Every day it's harder for me to wake up in the morning, even after having slept a dozen hours. I feel like an old battery that lost the ability to fully charge and discharges quickly. I shake my leg and I still can not feel my foot.
With what strength will I leave this jungle if the road is bad? - I wonder sceptically the day I leave Libongo. I have eaten a lot in the last 4 days and good quality food. I have slept in a comfortable bed many hours every day and rested all my muscles, but still, I feel weak.
Pasé los últimos meses cruzando la selva sorteando un obstáculo tras otro y sometiéndome a una tras otra paliza, hasta llegar al corazón de la misma. En todo el trayecto había arriesgado mi vida más veces de las que prefiero recordar y hasta fui golpeado por un corrupto oficial de inmigración congoleño.
By the time I returned to the village, three days had passed without seeing them and I already missed them. I was happy to return and they were happily waiting for me. When I returned, it was like coming back home, as if I had never left.
While the jungle is a fascinating place, the very act of staying there is exhausting. It is the heat, day after day that never stops pressing, the sticky humidity that does not let you smell good for more than 20 minutes after each bath, the flying bugs of all sizes that overwhelm you by sticking to your body and buzzing around your ears, the lack of good food and basic comfort.
The nights in the jungle are always special. It's like when we go to a theatre and at the moment before starting the function they turn off the lights and everything is in absolute darkness. We, the spectators, at that moment fill ourselves with excitement and enthusiasm for what is to come.
Son las 6.30 am. Los primeros rayos de sol se filtran arrojando puntitos de luz dorada sobre la densa vegetación de la selva. El aire es húmedo pero conserva aún la frescura liberada por las plantas durante la noche. Las mujeres están reunidas en grupo preparando sus redes y canastas.
5.45 A.M. I open my eyes. I slept 2 hours and I suffered the rest. The thin walls of my tent reveal the first light of day. The jungle is quiet, the elephants are gone and many insects have already gone to sleep ceding the singing to the daytime birds that are already beginning to wake up.
It was not the great inconvenience of losing more than an hour worth of light the worst thing that the unfortunate episode that I had just gone through left me, but the horrible bitter taste that remained inside me.
One of the most exceptional days of my entire life was coming to an end. These kinds of days are magnificent because they offer everything one imagines but, even more importantly, everything that one could have never ever imagined.
After periods of such intensity, day after day handling such high levels of adrenaline, the arrival of easier stretches is not only welcome but becomes a necessity.
I arrived at Olloba with the intention of resting but the bicycle was shattered, and so was I. After a few hours of lying on my back, now on a mattress without mice, I could barely feel my muscles.
It took me two hard weeks through the jungle to make the 550 km to the last village in northeastern Gabon and there, in Mekambo, the easiest part was over.
No matter how hard one tries to prepare for unforeseen events, it is never possible to prevent everything. It had been almost 10,000 km since I had left Cape Town and since then I had been carrying 10 kg extra in spare parts.
