The road to Brazzaville was probably one of the worst stretches of road we had encountered on the entire expedition for multiple reasons. It was the time of year when the rains were subsiding, but not yet completely over which meant that the roads would almost certainly be inundated with water and mud making the journey difficult at best. None of realized how bad the roads would be and how exhausting driving them would be. The stretch of road from Pointe Noire to Brazzaville is about 350 kilometers and it took us about four days to complete the journey. We were constantly getting stuck in mud that came up to your thighs, navigating seemingly impossible sections of road and at one point, having to rebuild an entire bridge in order to continue on to Brazzaville.
Then of course there were the rebels. We did make contact with the rebel group known as the “ninjas” in the Pool Region of the Congo. For the most part, our experience with the rebels actually was pretty good. We did cough up a few packs of cigarettes and a few thousand Francs here and there, but we did get some amazing photos with the rebels and were even allowed to set up camp for the night at one of the rebel outposts. It was a memorable experience and we were either extremely lucky or extremely persuasive as we were latter informed that a Doctors Without Borders vehicles was robbed and completely ransacked by the same group of rebels only a week before we drove through the area. We must have made an impression on the rebel chief because not only did he let us spend the night at his camp, he provided us with an escort to ensure that we made it through the rest of rebel territory without any problems.
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