Don't let your luggage define your travels, each life unravels differently. - Shane L. Koyczan

18 July 2019, Kibangou to Loubetsi, 39.28km
Room at private home 3,000CFA (R75)

We are housed tonight in a small room at a private homestead, a room intended for paying guests, with a separate room for bucket bathing and use of the family’s pit toilet, enclosed by mud bricks but doorless, tucked away behind a clump of banana plants. We had seen the accommodation mentioned on iOverlander as an “informal hostel”, so knew we would be able to stop for the night without having to resort to our tent.
When we arrived in Loubetsi, we inquired about the auberge at a popular open-air bar under a tin roof, and were told to sit. We were happy initially to do so, sucking down ice-cold drinks and Charl buying and consuming a tin of cat food (OK, bully beef). The other customers were all male, most of them drinking the house speciality, served by a woman, a sizeable tot of Pastis (aniseed-based spirit) watered down to taste from a blue plastic bottle.
Despite today’s short distance, we were both grubby and tired and eager for a bath and afternoon nap. Each time we asked about the room, however, we were told to wait, one of the men indicating by tapping his chest twice, left and right to denote “woman”, like the second half of a Catholic cross, that the woman of the house was away. Eventually our hostess returned from the river, bearing an enormous load of laundry, and she and a friend or family member set about preparing our simple room.
Later they brought us a table and two chairs which they arranged beneath a tree and then sat with the children watching us prepare and eat our meal, pasta with a tin of mushrooms in garlic and herbs. And long after the sun set, Charl sat outside on a tyre, under a full red moon, smoking a cigarette and listening to the intermittent tunk of the hand-operated water pump across the road.
One of our breaks today was at a shop-house. The usual simple fare available at the shop; no electricity and therefore no fridge and therefore tepid drinks. But we sat in the shade in their peaceable kingdom, enjoying the tranquility. Their open-sided lapa was brick-paved under a tin roof. Two young men played checkers on a homemade board balanced on their knees, using orange and green plastic chips, and watched intently by young boy on a wooden stool. A young dog, finding it too hot in the yard, came into the lapa and flopped under a chair to continue his sleep there. A baby, warmly wrapped and lying snug in a green plastic bath, was entertained by a young woman perched on a traditional woven stool. In the shade nearby lolled dad in a backward-leaning wooden armchair, a boy dozing in limp-limbed comfort on his knee.
Just outside Kibangou, the road split, our road to the border growing narrower and quieter with no logging trucks. It was in better condition, but many long inclines made progress slow still. Patches of burned grass on the verges, sprouted bright green new grass at their base, and where burned were striped like porcupines in black and dirty white.

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