Lisa au Congo!

As soon as we crossed the border into the Republic of Congo (otherwise known as Congo-Brazzaville), we encountered muddy dirt roads.

Our favourite part of the road had a stream (filled with small fish) running across it.

But then we encountered the complete opposite coming into Pointe Noire – freshly tarred roads cut into the mountainside which shaved about 40kms off the original route.

I was looking forward to staying at the Pointe Noire yacht club, and really wanted an upgrade before the long stretch of bush camping ahead through DRC and Angola.

But alas, the yacht club was not at all like what we expected and there were no upgrades available. At a glance, it’s a nice enough place

and it would be nice if you were a member and could use their huge selection of jet skis for free. However, camping here is not so glamorous. We’re camping under a large hut that used to be a bar. Long in disuse, however, there is rubbish all over and around it, and the driving school now trains their students around it – they even train people how to use a crane here for christsakes! Sand flies are rife as you’d imagine, so we’ve been getting bitten like mad. The toilets were blocked on arrival and the showers didn’t work so we ended up ‘bottle showering’ with a 1.5 litre water bottle (4 of us girls lined up together in a manky concrete shower room that looked like a prison cell).

And for some reason the temperature doesn’t seem to drop all night, making you drip with sweat and toss and turn. Only around 6-7am does it seem to cool down ever so slightly, by which stage everyone is already up and about.

There really isn’t much to do in Pointe Noire. There are some good Artisan’s Markets, one conveniently located right by our campsite (or inconveniently depending on how much money you want to spend), there’s a City Sport store that has $12 Havaianas, internet cafés, patisseries, restaurants and pubs.

Other than that, you would probably need to be happy just lounging around.

In total, we’ve had 7 full days here in Pointe Noire to sort out Angolan visas.

Despite trying their darndest on multiple occasions, the Angolan Embassy refused to issue some of our group with visas. MISERY!

Dom, ironically wearing an ‘I love Angola’ necklace

Amy, who tried the hardest to get an Angolan visa

Since some of our group left, here’s what I did to keep myself occupied:

-lunches at restaurants

-games of Trickster Scrabble

-read my book

-wrote my diary

-wrote some blogs

-laundry (including pillow, Thermarest, hat, bags…anything I could find that remotely needed washing)

-internet

-sorting out photos

-truck cleans (daily)

-filling up the jerry cans (twice)

-showers (daily – just because we can)

-eyelash tinting (thanks to Kristy)

-pedicures (thanks to me)

-litter picking (a garbage bag full)

In summary, it was boring but we've been here so long maybe we should put this sticker on our truck.

Luckily, however, some of us were able to take a taxi to Diosso, a nearby town, on the last day. There were both good and bad roads on this trip too.

 All we saw was the gorge,

as the museum and nearby Tchimpounga chimpanzee sanctuary were closed, but we were just so happy to leave Pointe Noire if only for a few hours.

But now, we are about to start on our longest ever stretch of continuous driving, bush camps, bottle showers, and tinned food. Let the real adventure begin!