Penetrating the Impenetrable

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We got up in a more relaxed fashion in the knowledge it was only 3-4 hours to get to the Impenetrable forest in the hope of seeing Gorillas tomorrow.

Along the way we had been informed there was a corrupt policeman on a section of the highway who would claim we were speeding and sure enough there he was. He pulled us over and claimed we were doing 57kph in a 50kph. I showed him our GPS tracking on the Dashcam that showed under 40kph. I didn’t get round to showing him the GPS satellite tracker and the Google maps which also showed our recent speed. He very quickly said it wasn’t a problem as he realised we were filming him with the dashcam directly. He said they allow some “allowances” and we could drive on. The moment he realised we could prove we weren’t speeding and that his face was being recorded he couldn’t have been nicer to us. So on we went.

Unfortunately the rear drum brake started making a rattle so we popped into a petrol station to take the wheel of. Not sure of the issue we gave everything a clean and come lubricant and headed on but it got worse. Luckily we were passing a large town and found a lovely gentleman and his garage. His team took the drum off and quickly found the handbrake cable had got caught and part of the mechanism had bent. That would certainly explain why our handbrake wasn’t great recently and they also stopped the noise (which was part of the handbrake cable flapping around. Unfortunately we will need a new handbrake cable for one side, fortunately we still have a handbrake on one side and with some use of the chocks for the wheels we can manage a while whislt we find spares. Our hope is to pick some parts up (which are easy to fit) in Kigali (in Rwanda) in a few days but if that fails we will get Warrick to bring out the parts with him. So we continue and Nelly is doing well despite all her little faults.

We then dropped by a beautiful mountain lake for lunch, unfortunately along the way we passed a number of quarries using a lot of child labour to smash up rocks, very sad to see. The lake was nice but very steep and in pulling a 3 point turn on a steep incline Alain and I had to act as “Chock-boys” to help Dan pull of the turn.

We then headed up to the impenetrable forest which is to say the least dramatic. A real mountain rainforest feel and dirt roads that fall off the edge of a cliff. Amazing scenery and eventually it bought us out in Ruhija where we hope to go and see some Gorillas early tomorrow morning. Fingers crossed.

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