26 december

DEPARTURE FOR BRAZZAVILLE

Today I leave for Brazzaville by boat, I wanted to leave very early, but unfortunately Daniele, the driver arrives only at nine and finally at nine thirty we are able to leave. I asked not to take the road we did yesterday in the car, too demanding if I have to go another four hundred kilometers later. Another problem, the people who should facilitate access to permits and the boat that will take the motorbike across the Congo river, give me the feeling of criminal means, unreliable, but there is no alternative. In fact, arrived at ten at the port, as I expected, problems. They want more money, obviously I have no intention of paying anything else, a price that I already considered a theft and by licensed thieves. Fortunately, Eric and I are with Daniele, who reminds him that the word given is one and they must keep the word. I have a little feeling of not being able to leave, it rains a lot. In the end, among a thousand vicissitudes and difficulties in loading the bike, we are able to leave. On the boat, I know a local boy, Arturo, who works as a doctor at the Brazzaville hospital and is married to a girl from Transacqua, a town in Trentino, more precisely in the Primiero valley. He helps me with the discharge and customs practices and then invites me to eat pizza in a pizzeria run by an Italian. I hesitate a little, in the evening I would like to get to Loubomo and it’s more than four hundred kilometers. However, I decide to stop, and after making me talk on the phone with his wife, I say goodbye and head for Loubomo. The road is very nice and fast, I manage to get to Loubomo around a quarter to seven, it is already night. I am very reluctant to travel in the evening, but unfortunately there was no way to stop earlier, there is nothing. I can find a hotel after filling up the bike as usual. I have dinner in the hotel where I can eat something. Fortunately the guy at the reception allows me to do wifi with his phone and I can communicate at home that I have arrived and that everything is fine. I’m going to sleep, early riser tomorrow, very demanding stage.