We planned to be up at 4am, out at 4:30am, and ride all the way to Labé to make up half of our lost day. Then tomorrow we would ride almost all the way to Dakar and be back on track. Ha! "Ghana time". The hotel had breakfast ready for us at 4am. I was outside with Ekow at 4:30, but nobody else was up. We finally got moving at 5:40am a bit over an hour after our planned departure. Riding out of town super early was nice in that the traffic was not crazy. There was still traffic, but it was reasonable. Lots of school buses jammed with kids super early in the dark on this Wednesday morning.
Google Maps led us through town to a ferry port. Turns out there's no ferry at 6am and from the look of it, maybe no ferry at all. Anyway, this caused us to wait to regroup with the van and cross town the other way to take the long (dry) way west towards Guinea.
On the way towards the border, the sun was rising and mists were settled on the fields and jungle around us. Beautiful. We stopped to get some fun sunrise pictures and wait for the van.
Then we filled up and hit the border at 8:40am. This border crossing was a long one, almost 6 hours. Looking like it's going to be a very long day if we still want to make it all the way to Labé.
For the rest of the day, we pushed hard with only a couple of short breaks. Then, north of Mamou, the sun set, and the road got bad. Like 50% pavement bad with lots of potholes and cars and trucks swerving all the way across the road to avoid them. Google Maps was saying 4 hours to go when we were only about 150 km from Labé. Turns out Google Maps was optimistic about our rate of progress in the dark.
Shortly before it got dark, I had a pretty severe accident/hit where I was accelerating out of a small town and hit a speed bump at about 120 kph. This was a sharp-edged bump (like a kerb in the USA) which was difficult to see in the fading light. I saw it at the last second and got up on the foot pegs. The bike hit me hard and sent me flying, but somehow I landed back on the bike and the tire still held air. But it wasn't round any more. Thank goodness for steel rims, spoked wheels, and tube tires. But my map tablet (Samsung A7 Lite) went flying and got smashed (eventually I was able to get this track log off it). And my phone holder broke from the G-forces. My phone stayed attached by the charging wire --- thank goodness for that!
Later this night, I would take another hard hit from a pothole in the dark and bend my rim again. So now, at low speed, I get some bump-bump-roll-bump-bump-roll action. Sigh!
It's a shame to ride so much of Guinea in the dark seeing only the next pothole and line of interrupted pavement instead of the scenery.
With Google Maps telling us 4 hours to go, we just didn't believe it could be that slow. We were sure we'd be faster and get there in just an hour or so. So after 45 minute of riding and not making any headway on the arrival time estimate, I called a break. I needed to rest my mind for a couple of minutes and I was worried that Rosie might be getting tired. I told the group that Google's estimate was looking correct and I wanted to stop every hour for a 5 minute break. Rosie waited for the van to catch up so she could stay safe for the last 100km. Good decision. The rest of us pushed on being very careful and barely making Google time. We finally arrived at 11pm and found a local to lead us around the dirt roads in town to our hotel. We got some food and were in bed around midnight. I don't even know when the van ultimately arrived. I think it was quite a bit later. They had a brake failure --- used up their brake pads trying to keep up with us and slowing down for every one of the hundreds of speed bumps, about four to eight per town. I'm not sure how much that delayed them, but they did a brake job on the side of the road that night.
What a freaking long day! From 4:30am to 11:00pm, another 18 hour day, largely because of an almost 6 hour border crossing and inability to get out on time, but also misrouting and just not understanding the roads. You cannot keep a fast pace in the dark!
Day 6, Freetown to Labé
| Time | Minutes | km | kph avg | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4:26am | 75.3 | preparing to leave with a goal of 4:30am | ||
| 5:41am | 10.4 | 6 km | 35 | actually departing 1h10m after the plan |
| 5:51am | 1.9 | the ferry Google tells us to take is not running early in the morning | ||
| 5:53am | 2.5 | 1 km | 15 | |
| 5:56am | 16.1 | waiting to regroup with the van (now a full 1.5 hrs after plan) | ||
| 6:12am | 74.2 | 101 km | 81 | |
| 7:26am | 3.7 | sunrise pictures | ||
| 7:30am | 38.1 | 65 km | 102 | |
| 8:08am | 22.6 | fuel stop | ||
| 8:31am | 11.0 | 9 km | 48 | |
| 8:42am | 344.4 | border crossing, exiting Sierra Leone + entering Guinea, 5h40m(!) | ||
| 2:26pm | 42.8 | 65 km | 91 | finally moving into Guinea |
| 3:09pm | 13.7 | map | ||
| 3:23pm | 83.5 | 97 km | 70 | |
| 4:47pm | 37.1 | fuel stop | ||
| 5:24pm | 52.0 | 70 km | 81 | |
| 6:16pm | 12.1 | 65 km to Mamou | ||
| 6:28pm | 42.2 | 59 km | 84 | |
| 7:10pm | 5.0 | map | ||
| 7:15pm | 51.2 | 43 km | 51 | now it's dark and Google says 4hrs to go |
| 8:06pm | 23.7 | I call a break in the dark on a bad road, Rosie gets in the van | ||
| 8:30pm | 90.5 | 70 km | 46 | the road continues to be terrible and we're not beating Google time |
| 10:01pm | 16.6 | I call another break to avoid a failure of concentration | ||
| 10:17pm | 11.1 | 8 km | 46 | super concentrated riding in the dark |
| 10:29pm | 1.4 | I call a final break with 30km and 1hr to Labé | ||
| 10:30pm | 29.1 | 27 km | 55 | more difficult riding in the dark |
| 10:59pm | 4.1 | finally in Labé, now how to actually get to our hotel? | ||
| 11:03pm | 2.1 | 1 km | 17 | |
| 11:05pm | arrived at Résidence Jaffal | |||
| 18h44m | 9h02m moving | 622 km | 68.8 kph | 48% moving, 581 minutes of breaks |