Well, we are up and packing at 5:30am. No food this morning. We hope to ride 665 km 11h17m to the border to start our border crossing before 6pm. This is going to be a serious push. It looks possible since we've been able to beat Google Time when the roads are good, but we don't know anything about these roads other than we do know that the road south from Labé toward Mamou is very bad --- remember the potholes and my speedbump incident? --- this time we are doing it in pre-dawn twilight.
We get out at 5:45am, on time for once! The ride-log GPX file
has a couple of big gaps --- my phone is more aggressive about power
saving than my tablet. I need a more reliable, dedicated GPX recording solution.
Day 14, Labé → Yaraouléna
| Time | Minutes | km | kph avg | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5:45am | 0.6 | packing to depart | ||
| 5:46am | 0.6 | 0 km | 0 | |
| 5:47am | 17.5 | actual departure on time! | ||
| 6:04am | 35.1 | 28 km | 48 | |
| 6:39am | 5.6 | Chris hits a cow --- take a 5 minute break | ||
| 6:45am | 28.8 | 23 km | 47 | |
| 7:14am | 1.4 | map | ||
| 7:15am | 5.6 | 4 km | 40 | |
| 7:21am | 3.6 | map | ||
| 7:24am | 20.0 | 14 km | 43 | |
| 7:44am | 1.2 | map | ||
| 7:46am | 21.7 | 18 km | 49 | |
| 8:07am | 2.3 | map | ||
| 8:10am | 34.5 | 28 km | 48 | |
| 8:44am | 1.6 | map | ||
| 8:46am | 24.0 | 22 km | 54 | |
| 9:10am | 1.8 | map | ||
| 9:12am | 4.0 | 3 km | 38 | |
| 9:16am | 27.0 | map | ||
| 9:43am | 400.6 | 387 km | 58 | |
| 4:24pm | 12.1 | map | ||
| 4:36pm | 29.1 | 20 km | 42 | |
| 5:05pm | 2.6 | map | ||
| 5:07pm | 2.8 | 1 km | 19 | |
| 15h58m | 10h08m moving | 571 km | 56.4 kph | 63% moving, 350 minutes of breaks |
We were riding well and carefully, making good time, avoiding potholes in the dark, and paying attention to animals. There were a lot of cows on the road. Usually cows are pretty docile and just stand there while we ride around them, but this time there were two on one side of the road and two on the other side. As I was driving between them at about 50 kph (30 mph) the two on the left spooked and ran across left to right. The second one went through my front wheel and knocked me over. Fortunately I was not seriously injured. My leg got a good bump, but my crash gear saved me from any road rash and padded most of the knocks --- that's what I thought at the time. Writing this 2 weeks later, my leg is very sore with a lot of black and blue.
Google says 1h54m to go on this 117 km stretch to the border. It's 4pm and we still think we can maybe make it in daylight, before 6pm...
This canoe river ferry crossing pretty much seals our fate of not reaching the border by 6pm. Super cool, but the crossing took about 40 minutes to wait for the canoes, load and unload the bikes, etc. After the crossing, Google says 76 minutes to go and it's 5:45pm. Obviously not going to make it. Now the goal is to make as much distance as we can before it gets dark.
I got cocky, riding too fast, thinking I'm a cool dirt rider on my Ténéré with knobby tires, trying to make it to the border before dark, and then I lost control in the piles of sand at the edge of the road. I went down at maybe 60 kph and twisted my ankle. Fortunately not severely because we really are many hours away from any kind of help and it's 6pm, sunset in about 30 minutes. No damage to the bike. We didn't know it yet, but we were still at least 2 hours from the border and now 2 hours from Mandiana.
OK, it's 8pm, good and dark, still maybe an hour to the border, I've crashed and the road is deteriorating. I've had enough. I stop Ahmed and tell him I'd like to sleep near here instead of pushing on to the border in the very dark. The next village on Google Maps is Yaraouléna about 3 km ahead. We decide to throw ourselves on the mercy of the people of Yaraouléna. Best decision of the trip so far! What awesome people!! They rolled out mats for us and served us food and Attaya seet mint tea.
I fell asleep in my suit, on a thin mat, on the dirt at about 10pm. I slept soundly the entire night, waking to find someone had put a sheet over me. What a day, what a night! Another long day from 5:30am to 10:00pm, 16.5 hours.