Posté par Mathieu                                                                                                                                                      2008-01-12

Namibia

Some photos from our trip in Namibia from 28/12/07 to 11/01/08.
Enjoy!

 Posté par Mathieu                                                                                                                                                      2007-10-18

Some pics from Pointe Noire ...

... plus some more here

   

   

   

   

 Posté par Mathieu                                                                                                                                                      2006-12-10

Pointe Noire - Dolisie by train

On a mid November weekend, we went to Dolisie - also known as Loubomo - the third biggest city in Congo, about 140 kms away from Pointe Noire.

Anne, who's been brave enough to visit her best friend Dominique (a 'VIE colleague'), was leaving a few days later and it was our last weekend as well as our last chance to go to Dolisie all together. Furthermore, Alex and Vincent (2 friends, also known as 'Ken and Barbie' ), were attempting to an organized trip over there (thanks to Total) at the same time. After having compiled all those information someone had a brilliant idea and said something like 'Wait a sec', maybe we could meet up in Dolisie eh''. So we did.

Basically there are 3 ways to get there. Firstly you can use the only 'national road' available, the one that leads to Brazzaville. Considering the track's awful state and the fact that you've got a 99 in 100 chance to get stuck on it, you need at least 2 winch-equipped 4x4 if you wanna have a chance to reach the city. Secondly by airplane, a 20-minute flight in a 'brand new' Antonov and there you are, comfy for sure but not for those who feared the airplane crap out on you during the flight! As one of the main purpose of our trip was to cross the famous Mayombe, a huge rainforest that separates the Kouilou basin (where Pointe Noire is) from the Niari tablelands (Dolisie), we finally opted the last, and definitely not easiest, solution we had: the train!

The original plan was to go to Dolisie by train on Saturday and to come back to Pointe Noire by airplane, with Alex & Vincent, on Sunday evening. Unfortunately things went horribly wrong! We started our weekend at 5.30am, in Pointe Noire's huge train station, to get our tickets. It was already overcrowded when we arrived and we had to wait quite a long while. Nevertheless we didn't get enough time to get bored. Indeed, there was this lovely (already!) drunk officer hitting people with his bludgeon in order to form a straight queue. For sure it was efficient and nobody felt sleepy anymore after this!
We finally got our tickets by 6.30am. The time to go back home, to prepare our stuff and to get a nice breakfast in La Citronelle and it was time to leave, well, almost. The train, that was first announced to leave around 10.00am, finally started to move by 2.00pm. Only 5 hours delay, looking back on it, it's not that bad ...

Let's be clear: the way through the Mayombe is absolutely stunning and it's definitely worth every cent you pay and every minute you wait before leaving! The Mayombe is a fairly hilly area and there are both many bridges and tunnels all along the way. The railway's construction was carried out by French in the Thirties and it occurred that many workers died during it. Not really surprising actually, when you see what they have been through, it's already a little miracle they managed to achieve it at the time.
There are at least 10 villages on the way and a stop of about 15 minutes for each of them. Villagers sell some food (manioc, banana) and drinks (some beer, water, we even saw people selling Whisky in plastic pockets) to the travelers. They also give the fruit of their (meager) harvest to some people who are in charge of selling it in Dolisie.
Each stops is also a pretext for the 'militia' present in every wagons (they're hired by CFCO, the train company, as a prevention force in case the train would get hijacked by some rebels) to get some booze. I let you imagine how badly drunk some of them were when we arrived in Dolisie, some 6 hours after having left Pointe Noire. And when you know that each 'security guard' is equipped with a machine gun (AK-47 like), you've got some bad thoughts which cross your mind at least once. Nevertheless we all arrived sound and safe in Dolisie after having crossed the last (endless) tunnel by approximately 8.30pm.

Alex and Vincent were waiting next to the train station to welcome us and make sure we were still alive! Then we went to the 'sorry, no water available tonight' hotel they kindly booked for us. After a quick shower with half a bucket of water we went to the buffet provided by Total to get some manioc, grilled fish and beer. We finally throw our last forces in the local nightclub where we paid an exorbitant 'mundele price' for a glass of Porto before coming back to the hotel and enjoying a well-earned rest.
On the following day, after some problems with militaries and Anne's camera (she got caught while taking a picture of them which is of course absolutely forbidden), we hired a taxi in order to visit the big village Dolisie is. We went to the Lake Blue (half an hour drive from the train station) and the Brazza's tree, a huge baobab. Both places were really nice. We also heard about a waterfall but we didn't have enough to get there, next time maybe.
4.30pm: it was already time to leave ... for Alex and Vincent! Their plane - the one we thought was also 'ours' at this time of the day - was leaving very soon. We went to the Dolisie's new airport where, pitilessly, we were told that, for some obscure reasons, it was finally impossible for the four of us to embark! There was absolutely no reason to justify this decision but the 'MF' (also known as airport controller or something like this) had the power and we couldn't do anything against it, even bribe didn't work !!!
As a consequence of this little hitch, we had to make a quick decision. Basically we had two choices. The first one was to wait on the following day in order to get a flight to Pointe Noire. Unfortunately it wasn't sure at all there would be some available seats left and after our experience with the airport controller we weren't really keen on arguing with him once again. In addition we had to be at work on the next day (even if it wasn't our main concern at this moment to tell the truth). One more time there was only one solution left: the train!
When we arrived at the train station, I think we were all slightly irritated by what have just happened to us! The four of us expected to come back to Pointe Noire quickly in order to get a hot shower and some rest after the tiring day we had had. It was far from what happened!
To make it short we waited the train to Pointe Noire something like 10 'Congolese' minutes, which means more than 3 hours. The worst wasn't the wait but the fact we didn't know if the train was coming or not, slightly agonizing I have to say! We all breathed a sigh of relief when the train finally showed up.
Thanks to René - a Congolese we met during our way to Dolisie the previous day and without who our trip would probably have been a real pain in the neck - who climbed through an open window while surrounding people were almost fighting in order to get in/out of the train, we managed to grab 4 seats, which is a 'must' when you know how long the following hours are gonna be! And long it was: more than 8 hours to reach Pointe Noire! This time we went through the Mayombe by night, under downpour conditions! We maybe had more than 15 stops, the village stops of course as well as the unexpected stops. Indeed, probably due to the bad weather the locomotive's engine broke down every 30 minutes and we had to wait at least 10 minutes each time in order to resume our way. For the believers it was a special moment to pray and wish the engine to restart! Try to imagine yourself in the middle of the jungle by a rainy night with huge lightings spreading through the sky and illuminating the menacing trees, packed together like sardines in a non air-conditioned wagon with, on one side, some drunk Congolese making (kindly) fun of mundele (white guys) and, on the other side, some security guards, smashed as well, with theirs machine guns ... In this kind of situation you weirdly find yourself thinking something like 'what the hell I'm doing here!'
We arrived at Tie Tie's train station (a few kilometers before Pointe Noire) around 3.30am. This is the place where travelers unload their goods and it was such a scene watching the people performing their job under a strong rain. When we thought our trip was finally over, we unfortunately witnessed a fight between a thief (who was trying to get some 'forgotten packages') and 3 or 4 people, including a security guard who was making fun of jumping on the poor lad's head with its military boots. Not really funny. We were suddenly all very awake after seeing this. It was 4.30am.
At last we reached Pointe Noire's train station, tired and happy to have done it! What a trip it was! In retrospect it was probably one of my best trips ever and I strongly recommend doing it if you're in Pointe Noire for a while. As the four of us are now definitely sure, the best way to proceed in order to go to Dolisie is by train on the first way and by airplane for the return. Thus you will enjoy the Mayombe, Dolisie and the way back will be around 20 minutes instead of 10 hours!

If you want to learn more about the train and this part of Congo, I strongly recommend you the reading of this excellent article http://www.hackwriters.com/Mayombe.htm. Afterwards I'm sure everybody will be keen on traveling by train from Pointe Noire to Dolisie!

Pictures of this trip are just right here.

 Posté par Mathieu                                                                                                                                                      2006-08-16

DP1-Loango

Some pics from DP1-Loango, a platform of about 80 kilometers away from Pointe Noire, where I spent 2 days / 1 night. It was an interesting experience to get on this kind of structure even if I couldn't live more than 2 days on it!

There is some new pics in the album section as well.

Enjoy!

   

   

   

   

   

 Posté par Mathieu                                                                                                                                                      2006-06-08

News from Pointe Noire !!!

As I'm deeply lazy and I don't want to create a new website, I'm going to use this one - which previously was about my trip in Australia in 2005 - for my new trip in Congo, Africa.

For people who don't know yet, I'm in Pointe Noire, Republic of Congo, until May 2007 at least and I strongly believe it could be a brilliant idea to upload some pictures from this unusual place! After all, if you type "Pointe Noire Congo" on Google, you actually will not get lots of results!
Oh, and for those who are wondering "where the hell is this bloody city!?", here is the map ...

As you can see, it's just in the bottom left-hand corner, close to the equator and next to the Atlantic Ocean!

This humble website will probably not be updated as often as it was when we were in Cairns with Jules, mainly for two reasons: firstly I won't have as many pictures as I had Down Under and secondly because it takes a lot of time to do it. Nevertheless I will try to do my best to write some comments about this country and to add some pics.

Thanks to Stefan by the way who had the clever idea to use JAlbum on his website . I used it to create the new galleries as well. I added two new ones so far: one about some places I went when I was in Paris and one about Pointe Noire and its surroundings.

All comments and emails are welcomed! And remember, if you don't know where to spend your next holidays, I'm a brilliant bilingual tourist guide and I've got a Queen Size bed to share!