What funding drive would be complete without a sappy video? If you've already donated to our little mission I thank you sincerely and hope that this video gives you a better idea of who you've helped. If you haven't yet, I hope that it gives you the final push!


from garnaro on Vimeo.

__________________
bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

One of the great sources of trepidation I’d had since setting off on this trip now loomed 200 feet ahead of me on the highway. There wasn’t a lot of time to think about what to do, so I set my gaze dead ahead, slowly opened the throttle, and hoped for the best.


The day hadn’t started out great with my bike refusing to run after just pulling out of my camp spot. Symptoms indicated that she was either fuel starved or not getting enough air. While this sort of problem inevitably comes up after many miles of dirt riding and usually has a simple solution, it's still an irksome feeling when your bike kills leaving by the roadside hoping that you don’t have to start taking things apart in a dirt patch under the beating sun. While I worked on the bike a portly Frenchman named Henry approached to see if he could be of assistance. When I told him that my plans for the day were to ride from San Pedro towards Abidjan, he advised caution, as there had been reports of bandits wielding Kalashnikovs along the road between San Pedro and the next big town, Sassandra. A substantial UN troop presence was apparent since I’d entered Ivory Coast, and a contingent of the blue helmeted soldiers with a fleet of armored vehicles prowled the streets of San Pedro. A UN convoy was leaving that day which would have been good to travel along with, but I’d already missed them.


As I sped towards the barrier now about 100 feet away, I could see that there were 4 men, 2 of them in military fatigues, talking to one another in the shade off the road. They had not yet noticed me approaching. I had passed more than a dozen military checkpoints since entering Ivory Coast and this one had two important differences: 1) There was a makeshift barrier from branches - every checkpoint thus far had the same spiked steel barrier laid across the road and 2) The 2 men wearing fatigues were of a color that I hadn’t at any checkpoint in Ivory Coast yet.


Back in San Pedro, I’d checked that fuel was flowing to the carburetor and banged some dust out of the air filters. That seemed to do the trick and sent Dyna Rae roaring back into action. I was more than ready to get going, as San Pedro had turned out to be a bust for surf. I did a lot of looking and no surfing. Before I’d gotten underway, Henry the Frenchman had told me that 3 days ago a woman was robbed of everything she had including her documents along the stretch of road that lay ahead of me. He added that couple weeks ago a friend of his on a motorbike along the same stretch had made run from the bandits and escaped but not without a bullet landing in his leg.


By the time I was 30 feet from the barrier, a man had looked up from the covering of shade to see me approaching and stood up. My heart beat faster. I was wearing my goggles with a reflective lens on, so it wasn’t obvious from a distance that I was a white man. I pretended not to notice anything other than the road ahead and carry on steady forward. Still, no command had been issued from the men at the roadside. As I shot through the small opening in the branches, one man gave an indeterminate shout at my back. And then there was silence. After a couple miles, the thump of Dyna’s single cylinder overwhelmed the thumping in my chest.


For all that I know, I’d just blown through a legitimate checkpoint. In which case, there never was much danger. When I’m stopped at checkpoints, soldiers and police usually just want to chat about where I’m from and where I’m going and my motorbike, and of course they often want some money. I took a calculated risk that panned out and hope I don’t have to take another one anytime soon.


After all of the fun on the road, I was really ready for a wave to ride. The best I managed was some bodysurfing in pounding shorebreak slamming into the steeply sloped beaches near Abijan. I shook the sand from my hair and pointed the bike east to Ghana. One of the great things about traveling is that you continually get to satisfy your curiosity of whether the grass is greener around the bend than the patch you stand on. In this case, the grass couldn’t help but become greener, as I had finally run into the rain. I donned my rain gear for the first time on the trip, put my visor down and spent the day hoping to punch through the other side of a nasty storm.





Ghana welcomed me with another easy border crossing, a far cry from the trials I’d become accustomed to crossing borders in the north of Africa. However, the rain had turned to roads to a red slippy slidey mud pit. I watched a huge passenger bus in front of me do a slow-motion sideways drift as its rear wheels spun in vain, gaining little purchase in the mud. I was sure that it would end this comical looking maneuver resting perpendicular to the road, blocking traffic in both directions. It proved tremendously advantageous to be on a motorbike. As trucks and buses lined up either direction for their turn to get stuck in a narrow section of road, I simply motored along the side of everyone.





While feeling pretty smug about the agility of my motorbike I stopped to take a photo and found that the toolbox latch that I’d repaired in Freetown had failed and my tool roll was missing from its usual place inside the narrow aluminum box. I’d just ridden 10 miles through this slop of a road and now I had to turn back to retrace my tracks. On the ride back, every black plastic bag lying in the mud inspired a moment of hope that was quickly dashed as I came close enough to correctly identify it. Traversing the mud for the third time to get back to where I was 2 hours prior, a hollow feeling of defeat occupied my belly. I was now powerless to solve even the simplest of mechanical problems. As luck would have it, my carburetor had just started acting up in the last couple days. It was probably just a clogged jet but without tools, every hiccup of the carb provoked a twinge of unease.








I found a clear patch in the forest to make a camp and discovered that the zipper of my tent had finally given up the ghost, so I now had poor sanctuary from things that creeped and crawled in the jungle. As darkness fell, the clouds let loose some more rain and finished the job of soaking me to the skin. My boots, clothes, bike, bags, and board were absolutely covered in the red mud of Ghana. I simply looked forward to the packet of Lemon biscuits that I’d bought at the gas station and stuffed in my bag that would serve as my dinner. I dug them out and found banana rather than lemon biscuits. Devastated. I hate banana flavored biscuits. It was the final blow for the day. I was soaking wet, cuddling up with bitey things in my broken tent, had a carburetor with a cough and no tools, and choking down banana cream biscuits in the dark. You could say that it was a low moment. I told myself that his is the adventure part of the surf adventure.

__________________
bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

When does the fund raising have to be done by?

They are ready to drill in May, so I'd like to have it sorted by then - about $1000 still to go!

__________________
bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

Hi Gary, don't tell me the toolbox was still fixed with that girly pink gaffa tape of yours?
I love reading your adventures, especially the stuff that goes wrong , but your probably typing this from a nice place with airco and chilled drinks so I'm not too worried.
As soon as I'm home I will make a donation for the well in Kabala too, so folks, please donate, don't make Gary pay for the last 1000 $...I've seen the village where they will make the well, they realy need it!

__________________
http://tony-ontheroad.blogspot.com/

The AC is saweeeet man! Just got Angola and DRC visas in Accra!

Titbird in a tight spot in Sierra Leone:

__________________
bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

PM me 1 week before the deadline in May and I'll cover whatever's left outstanding.

Maybe one day I'll get to drink from the well.

How does that sound?

will do Moose!

__________________
bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

Thanks for another great update! Good to see your DR toughing it out!


(very generous offer Moose! )

Garnaro- great and inspiring ride report, looks like an amazing adventure thus far.

And great call bringing the board along......surfing and moto-ing through foreign lands, great combo. Thought about doing that on a trip in s america, but it wouldn't have taken me long to drop the bike on the board side rendering it useless.

I hoping to head to Africa in the next year.....you're providing great info and inspiration.

Cheers, safe travels.

thanks much guys.

the old girl is doing great - gosh I love my DR.

__________________
bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

After I’d finished sliding around in the mud near the Ghana border, I looked up to see oddly familiar wires overhead running parallel to the roadway. An electricity grid! Ghana is substantial step up in development and stability in comparison to most of West Africa. With prosperity comes electricity without gasoline and diesel generators thumping away in every building. Air-conditioned buildings and an affordable variety of foods were more common. I saw 125cc motorbikes with fewer than 3 people on them. I heard rumors that there was even a shopping mall in Accra.


My first stop was Basua Beach, where I found some nice sandbars and a small gang of friendly local surfers. This was the pattern emerging as I moved from country to country in West Africa: a beach that is the center of the surf culture with nearly all the surfers in the nation living there (usually about 20). As in other places, hardly anyone ever surfs anywhere besides the local beach mostly due to the cost and inconvenience of getting somewhere else. In Ghana, local surfers paddle right up to you and say ‘Hello, what’s your name?” It makes me laugh to think of someone doing the same thing on a crowded day at Steamer Lane in Santa Cruz. Maybe I’ll give it a try when I get home.





Right on Basua Beach sits a surf shop of sorts called ‘Black Star’ that has some basic wooden rooms to stay right above the shop. I tucked for a week of surfing with the local crew and learning what it was to be a surfer in Ghana. Several of the surfers rode the fast breaking waves at Basua really well, quick and light on their feet, racing down the line to bust a big turn before the wave closed out. In waves like this, half a second too slow on your takeoff and you don’t make the wave. The surfers here have somewhat greater means than other places in West Africa and seem to have enough surfboards, wax, and leashes. I happened to be at Basua for a long planned music festival that provided plenty of fun after the sun went down.





Room with a view.




Venturing out from Basua I found a cape with several craggy points and reef breaks that caught about the double the amount of swell as Basua Beach. The reefs served up head high empty waves with decent shape, though a bit slow moving, and a few too many rocks protruding to the surface in the middle of the lineup. Out on the cape there were eco-lodges run by Canadian and French Expats that had used the local material to buile some very funky huts.





Hauling in the fishing nets is a family affair.





Always Coca Cola.





When I had my fill of surf, I rode east from Basua Beach and to find the castles of Elmina and Cape Coast. These are two of about 30 forts in Ghana that were originally built as trade settlements and became key stops on the Atlantic slave trade route during the 17th and 18th centuries. Europeans were originally attracted by the prospect of trading gold and timber from this part of Africa, but as the slave trade boomed, the castles were used to hold slaves before they were loaded onto ships bound for the Americas. For Africans, these castles in the sand were gates of no return. The Dutch seized Elmina castle from the Portuguese in 1637 and drove Swedes from Cape Coast Castle in 1663. Slave trade continued under the Dutch until 1814 when the Anglo-Dutch treaty put a stop to Dutch slave trade. In 1872 this region, then known as the Dutch Gold Coast, including the all the forts and castles became a possession of the British Empire. Independence from colonial rule of the British in 1947 gave rise to the modern nation of Ghana.











I’d been dreading arrival in Accra as I was about to launch back into the red tape nightmare of procuring visas for countries that didn’t want to give them to me. Like Ghana, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) both have policies not to grant visas outside of your country of residence. This poses a real problem for folks like me traveling overland as any visa acquired back home would have been long since expired on arrival. Angola is the major potential showstopper of the trip – a tourist visa is notoriously difficult to get and there is no easy way around the country. Stories abound of travelers in years past having to figure out ways to ship around Angola or ride the infamous road from Kinshasa to Lubumbashi all the way through the Congo. In the dry season it’s an arduous route and in the wet season it can be nearly impassable, with scores of trucks getting bogged in the mud and sometimes being forces to pitch a camp for months waiting for the rains to stop before anyone can move anywhere. Needless to say, I am keen to avoid a long trip through the Congo jungle mud pit. Additionally, there have been reports over the last year of some epic barreling lefthanders on the Angolan coast. Fortunately a fellow motorcyclist living in Luanda volunteered to write me a letter of invitation in Portuguese to submit with the Angola visa application (thanks Hugo and Alvaro!). Luck was on my side, and in just a few days I had the infamous Angola tourist visa in my hand!





Riding into Accra I found a mess of hopelessly clogged streets. I didn’t mind the slow moving traffic because it gave me an opportunity to scan the roadside vendors on the way in for someone selling tools. I managed to replace the essentials of what I’d lost when my toolbox latch failed near the Ghana border: some wrenches, allan keys, pliers, a screwdriver. Its not the ideal overland toolbox, but it sure feels a lot better than nothing. Driving in Accra is a bit like the best of both worlds on a motorbike –relatively wide, well-maintained roads, but while car traffic is much more organized than other capital cities in West Africa, there still seems to be no rules whatsoever for the motorbikes. You ride wherever you want, and the lanes are wide enough to shoot through most of the traffic that seems to clog every single road in Accra at all hours of the day. Motorbikes constantly blow straight through red lights with police sitting right on the corner. Motorbikes don't have to stop at toll booths and there are little trails across the medians of all the big roads that you can ride right over if you make a wrong turn. It's awesome.


My time in Accra was shockingly clean and comfortable. At Basua Beach I’d met the only other foreign surfer there – a Peruvian named Bruno. He invited me to stay at his place in Accra where I passed my days in an envelope of cool, dry air, lit up the night with the flick of a switch, slept in the most comfortable bed I could imagine, washed my clothes with a machine, and enjoyed my first hot shower in 5 months. . Bruno’s wife Catherine works for the US Foreign Service, which provides them level of accommodation that makes me feel like I’m back in California. On the road I spend most of my time exceedingly hot, damp, and filthy. It can pull you out the moment with daydreams of what used to be normal. A brief reprieve like I’ve had at Bruno’s place is rejuvenating and reminds me that I’m still willing to trade those comforts for the daily wonder of what’s around the next bend.


I even had a good place to work on the bike and mount some new tires acquired via a fellow traveler who had the tires shipped out but had to return to the UK. I rode right up to the arrivals desk at the airport to find two brand new Continental TKC 80's with my name on them. The moments of kindness and serendipity seem to just keep coming. I did manage to damage the valve of my front heavy duty tube in the process of wrestling the tire onto the rim and had to take it off again to install my spare standard thickness tube. The whole process involved mounting the front tire a total of 3 times. Fun. There was so much sweat pouring off of my face that it soaked the bead of tire.






Leaving Accra, I ran into 8 miles worth of gridlocked traffic. No problem though, I just rode on the shoulder for 8 miles right past everyone. So rad. When I got to the front of the line, I found what was causing the backup - a string of 10 black shiny SUV's raced our way with a full compliment of motorcycle police. I asked someone on a motorbike next to me what was happening and he said that the president was coming. Sure enough, out of one of the SUV's trotted the man that I'd seed smiling down at me from campaign billboards all week in Accra, coming to bless the latest roadway project. That was pretty rad too.

__________________
bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

I'm currently sitting in Santa Cruz, surfing the crowded breaks in town everyday, drooling over your photos of empty surf and perfect waves. The adventure parts of your trip only make my jealousy well up even more. Reading about ur journey as it happens is amazing and serves as a constant reminder for me to keep my ass in gear on putting my own trip together. I plan to ship off for a circumnavigation of South America with a surfboard in the fall. Hunting for peaceful beaches, perfect waves, and even more amazing people.

Keep the posts coming. They serve as constant motivation for me to keep myself on track in planning my own trip.

that sounds like an awesome trip man!

happy to keep the daydream fodder streaming in ;-)

__________________
bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

And that my friends is all she wrote. Next step is wire transfer to Coco's non-profit org bank and then get this thing dug.

Coco visits the villages up there regularly and he will provide me the info on progress and images that I'll post on the website (see my signature) and here on this thread. Nice job guys, more than anyone, the riders made it happen.

__________________
bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches