Day 49: Welcome to Bamako - fined big time.
Soutpiel Safari
John & Jenny
Fri 24 Dec 2010 15:08
|
Day 49: Thursday 23 December 2010. The Sleeping Camel,
Bamako, Mali. N12 37.525 W007 59.278 Distance driven 436 km - too
much!
Late start today as we relaxed after a hard day
yesterday and de-dusted the LR. It is still filthy on the outside but will
have to wait to be cleaned.
After telephone consultation with our Oasis friends a
day ahead of us, for the route, we crossed the bridge again - this time
free! The process involves driving one set of wheels over one of the lines
so that they run between the two rails and the other pair run on the bridge
decking to one side. This, of course, after checking that a train is not
due! All the time one is besieged by a small army of motor scooters, like
locusts, in both directions.
Having successfully accomplished this we set off on
another 200 km of hard piste to Manantali and Tambaga where the tarmac
begins. We had a break at the enormous (200 MW) hydro plant at Manantali,
apparently run by Eskom, but saw no sign of South Africans or ice-cold Castle
beers!
After Tambaga we looked for a camp site by the river but
it seemed difficult to get away from villages so, being on 100 kph tarmac we
opted to go right through to Bamako. This was a big mistake and we broke our No
1 Golden Rule of this trip which is "We will never drive in the dark in
Africa". It got dark 100 km from Bamako. Initially we found little traffic
so we trimmed up our driving lamps for 200 m range and ploughed on, easily
picking out the unlit donkey carts and trucks without rear lights. All
went well until we hit down-town Kita and confronted another vehicle driving
across a bridge in the middle of the road. I put full beams on him and
flashed him several times to move over, at which point the pickup
stopped, blocking our way and the driver got out and harangued me in
forcible French for blinding him. I retaliated that he was driving on my side of
the road and then realised that he was a gendarme! Fortunately, he
realised that his wrath was lost on the English and buggered off.
Then we reached Bamako - picture the scene, no street
lights, thousands of motor scooters driving in all directions mostly on the
wrong side of the road, no defined edge to the road, only a ragged line where
the tarmac crumbles away to the dirt, smoke and dust blowing everywhere, people,
donkeys, chickens in the road etc. We haven't the slightest idea where we
are, no map of Bamako, only the GPS co-ordinates of where we will be
camping. Then suddenly there is a motor scooter with two guys on it
rushing up on my inside - as the LR is RHD I can look out and almost
touch the driver who is furiously blowing a whistle. I was slowly
edging him off into the dirt when I realised he was a cop! We pulled
over and he poked his head in the window and very, very aggressively accused me
of not stopping at the Ministry of Information, which could have been true in
the chaos but we denied it. Then began a long French/English argument with
the guy hanging on to my driving licence. This time the fine was CFA
75,000 (£107). It soon became clear that anything we paid would straight
in his pocked with no receipt. We were lost, confused, hot, exhausted
and furious so we paid up when we really should have told the guy to get
stuffed.
After that, the cold beer at the Sleeping Camel was very
welcome.
|