So after a fitful night of half-consciousness (and one episode of flagging down the only truck that passed by the whole night for water), I woke up to find 5 bushmen poking around the outside of my tent.

Besides the whole crashing constantly thing of the previous day, I also, in my infinite wisdom after my cheap sidebags (from the UK apparently and not South Africa!) shredded, put a can of DEET spray in my duffel bag as part of my mildly futile attempt to repack my gear with 80 liters less of space.  (I also ditched some things in the bush that I didn’t badly need - left myself with just the bare necessities).  Of course the spray exploded everywhere, and melted everything made out of plastic and some synthetics and left me with a gooey mess all over my gear.

I did my best to clean stuff off before passing out, but left a lot of gear outside the tent to dry, figuring I would be alone until sunrise.

I was, but as soon as light broke, a group of guys on their way to either hunt or gather (not sure what two machetes among five guys accomplishes).  They then spent the next 10 minutes pointing at each piece of gear and asking if they could have it - I said “no lo necessito” to each request (which is gringo Spanish but hey it’s close enough to Portuguese).  After this typical example of how Western aid has trained all of Africa to beg from the white man (because all white people are rich and the only reason they come to Africa is to hand out stuff to the poor little black Africans), I got myself together and packed up my gear - slowly.

I then proceeded to crash my way all the way to the DRC border. 

In between crashes, in my dehydration and dizziness, I flagged down another truck and was given a few oranges, some water, and a bread and mystery-meat sandwich.  I was able to suck down the water and oranges, but after tearing into the sandwich with animal noises, after the first bite I promptly puked everything back up.  Note to self - don’t eat meat sandwiches when suffering from exhaustion and dehydration.

I finally arrived at border as the sun was going down, but as is always the case in Africa, it wasn’t going to be a smooth process, and my body and my gear was in terrible. 

More next time - but for now - here’s the the final tally of destruction from Luanda to the DRC border (which took my 2.5 days and was only about 200K!)

• 1 broken clutch lever
• 1 torn palm
• 2 sprained ankles (couldn’t walk right for about a week)
• 1 pulled ab muscle (couldn’t sit up properly)
• Countless deep tissue bruises
• 1 missing toenail
• At least a dozen blood blisters on my hands/arms
• Almost an hour in total trapped under the motorcycle
• Two completely shredded side bags