Personally I like going places where I don't speak the language, don't know anybody, don't know my way around and don't have any delusions that I'm in control. Disoriented, even frightened, I feel alive, awake in ways I never am at home. - Michael Mewshaw

12 July 2019, Bondi to Les Saras, 62.25km
Auberge Andre 10,000CFA (R244)

An excellent road, except for the last 3km, carried us through beauty from Bondi village to Auberge Andre, sited off the main road on a dirt track. It was blissfully cool, though still humid, and very lovely, and very hilly. We did either 4km per hour or 40km per hour for much of the day. The forest is green and dense with bamboo and fern and palm; with pineapple and banana and papaya.
Taxis, mainly cars not mini-buses, are loaded, not with passengers, but with goods. On occasion, green bananas might fill the passenger seat, back seat, boot and be piled on the roof, doubling the height of the vehicle.
Leaving Bondi, we saw a collection of the yellow 20 litre plastic containers which people fill with water, either from rivers, or communal taps and wells, or from the municipal water trucks. And in villages through which we passed, we saw water tanks on top of containers, often three tanks individually coloured green and yellow and red. The tanks seem to feed into pipes that dead-end at taps up high - we think to make it easy to fill a bucket balanced on a head.
As always, entrepreneurial villagers sell something or other from their homes, erecting sometimes rickety and sometimes stable wooden structures or tables from which to do business and promising, for example, “ici vente essence”.
The forest was increasingly beautiful. And sometimes (potable?) water was piped from on high via a bamboo “pipe” to pour onto the verge.
We had seen advertised on our map, an auberge. We turned off the main road fairly late in the day onto dirt. The road led us to village of Les Saras and the abandoned railway station and line there. In the village we were directed up a narrow, rough track. Disheartened, we pushed our bikes through ruts and over rocks, picking up a one or three small children on the way.
We were delighted with our room, large and airy and with a view. It had an en suite bucket bath area, but the loo was a shared number out back. Unexpectedly, for such an out of the way guest house, we were not the only guests. Two women with attendant children, some grown and at university, originally from Congo, but living in the UK and France, were visiting family in the area.
Our host, a young man, went shopping having negotiated a dinner price with us, returning later to cook a delicious meal for all his guests.
Another good day.

For today's route see below photos
For overview route, click on ROUTE tab above…