Transafrican Tour
TRANSAFRICAN TOUR
JOHN HIGGINBOTHAM
LAST SPRING I FOUND MYSELF in London, a Canadian post-graduate student on my way to Nigeria, West Africa, on a Province of Saskatchewan Fellowship. Several months remained before the school term began, Europe was full of tourists, and a jet flight to Nigeria cost over $300. So I decided to try to get to my destination overland, by motorcycle. The Sahara desert eventually stopped me, but during the summer I drove alone some 6000 miles from London to Upper Egypt, crossing Africa west to east from the Pillars of Hercules to Aswan.
The trip took over a month to complete, and it was a quite unforgettable series of difficulties and pleasures. Sandstorms in the Libyan desert, blown-up bridges in Algeria, an accident when the nearest BSA 250 was a thousand miles away, the mystery of ancient Roman cities in the desert, and the kindness of strange peoples made it a trip that was unusual to say the least. The trip firmed my lovehate relationship with motorcycles, and I hope this story will encourage other addicts to try a really big trip sometime.
It took nearly a month to prepare for the trip in London, where all the facilities were available. It would have been impossible to prepare from this continent, purely because of the difficulty involved in getting visas for the many African countries I planned to cross. Every embassy has an agonizing number of forms to fill out, a fee ranging from $3-$ 10 for transit permits, and a period when your passport must be lodged at the embassy waiting for the precious stamp, some countries requiring a week's delay. As the visas are valid for only two or three months, trying to get them by mail would have meant that some would start to expire before the set was complete. Often personal coaxing is needed to speed up small embassies.
Besides a passport with visas, a lot of other documents are necessary, such as the expensive insurance policy that is necessary to cross borders in Europe, international driver's license, international registration, good maps, and an invaluable book called Trans-African Highways, which accurately describes many of Africa's nonroads, and the occasional facilities along them.
The Automobile Association in London is very helpful with these documents, and is the only source of a customs paper called a carnet, which is often necessary for crossing boundaries in Africa. The carnet requires a bank guarantee to the value of the motorcvcle. Anytime someone imports a vehicle (without paying duty) into one of these states, and fails to export it within a few months, the country simply claims the money from the Automobile Association. Another necessity for such a trip is money. If possible, take about twice as much as might ever seem necessary, in small dollar and sterling travelers' cheques. And be sure of the address of American embassies.
I bought a BSA 250 in London, new, and a stock of parts from valve springs to a spare tube. As anyone who buys a motorcycle in Britain knows, foreign buyers are exempt from a large Purchase Tax if the machine is exported — unfortunately you have to pay it first and the money is sent to your address in America. This reduced my funds a little, and further decided me to make the trip as cheaply as possible, using a tent whenever possible, youth hostels (very low price accommodation for young people) when available, and hotels when desparate. So. with panniers and a packsack full of gear, and a last minute supply of antibiotics, I rode out of London for Africa.
Riding south through France was very enjoyable; the roads are excellent, the drivers completely mad, and there are many excellent camping sites with all facilities available, as in all European countries. It also gave me a chance to brush up my French a bit — which is the second language to Arabic in three of the North African countries, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia.
Continuing south into Spain, the roads become less consistently good, the people poorer, and the climate hotter. Franco's Spain is a dictatorship, and one has to be careful in conversation. This factor detracts nothing from Madrid, which, with its bullfights, museums and clubs, is one of the great capitals of Europe. Further south. Í finally reached the Mediterranean Sea at Malaga, one of Spain's many economy resorts. The machine was completely broken in by now, and I was looking forward to Africa.
I stayed three days on the Rock of Gibralter, which is in effect the southernmost point of Europe. The Rock is a marvelous place, long a British fortress and still a British colony down to the last Bobby. It is a great tourist stop for passing ships, with its gun caves, natural caverns, the only wild apes in Europe, and duty-free purchases. Across the Straits of Gibraltar, I got my first sight of Africa, the Mountain which, with the Rock, were once called the Pillars of Hercules by ancient mariners to whom it represented the end of the known Mediterranean world.
I landed on the other side of the Straits in Tangier, long an exotic, intrigue-filled international city, now in the reduced circumstances of the tourist trade. Nevertheless it was Morocco and North Africa, with mosques and minarets, the poverty that shames America's wealth, and the quick fluid Arabic voices of the Casbah. Tangier also has a colony of European beatniks that makes some local products seem like Teens for Christ.
Now the serious riding began. The roads were still reasonable, but there was very little private traffic and gas stations were thinning out rapidly. It began to be necessary to put in long, back-straining hours in the saddle to get anywhere, but the scenery was extraordinary, as I proceeded through the mountains and plains of Morocco towards the Algerian border — the first country which required a visa.
The border took well over half a day to cross. My French did not mesh with the border guards', who seemed occupied endlessly with the examination of the affects of a busload of poor Arabs. My gear was never investigated, but with all the politeness, smiles, and entreatments in the world, nothing would cut the red tape of forms, documents and questions. When the end seems in sight, they close for lunch, or some vital official "may be back in an hour." My advice is never to belligerently announce your nationality and demand service; be friendly and patient. It is their country.
Once into Algeria, you are very much out of tourist territory. Algeria is a country that fought a savage guerilla war with France a few years ago, and achieved its independence under Ben Bella. I was there before the counter-revolution, when the country was militantly socialist and pan-Arab. I encountered six machine-gun armed road checks as I traveled, particularly in the Kabylie Mountains, where the government was carrying out counter-insurgency operations. Be polite.
Algeria is "underdeveloped," like the rest of North Africa, and I started to feel the frustrating logistic problems in Algeria. Outside of the big cities, trustworthy cooked food is almost impossible to find, and dysentery on a motorcycle is distinctly unpleasant. You have to plan where you are going to get your next gas, and where there is a safe place to camp. (I often set up near a village army or police post.) No matter how thirsty you are, you must treat water with chlorine before drinking it. You can never be sure about what is around the next curve, so slow riding is essential.
On a map, Algeria is a huge country, but it is all desert except for the Northern Mediterranean strip, straddling the Atlas mountains. From the Moroccan border, I drove first to the Port of Oran, which could almost be a French city, and from there along the coast road to Algiers. This was a slow road, as most of the bridges had been blown up and temporary trails cut, but the mountain scenery was spectacular, rather like parts of the California coast. Finally arriving in Algiers, late at night, I was delighted to find one of the few youth hostels in Algeria, which offered a good cheap night's sleep despite the Youth of the World Unite atmosphere.
Algiers is a truly beautiful city, tall white buildings arcing around a rich blue bay. Many of the little French shops closed after the revolution, but it remains highly cosmopolitan, and one of the vital political capitals of Africa. Algerian Arabs are a somber lot, hardened by their war which can never be forgotten in Algiers by the tourist — reminded by the apartments with blown-out walls still unrepaired, and the looks that Europeans sometimes get in the streets. Considering the way France fought to keep its empire here, it is not surprising. Despite the fact that American diplomats in Algiers must be skilled with the putty knife, personal relationships are easy and amicable between American tourists and Algerians, especially if you try to understand their point of view. One universal brotherhood is respected; I drove and rested with a BMW-mounted army dispatch rider for some time, though I had trouble keeping up, as he seemed to know that Allah was on his side.
In Algiers, I confirmed what had been suggested in London, that all traffic on the tracks across the Sahara had stopped because of the summer heat. My idea had been to put the bike on one of the big French desert trucks that cross the endless wastes of the Sahara to supply the outposts, until I reached Southern Niger, from where it would be possible to drive to my destination in Nigeria. But this was not possible, and as attempting to drive across this territory alone on a bike is unthinkable (I later traveled across by Landrover, on the way home) I decided to continue east across the Lybian desert to Egypt, where the roads were better and well traveled.
After leaving Algiers, I drove through Constantine and cut south and east toward the Tunisian border. It was in a desolate part of Algeria near Tebessa, in the Sahara Atlas mountains that I had the only accident of the trip — my fault for riding too fast. Upon climbing a hill, I discovered a rapidly descending, hard right turn, with a thin layer of loose gravel covering broken pavement. After stopping the blood (you can't wear leathers in that heat) I found the bike rather bent up but still rideable. I wobbled into Tebessa, where a Russian woman doctor, there under a foreign aid project, bandaged me up. As soon as I could drive again, after fervent thanks to Allah that the bike was still in fair condition, I crossed into Tunisia, a rather less radical country than Algeria.
I spent little time there, wanting to press on to the most difficult driving, the nearly uninhabited desert area almost half the width of Africa between myself and the Nile. I cut across the southern part of Tunisia into Libya and its major city, Tripoli. French is not the second language here, but more likely Italian or English, because of the Second World War which raked back and forth across Libya and Egypt. There are still many areas where you can't wander off the road because of mines.
After a few days in Tripoli (there is a large American influence because of a big nearby air base) I started in on the difficult riding. The blacktop was very irregular, there was great distance between servicing points, and the heat was very intense. The road was exactly one truck wide, and the trucks (often carrying oil equipment) were frequent and possessive, forcing me to nearly stop each time I met one. There were occasional stretches of fair straight blacktop, and the 250 was for once inadequate in power. My chief memory of this drive was backache, dawn to dusk driving, tenting in the truckers' night camps, and seeming to make no progress at all across the map. The only bit of mechanical difficulty I had in the whole trip came in the desert when the condenser beside the points broke off its mounting; I had a spare and it could have been soldered if not. This was excellent performance considering the length of the trip, even though I thoroughly and frequently checked and serviced the machine.
Most of the desert road is a few miles in from the Mediterranean; there is no scenery, just flat arid land obscured by heat haze. I got in several sand storms in this area, and there is nothing to do but stop and wait. Aside from the widely spaced coastal towns along the highway, there are only a few nomad shepherds — with camels that are inclined to wander on the roads at dusk. You must drink great quantities when driving in the heat; I even had a water bottle cooled by evaporation strapped to the fuel tank and a yard long plastic tube for drinking.
There is a concentration of people in north-eastern Libya between Banghazi and Tobruk which was a readily acceptable substitute for civilization after the days in the desert since Tripoli (not 40 days). Here I saw the ancient Roman ruins at Cyrene, which like Peptis Magna near Tripoli, are some of the most impressive sights in North Africa. They were both small trading cities of Rome near the height of its powers, then suddenly deserted, leaving their cities to the elements, which have been wonderfully kind, leaving splendid public buildings still intact. They give a better picture of Roman life than Rome itself, today.
It took nearly a day to cross the Libya/ Egypt border, and I had to use all the documents including my laundry bill to persuade the various border posts to hurry up. Then it was several more days of straight hard desert driving, this time accompanying a couple of German tourists whose Volkswagen was having engine trouble, until I finally reached Alexandria im Egypt.
There is no need to describe Egypt fully, it is a world tourist attraction — Cairo, the Sphinx, the Pyramids (which are big) and the mighty new Aswan dam. Egypt is the Nile, as it has been for 5000 years, and absolutely unique in the wastes and poverty of North Africa, as a slow and less pleasant ride across will confirm. The roads are good there, and Cairo must have some of the best and cheapest hotels in the world. It is tourist territory again, with people flying from Hilton to Hilton and knowing the people from the taxi drivers.
I spent over two weeks in Egypt, traveling up the Nile as far as the High Dam, a massive work with the laborers working as the toilers of the pyramids must have done, but now for Soviet engineers rather than the priests of the Pharoah. The hottest riding I did was in Southern Egypt, where it was regularly over 130 degrees. I had spent little money in the past month relative to my reserves, so, as there is only a choice between four-star and nostar hotels in Upper Egypt, I chose air conditioning and promptly caught a cold. At Luxor I joined the tours and saw the Valley of the Kings and the temple of Karnak, wonders of the world without a doubt.
It had been in my mind to try to get further South than Aswan on my way to Nigeria by taking the ferry and train service through the Sudan, and then cutting across the Congo, Central African Republic and Camerouns to my destination. However, I was stopped by the new dam which had halted all river traffic for some months; this was fortuitous, for if I had driven as planned I would have been in the North Eastern Congo about the time of the Stanleyville massacre, and no one there would conceivably believe that a lone Canadian would be traveling great distances alone on a bright red motor bike in Africa for pleasure.
So I returned to Cairo, managed to sell the bike at a good price to another Canadian who was going by sea to Greece, and flew down to-Nigeria; five hours by jet.
Despite all the difficulties I very much enjoyed the slow way across Africa; travel is too easy now and you have to create your own adventures. It was a wonderful introduction to the Arab world with all its fire and diversity, to the poor of North Africa to whom a motorcycle would be a fantastic luxury, and to the politics of poverty, religion and nationalism. Every country has its problems; the poor ones need aid more than advice.
This was an excellent and interesting trip; others should try it. Together with this trip, I traveled a good deal in West and South Africa and Europe, and for a young man who doesn't mind rewarding difficulties, I think a tent and a motorcycle is the cheap, sporting way to get anywhere. If your last big trip was to Tahoe, think about one like this.
