DRC Bonjour/Jumbo Muzungu!!!!!

THE SPONSOR OF MY BICYCLE SPARE PARTS IS COMPANY PRODUCING FINE BICYCLE SADDLES www.abi.com.pl


The border crossing was pretty much like a taste of what was going to come in a smaller scale.
It's not enough that on the Zambian side it is messy and out of controll!! But what I was to find going on over on the DRC side was just chaos!!
So, imagine going from one crazy mess to complete chaos!!! On the DRC side guards were trying to get some money from me by not accepting my visa granted in Lusaka but it was just a game. In the end I was suprised how smoothly it all went compared to what I was expecting.
So here I am going on a good road to Lubumbashi which is the second biggest city in the country. The next day I reach my destination, stopping on the way occasionally I had the opportunity to learn and practice my first basic french words.
I had just got to town and I so had to start fixing my bicycle, in dire need of repairs. I had to put on a new back casket, a chain, and what was the most difficult to find, a bit for my front casket.
I had to also withdraw money from the ATM which started to be a bit problematic because many of them didn't work properly. Finally I have succeeded and with the last light of the sunset I left the city and it's constant noise. The sky was dark with the rain approaching.
A few kilometres from the town I found some shelter in a protestant church. I spent the night in the pastor's house, learning new things about this country.


I turns out the next part of the trip was going to be much harder. As I was going further and further, passing Likasi where I said good by to the tar road for the next 1000 or more kilometres, I reached a place called Tenke where "good" dirt roads changed into a total obstacle course all the way to Mwene Ditu where it has tar for 200 km to Mbuji-Mayi.
From Likasi the road was gradually worsening with no hope of respite. For some time I was moving along a railway Lubumbashi-Ilebo on a big plateau full of small swamps, but even this was short lived and soon I had to take a path along the long grass and scattered bush. Rain was constant almost every day, the mud too. Mountains, huge boulders on the roads or totally washed out tracks, I didn't see any cars on the road, just motorcycles and bikes like mine fully loaded with goods for sale.
Villages were few and far between as was the food too!!!
Once I had an amazing ferry on a small canoe made of tree bark which was magestic.
Soon my bike journey would change from fast and technically no problems was going to change to be far more complicated.

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