Lois Pryce - Red Tape and White Knuckles: One Womans Motorcycle Adventure through Africa

Contents

Unafraid of a challenge having already ridden her motorbike from Alaska to the southernmost tip of South America Lois Pryce began the kind of adventure most of us could only ever dream of. She put on her sparkly crash helmet, armed herself with maps and a baffling array of visas, and got on her bike.

Destination: Cape Town and the small matter of tackling the Sahara, war-torn Angola and the Congo Basin along the way this feisty independent womans grand trek through the Dark Continent of Africa is the definitive motorcycling adventure.

Colourful and hilarious, Red Tape and White Knuckles is an action-packed tale about following your dreams that will have you packing your bags and jetting off into the sunset on your own adventure before you know it.

Torn between the career paths of two illustrious relatives, Max Born, the Nobel Prize Winner in Physics and his granddaughter, Olivia Newton-John, Lois Pryce abandoned her interest in Quantum Theory at the age of 16, left school and spent the next couple of years as a carrot picker, painter and decorator and failing an audition as a kiss-o-gram before bowing to the inevitable and going into rock n roll. After various underpaid jobs in record shops and as a product manager in the Beeb, she decided to jack it all in and ride her trail bike from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. Her on-line diary of her journey became a cult hit and led to her first book, Lois on the Loose. When not on her bike she is at home on her houseboat with husband Austin.

Lois on the Loose

To Austin, the unsung hero of this journey

A solo trip relies on others for its success, and my journey was enhanced in many ways by the following people, to whom I am extremely grateful

To Austin for his love, unconditional support and the beautiful maps I could not have done it without you. Thank you to everyone who waved me off from home Nat, Lisa, Nikki, Sarah and Ken, Sophie, Angie and Trundle, Sarah Bradley and Doug Brown, Janine, Gerald, Loretta, Carole and Ray, David Boyer, P.W., Stuart Reggie Martindale, Paul Mules, Bob Chapman, Charlie Benner and Tina, Lawrence Hamperl, Jason Simmons, Greg and Sharon Taylor, Suzi and Simon Harby, Andy Miller, Walter Colebatch and especially to Andrew and Collette for the fab home-sewn banner.

To Geoff and Phyllis Vince, Elaine, Paul and Liam Kenchington, Nigel, Gerry, Sam and everyone from Southampton Advanced Motorcyclists for the surprise send-off, to Gary and Carole Lamsdale for appearing at Portsmouth out of the blue, Kate Pryce for Nigerian visa assistance, Ahmad Ahmadzadeh for putting me in touch with Ekoko and Nadya Mukete who welcomed me into their home and treated me like royalty thank you both for your generosity. Much admiration and gratitude to Jasia Ward for her patience and professional webmastery, to Lisa Hall for being the best impulsive friend a girl could have, to Si, Mel and James at Trail Bike Magazine for all their support. Many thanks to Paul and Zoe for their pre-departure advice and for giving me my first taste of a hookah pipe, to Rachel, Simon and Patrick for their kindness and hospitality on my way through France, to David Lambeth, Reg, Jez, John, Rupert and Tamsin for their fine company on the El Chott Rally thanks for having me along. Thank you to the Kusserow family in Niger for their much-needed warmth and hospitality, to Eric and Sherrykay for a fun night out in yaounde and for their helpful tips, to David in Luanda, for taking me under his wing. Thanks, as ever, is due to Chris Scott and Susan and Grant Johnson for inspiration and practical assistance by way of the Adventure Motorcycling Handbook and HorizonsUnlimited.com

At Random House I am forever grateful to Oliver Johnson for not being Superbri, to Charlotte Haycock for her endless patience and efficiency and to Louise Campbell for all her work and infinite good cheer. As always, enormous gratitude is due to my agent Faye Bender for her positive words and enthusiasm and to Jenny Meyer for all her hard work in making this book happen.

IF EVER THERE was a continent I wasnt cut out for, its Africa, and my first visit to its shores almost put me off for good. The problem is that I am whiter than white, not morally Im afraid, but quite literally. Where some women blossom in the heat, I wilt; and while those other ladies might drape a sarong around their tanned bodies and throw on a stylish sunhat and designer shades, Im the one with the frizzy hair and the bright pink face. Tennyson may have dreamed of fair women and Milton may have waxed lyrical about the divinely fair, but the pasty reality is far from poetic less English rose, more Romanian vampire, and you dont see many of them in Africa.

I am also troubled by extremely itchy feet, although in this case, not literally (rest assured, this book is not the misery memoir of an albino womans battle with athletes foot). For as long as I can remember Ive fantasised about grand adventures, and I remain unashamedly seduced by images of khaki-clad explorers, parchment maps and the hopelessly quixotic notion of wayfaring. Aged twenty-two I bought myself a narrow-boat to live on in London, hoping that as well as providing me with a cheap home, a life afloat would inject a dash of romanticism into my daily grind. This it did in spades; I discovered a hidden world of fascinating characters, of self-sufficiency and beautiful decay; a veritable soap opera tucked away from Londons rat runs, and for many happy years the Regents Canal was my oyster, allowing me to live in postcodes that would under normal circumstances have laughed me out of town. (Although, while the great and the good of NW1 or W9 were quaffing fine wines on a Sunday lunchtime, I was more likely to be found emptying my chemical toilet.)

But I relished every moment of my watery life; it sprinkled my workaday existence with happy holiday dust; even the tedium of the 9 to 5 was made bearable by the potential of ever-changing surroundings, but by my late twenties my feet were itching worse than ever and the 9 to 5 had become the 9.30-ish to when can I go home? Even the convoluted system of transporting my motorcycle aboard my boat (thus enabling me to wake up in different places and ride to work) couldnt stave off the urge to hit the road.

So I jacked in my dreary office job at the BBC and rode my 225cc trail bike from Alaska to the tip of South America, a 20,000 mile journey. Rather than curing my itch, this most excellent adventure only made it worse, and as soon as I returned home I dug out my map of the world and started dreaming about the Next Trip that life support system of all house- (or even boat-) bound travellers.

Africa called to me for some reason, not in any concrete, explainable way, but in a way that summoned the heart, not the head. It wasnt about following in the footsteps of some famous explorer or tracing my ancestry; I wasnt even running away from anything, or trying to find myself. It just seemed to me that Africa might be the last place on earth where I could still have a real, proper, old-fashioned adventure. And it had to be real: just me and my bike, no support trucks or organised tours or satellite phones or any of that malarkey. Im not a foreign correspondent, or a Dakar racer, or a hard-bitten war reporter. Im a thirty-three-year-old fair-skinned English woman whos five foot and four inches tall, reasonably fit (but could probably do with losing a couple of pounds), and, quite simply, I wanted to see what would happen if I jumped on my dirt bike and pottered my way down the African continent.