Gabon - The Lions on the Road: Cycling London to Cape Town - page 185

direction to the Gulf of Guinea, it changed colour. As it passed by Ndjolé, I noticed the
riverwasachocolatebrownmostlikelyduetotheamountofsedimentitcarried.However,
when I looked out from my vantage point in Lambaréné, it was a beautiful blue.
I cycled across the first bridge and came upon a 'huge' hill ahead of me. I became
discouraged for I was so exhausted that even a speed bump would have been tiring. To
climb it, I used a past cycling strategy where I only concentrated on the one metre of road
ahead of my bike and ignored the summit. When I did look up to see my progress, I had
arrived. I quickly found the church, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception and waited
for one and a half hours for the priest.
When he arrived, he took one glance at me and immediately said that this was not
theplaceforglobetrotters.Iexplainedmyselfpatientlyandshowedhimmylettersofintro-
duction andtold him myreason forpassing through.Iinsisted that all Iwanted wasaplace
to set up my tent and I would be off in the morning. After 20 minutes of my explanation,
he reconsidered and allowed me to stay in the guesthouse. As I lay in bed, I decided that
before I left the town in the morning, I would go to Lambaréné's hospital to see why my
lower legs were so itchy. Incidentally, the hospital is named after Schweitzer and is one of
the best in the world where many westerners came to study tropical medicine.
I woke up by 6:30 a.m. and the priest had already left. I cleaned my room (not that
it was dirty) and quietly departed. I crossed the bridge and passed the hospital's entrance
butIdidn'tgoin.Inretrospect,Iregrettednottakingthetimetovisititnotsomuchformy
skin issue but just to see what it was like.
The road was excellent and I was going at a great pace. If it wasn't for one nasty
fall where I scraped my arm and right hip, it would have been a great day. As embarrassed
as I am to admit it, I was going too quickly on a 90º turn and my front tire slipped on the
loosegravel.Iguesswhathappenedtothatdogwasforeshadowingwhatwasgoingtohap-
pen to me later. If only the dog knew, he probably would have laughed at my expense like
I did at his.
After collecting myself off the road and taking a 5-minute breather, an overwhelm-
ing sense of depression came over me. There was no one around. No vehicles, no locals
walking between villages…just me standing alone in the middle of a dirt road in the equat-
orial rainforest. As I mounted the bike and pedalled off, I brooded over the feeling that I
lost my sense of adventure and realized I was concentrating too much energy and thought
on the kilometres I completed…”Wow, I did 123 kilometre today” or “I only did 52 kilo-
metre today.” I brooded over the fact that I hadn't visited any centres for children, schools
orNGOsinawhileandfeltIwaslosingmyfocus.Toaddtothiswoe-is-meframeofmind,
for the first time, I started to worry about spending Christmas alone in the rainforest and
wondered if there was any snow back home…of all things.