Crossing into Cameroon proved challenging. Aside from the fact that no-one could provide an accurate approximation of travelling time or distance to the border, the road was terrible – really terrible. When unpaved roads in tropical countries aren’t graded to level out the bumps and ensure surface water runs into ditches at the side, heavy rain soon destroys them. Crevasse-deep gullies form between football-sized rocks and the way ahead ends up looking more like a dry mountain river-bed than a road. Such has been the story for much of the past week.

That was the question I was left asking myself. My passport had been stamped out of Ghana and now at the Togolese border post I had a problem. Obtaining the visa I needed to enter  was not going to be such a simple procedure. It wasn’t helping matters that the burly officer on duty refused to accept my handshake nor look me in the eye as he stood chewing and spitting a stick of cane sugar. A nice welcome back into Francophone Africa.  Read more... (654 words, 6 images, estimated 2:37 mins reading time)

In the end it required four of us to remove it. I’d struggled for two hours previously with an adjustable spanner in one hand and chain whip in the other and got no-where. I was in danger of doing myself an injury. The advice I’d been told about removing my bike’s rear sprocket was true. The thing wouldn’t budge without tremendous force. Two men held the wheel, another the spanner and the biggest of the four of us thrust down on the chain-whip. It finally gave and I unscrewed the dagger-edged piece from the hub.  Read more... (561 words, 4 images, estimated 2:15 mins reading time)

Leaving Guinea required some patience. The border was closed, at least according to one immigration officer. I found him lying on a wooden bench under the shade of a mango tree. Several metres away a bamboo pole acted as a barrier across the dirt track. This was the end of the road for Guinea. And whilst the country waited to hear the results of its Presidential elections I apparently would not be allowed to cross into Sierra Leone.  Read more... (558 words, 3 images, estimated 2:14 mins reading time)