...Not painful, but agony. What a shocking few days it’s been. Somewhat recovered here’s what I’ve been trying to forget...Still taking the cross country route we entered Nigeria slowly but without hassle. For my fellow travellers you might be interested to know that I’ve still not used my Carnet. It’s been requested a couple of times but they really don’t know enough about it for it to be a problem, instead I’ve had a few Laissez-Passers issued, some free and some for a fee of less than 10 euros. Quite often just producing my V5 is enough and we’ve just been waved through. So then a free L-P later we’re on yet another ‘road under construction’ heading east. One day many years after reading this maybe someone will retrace my route and wonder what the problem was as they ride the perfect tarmac on their smooth 100kg, 200bhp, quiet, solar powered bike whilst wearing climate controlled protective clothing and having chilled nutrients and liquid available just by thinking about it. But then again maybe that’s a bit farfetched, the bit about the perfect tarmac. Next whinge is the Michelin Map...the roads are of varying colours depending on condition i.e. ‘Improved road’ whatever that means and other helpful descriptions such as ‘secondary road.’
It was on a combination of these two that the fun started. On what should be (for a couple of dual sport riders) a good day on a challenging 80km trail and a crap day on a similar sized badly potholed ‘road,’ for one dual sport rider following a sports tourer it was hell. The ride was mostly at 20-25kph which is right at the top of first gear and at the bottom of second and much more importantly at this speed there is no let up from the heat at all as there is no wind to help to cool the body. On top of all this, when the next village is only 5/10/25km away (depending on who you ask) it’s actually hours away. Several times we’d run very low or out of water and this isn’t our cold, nice tasting tap water either, it’s either water from a village well or the same tasting stuff from a shop that comes in a 50cl bag. Either way, initially when cool (it’s never cold) it’s bearable but when it warms up it tastes fowl and just makes you feel worse. After two days of this we reached New Bussa with me totally on my last legs like never before, severely dehydrated and having only eaten one small meal in 48hrs.
Then the local “In charge of security” guy turns up to question us on our visit. I’m in no state to get involved and just sit there while Mick explains that we’re neither terrorists nor spies. The following morning, feeling slightly better we head off for Abuja and we nearly got there were it not for a storm (hurricane?) of ‘proper’ proportions. With an estimated 25km left (estimated because my GPS is now dead and Mick’s had fallen out of its cradle and was lost forever earlier in the day) the riding conditions had gone way beyond dangerous with darkness, water inside our visors, fallen power lines and chaos everywhere adding to the usual mix of dodgy vehicles, terrible roads, pedestrians and animals. We eventually found a motel to stay and after 30 minutes of plain hard work with the staff over whether or not they could accept some US dollars we were in the dry. Damn that global warming again, maybe next time I’ll walk.
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