shouts erupted from the Christopher: “Look at the river!” “Left! Look left!” The Cubal River Gorge unveiled itself, a breathtaking panorama of striated sandstone cliffs in vibrant hues. Another natural masterpiece to add to our journey. We stopped the vehicles and walked towards the river where we spotted a perfect viewing platform with spectacular views of the gorge.
Troy and Gary stayed a little longer than the rest of us, flying the drone along the river, capturing the gorge in its full glory. This award-winning, epic footage is unfortunately not something we can share with you, and neither is the spectacular, even-more-award-winning, extremely close-up footage of a Lanner Falcon spotting a rival predator in the sky and launching a deadly attack. Caught unaware, mid-flight, the falcon’s target didn’t stand a chance, and Gary could only look in horror as his poor drone took a direct hit, spiralled out of control, spun tumbled and eventually plummeted to its untimely death in the river far below. Apparently, a drone being attacked by birds is not uncommon, but Gary was bleak that his had survived an entire swarm of swallows only to be taken out by a lone bird of prey.
Uplift days are a boring but necessary task, and when we stop, we are always delighted to meet new people or see something new and exciting. Today we met Chris. Chris Pieterman is from Germany, and if you think we are a crazy bunch of lunatics for riding for a month through Africa, this guy has been riding through Africa for the past two and a half years! He embarked on his African odyssey in Oman, hitching a ride on a ship to Somaliland before venturing into Ethiopia. After conquering the East African coast from top to bottom, he’s now tackling the West Coast, aiming for Morocco. He hopes to be home next summer.
We invited Chris for lunch and beer which he devoured whilst telling the stories of his travels. He makes our trip seem a little less epic, but he isn’t the first wild person we’ve met on our travels. We met a Swiss couple doing the same thing when we were in Kazangula on the Skeleton Coast Tour, they survived on rehydrated food and were stick people by the time we saw them. And on the Uganda Tour we met Yalla who was travelling around the world without using motorized power and was aiming to climb the highest peaks on every continent. By the time we met him, he had conquered the Pyrenees and Mt Everest (after 3 attempts). We gave Yalla a packet of mini Mars bars that he devoured with cheeks like a chipmunk, two or three at a time! So if you want to lose weight and still eat chocolate…. Ride!
Sadly we didn’t get to ride today after all because the relentless traffic stretched our 300km journey into a full-day ordeal, depositing us in Baia Farta just as the sun was setting. Thankfully, Gus’s iOverlander app led us to a beachfront restaurant that welcomed campers. Surrounded by upscale homes, the restaurant was a stylish oasis. The manager told us that they closed at 6pm, after which we were free to use the premises and camp on the verandah for the rest of the evening. Perfect!
After a swim in the ocean and a shower on the beach, we sat down to a feast of fish, prawns and crayfish, with fresh vegetables, chips, potatoes, sweet potatoes and plantain. We had hit the jackpot! When the restaurant closed and the sun had set and our bellies were full, we climbed into our stretchers and settled down for the night…of horror that lay ahead!
Day 29 Baia Farta to Binga Baia
Linda and Laurie didn’t sleep as they were sick all through the night. Dave didn’t sleep, Jono didn’t sleep and Ali definitely didn’t sleep, thanks to the party of the century that just happened to be taking place. Right. Next. Door.
Jaime’s sleep was repeatedly interrupted by the barking dogs that also lovingly licked her face and slept at her feet. Jess’s signature giggle could be heard every time Jaime was startled awake, yet again. Gus quite enjoyed the dogs that were sleeping by his feet but didn’t quite enjoy the damp dog smell that infused all his clothes the next morning.
But Adam and Nick slept really well… so that’s nice.
Linda and Laurie were feeling very unwell, making the prospect of a ten-hour drive following the cyclists impossible, so Jaime opted to drive them for the day. Everyone set off, the girls went ahead to get supplies, leaving the rest of the support and media team to follow under their own steam. 20 minutes later, having failed to find a shop, Lady Dakar noticed that the other vehicles had headed off in the wrong direction! With no radio contact, the girls had to give chase to let them know that they were in fact on the wrong route and wouldn’t be seeing the cyclists any time soon if they continued that way.
Eventually, the three vehicles reached the cyclists just before the turn-off to Dombe Grande where the black car forged ahead in search of a comfortable stop for the two sick ladies.
Meanwhile, the cyclists had ridden up from the beach, climbing about 200m. At the Dombe turnoff, the road levelled out. This, combined with the overcast weather, made for perfect riding conditions and the peloton sped its way towards Dombe Grande. We stopped briefly just before Dombe for a fantastic eggless scromlet of bacon, beans, chili and all sorts of delicious delicacies. Bit (aka Ant) has been out of action for a while due to his debilitating gout, but today he is full of cheer and back to his happy self, cooking up a storm for us.
It was all downhill from breakfast as we entered the Dombe Grange, a huge, wide, fertile valley filled with palm trees and banana trees, almost an oasis in comparison to the semi-desert we had been riding through up till now. The valley was a verdant tapestry of small plots, bursting with fruits and vegetables, from eggplant to sugarcane and maize, pineapples and lychees, it was overflowing with delicious treats.
Dombe Grande is a wide, sandy river, with water currently flowing only inches deep, but the bridge across it is about 400m long and it must be quite a sight when the river is in full flood.
The ladies were waiting at Dombe, a busy little town, with motorbikes zooming past, and people trading their wares in little shops that contained pretty much everything, except milk, which we had run out of.
But all the beauty, peace, and tranquillity of the valley was about to end. Big rivers that flood seasonally in desert landscapes create equally impressive big canyons, and to get out of Dombe Grande on a bike comes highly unrecommended. But no one had mentioned that to us.
The ascent started gently enough, but Garmin has a wicked setting which soon warned us that we were about to climb 300m over the next 6km and that the gradient would peak at 10%. Despite the cool day, we toiled and sweated up to the top, where at last support had stopped for a tea break. One by one the Old Legs summitted, and the sheer relief on each face was almost comical. We calculated that the ascent out of Dombe Grande is only 20% of what it will be on the ride up Sera Deleba and it dawned on several of us just how enormous a challenge our last day is going to be.
After a brief stop, we headed off on the second-last leg of the day, relieved that the tough part of the ridge was now over. We rode our bikes until the tar road ended and the unrideable desert track took over. We had covered 75km but still had another 75km to get to our camp at Binga Baia, and knowing that the last 15km of that was going to be spectacular to ride, we uplifted and left Christopher do the work, for now.
Back in 2012, the construction of the EN100 south from Dombe Grande to Lucrita, was in full swing and scores of massive bridges were built. The new road was plotted and the land cleared, giant causeway drains were built and a never-ending trench was dug, laid with fiber optics and covered with manhole covers every kilometre. Milestones were placed every hundred metres for mile after mile after mile. Inexplicably, at some stage, after all this industrious effort was made, the funding must have dried up, and this stretch through hostile, rocky, arid land is now served only by the temporary detour and construction road that was built parallel to the projected highway.
The result is that the coastal cities South of Dombe Grande are largely isolated from those in the North, in much the same way as the towns and cities in the forests of the East are isolated from those by the coast. Angola is in some ways a country of isolated provinces, whose natural beauty and unique character is ironically preserved by the challenges of Angola’s still underdeveloped infrastructure.
As we ventured deeper into the desolate landscape, the support crew’s anxiety grew with each passing town and village, until all that was left was a semi-arid desert landscape that stretched further than the eye could see. Feeling decidedly unwell and running out of water and now realising that we would be wild bush camping with no hope of replenishing stocks was a daunting thought for Linda and Laurie, who decided Steven Spielberg should be told that we had found the perfect place to shoot the ‘End of Days’. Back in Christopher, Alistair was thinking along the same lines, saying that Mad Max 7 should be filmed here.
We stopped for lunch at the top of a hill that boasted another endless view and we all just gawked in amazement at the 360-degree view of rugged, rocky, arid landscapes that seemed to stretch on forever. We aren’t sure if the media crew actually captured any of this as they were too busy looking under rocks for scorpions and lizards, Troy spronking from rock to rock like a baby springbok, excitedly discovering desert creatures to admire. We were in the middle of the middle of nowhere…. AGAIN. If you ever choose to visit this place, we recommend you take Laurie’s advice, “Come by helicopter like a normal person!”
After a couple of hours of rocking and rolling in Christopher, we finally reached the turn-off to Binga Baia. To give you an idea of how remote this is, Binga Baia cannot be found on Google Maps or Garmin, and is 10 km from the middle of the middle of nowhere. Actually, even Alastair can’t tell us how on earth he found this place, all he knows is that it is there and it is epic.
At the turn-off, we were all excited to get our bikes off the rack and ride the last leg of the day, including Jaime, as Linda wanted to drive over the corrugations, and Troy and Jess, who wanted to stretch their legs.
At first, the ride in was disappointing, lots of uphill, peaking at 11% and the harshest of corrugations which aggravated Alistair’s broken thumb and Nick’s broken wing, and frustrated them as they had to slow down, especially on the downhills. But as we crested the final and biggest ridge, Keegan shouted out, “I can see the sea!” At which point the rocky, corrugated track began a long descent to our wild beach camp.
Troy celebrated by falling off his bike. Twice. And then indignantly cried, “How come you managed to catch me falling off my bike on video, but didn’t press record when I lovingly pushed Jess up the hill?” Without skipping a beat Nick replied, “The good guy never gets on the news”.
Words fail to capture the cove’s sheer magnificence. Maybe the photography will give you a glimpse, but it’s the kind of view that washes away all the pain leading up to that moment and fills you instead with a sense of awe and gratitude. It’s doubtful that more than 50 people have visited this secluded paradise, other than the most ardent of fishermen, and this is just one of countless hidden gems along this unexplored coastline, awaiting discovery by intrepid adventurers. Or a bunch of crazy Old Legs.
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Until next time,
Have Fun. Do Good. Do Epic
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