Stymied by Muammar Qaddafi

Day: 22
Location: Dabola, Guinea
Weather: fantastic
Kilometers: 50
Hours: 1
Health: fine
Accomodation: Peugeot 505
Price, room: 0K FG
Price, water: 3.5K FG
Shower: no
Morale: 2
Total spend: 18K FG

AW: Today we got totally screwed by none other than Muammar Qaddafi. In a freak coincidence, the Libyan dictator decided to drive to Conakry for a visit in his bus, with about 500 troops in a 150 vehicle motorcade. As a welcome, the Guinean military shut down traffic on the main north south artery through Guinea for 26 hours. The car was forced to stay in a field along with all other non military traffic. All business along an 800 KM stretch of road was suspended and held until the motorcade passed. Unfortunately, the military had AKs but did not appear to be supplied with radios or cell phones, so they had no clue where Qaddafi was or where he would be staying the night, or when he might be passing. Thus, they shut the length of the road down in one go rather than in segments, and they started the blockade at midnight, only to have the motorcade pass at 2:30AM, 26 hours later. Ouch. The only thing keeping morale above a 1 on this useless day is that we had good rice and coffee in the nearest village, and we got to see Qaddafi’s party bus etc. Despite an early incident when we were caught photographing a "sensitive military installation" (read a truck, painted green, parked under a tree, with a couple dudes holding machine guns), we did take a secret video of the procession. It wasn't all that interesting in the end, except to see so many identical Toyota Landcruisers. Probably not the type of publicity Toyota is looking for, but it would look cool on TV. We missed our malaria pill today. Also, once we started moving at 2:30 the gearshift broke after an hour and we had to spend the night waiting for a mechanic. To be frank, this part of this trip was not very fun.

FRENCH: Au debuttout s'est bien passe au depart de Conakry. Cela dit au bout de la troisieme panne de notre bush taxi on a commence a se de mander si on avait pas choisu un mauvais cheval...Finalement a 2h30 du matin notre chauffeue a arrete d'essayer de reparer le levier de vitesses lui me me et a cherche un mecano. Malheureusement aucun n'etait disponible a cette heure. Meme en Afrique l'absence d'heures de bureau a ses limites.Le lendemain matin on a trouve le mecano. Il a repare et on a repris la route. Malheureusement au meme moment Kadhafi passait par la Guinee. Resultat 1 journee d'arret, de 10h a Minuit pour finalement voir oasser un convoi de 80 voi tures dans la nuit. On a failli se faire arreter pour avoir filme mais finalement pas de probleme. On l'a meme utilise pour amadouer des douaniers meduses devant la video. Heureusement ouisque mon visa a usage unique avait deja ete utilise. MaiA aucun probleme et finalement apres 60h de voyage nous sommes arrives a Bamako. Une moyenne inferieure a 20km/h