Tombouctou by Matz Lonnedal Risberg, Oslo, Norway Tombouctou or Timbuktu, actually the correct name is Tinbitku, which means The lady with the big navel, where the navel is the big whole where water first was found in this city on the border between the Sahara desert and the much greener Black Africa, was once one of the richest towns in the World, still the goal for camel caravans, carrying salt, but now only a tiny town of 10 000 inhabitants and people continue to leave the town. An old architect college of mine in the tiny Norwegian town Narvik always talked about visiting this town on his 60 th anniversary. He never did but the town started to fascinate me, especially as I understood that it was pretty difficult to get to this remote place. Anyway, I got there for my 50 th anniversary. Through Internaves I got prospects of the Italian Grimaldi Lines, which have several car- & container transporters from Europe to West Africa. So I booked a trip Antwerp-Dakar and Dakar-Rotterdam via Cameroon six weeks later, as the ships do not call Dakar on the northbound tour. According to the prospect of Grimaldi Lines it is however fully possible to go from Dakar all the way to Cameroon and stay on until the ship is back in Europe. That is according to the prospect, which has nothing to do with reality. I got the uttermost stupid answer that I could not embark in Dakar but in Douala. Sure, and how was I supposed to get from Timbuktu or Dakar to Douala?!?!? However, my old ship s agent Kapitän Peter Zylmann had a journey from Dakar via South America to Europe, not using longer time, 34 days, than what Grimaldi Lines would have used via Cameroon, and supposedly being unusually punctual. The departure was supposed to be 2 nd December, which was perfect for my journey. Monday 6 th October 2003 I boarded the m.v. GRANDE ARGENTINA, actually owned by the Swedish daughter company ACL and thereby Swedish registered with Gothenburg as home port. My inside cabin didn t even have a refrigerator. Most of the officers and some of the crew were Swedish, the rest Filipinos. The captain was a strange fellow but the rest of the officers and crew very nice and the chef absolutely excellent. Saturdays the typically Swedish smörgåsbord was served with Danish and Norwegian aqua vitæ. The loading of second-hand cars in Antwerp was pretty wild, with burnouts on the ramps between the car decks. We left Antwerp Tuesday at 3 a.m. in pretty bad weather and arrived Le Havre Wednesday afternoon, but had to wait outside as the sister ship GRANDE FRANCIA was occupying our dock. At five we passed through the écluse Francois 1 ere. The loading in Le Havre was extremely non-efficient and time consuming - the night between Thursday and Friday nothing at all happened - and not until late Friday evening could we leave Le Havre. From there three fellow passengers were on board; two Swiss artists on an exchange tour to Mali and a man with both Swiss and Senegalese citizenship, having run hotels and restaurants in Senegal for a long time but now on holiday only, taking his private car with him. We did not call Lisbon but arrived Dakar Thursday 16 th. The crew were denied shore leave by the port police. The fellow with double citizenship and I stayed on board till Friday morning as it anyway was too late to exchange currency (in his case as he didn t want to drive to his place after sunset). We had to disembark through the engine room!!
In Dakar I had to spend six hours Friday queuing to buy my railway ticket to Bamako. I took the then only weekly train, the most horrible night train I have ever travelled by - and I have travelled by train in 77 countries all around the world - Sunday afternoon, arriving Bamako Tuesday noon. I had already discovered the difficulties that followed from not speaking French in West Africa. When I told the people of my hotel in Bamako that I wanted to go by boat to Timbuktu they lead me to a guy, who offered me de luxe cabins on the boats, lodging, food and transfers for four weeks from Bamako to Gao via Timbuktu and back via Mopti and Djénné for 2 000 000.- CFA (around US$ 3500.-). As that seemed to solve all my problems and give me what I wanted inside the limits of my budget I accepted the offer and paid the guy, Kami, half the price. Foolish? Well, I had his ID as a security and although we had a few disagreements in the end of the journey I got my de luxe cabins on the riverboats, my transfers, my hotels and my food and had a pleasant journey I would have had difficulties organising on my own. I could have continued to Kabara (the port of Timbuktu) already the same day, but then in a four berth cabin only. As I preferred de luxe cabin (cabin with A/C, apart from that power is cut between 8 a.m. & 11 a.m. and between 3 a.m. & sunset, and toilet/shower, where you have water only about three unpredictable times a day and maybe only in the shower) I had to wait one week in Bamako for the departure of the m.v. GENERAL A. SOUMARE. We left Tuesday evening 28 th October at 10 p.m. and arrived Kabara Saturday evening. Wednesday the boat called Ségou and in the evening went through the Marakalla-Tio canal and lock in Tio. Thursday we called Mopti. Going through Mali by a riverboat was really going through the genuine Africa, which also were the comments when people later in Dakar asked me where I had been and I told them I had been six weeks in Mali: Then you have been to the Real Africa. I stayed a week in Timbuktu (the boats don t go more often). The town was exactly as I had imagined, possibly with slightly more motor traffic. Tuesday morning I rode out in the desert on a dromedary. At 3 p.m. the Tuareg said I m going to fetch the camel. And away he was for two hours, returning without dromedaries. The sun started to set. Finally two guys with three animals showed up, the Tuareg hired them and we could ride back to Timbuktu in the moonlight. Next Saturday I continued by the m.v. TOMBOUCTOU to Gao. A quarter of an hour before we were to dock Monday evening the boat hit a sandbank, lost steering speed and blew into the grass. There it got stuck. So next morning we had to climb down in pinasses, to get into Gao. Wednesday a couple from Graz, Austria and I took a pinasse further downstream to Tacharane and back. On the trip we saw hippos. Thursday I went back by the m.v. TOMBOUCTOU to Mopti, calling Kabara Saturday night and arriving Tuesday 18 th November. By that time the water level in the river Niger was so low, that after a visit to Djénné with its mosque, being the largest mud building in the world, from Saturday 22 nd to Monday 24 th November, it was no longer possible to go back to Koulikoro (the port of Bamako) by river boat. Luckily enough I met a Dutch couple in Djénné, who had a car with driver and was going to Ségou that Monday. In Ségou I already had an agreement with a German fellow I met on the m.v. TOMBOUCTOU to go with him in his car to Bamako Friday 28 th. I then left for Dakar by train Wednesday 3 rd December, arriving Dakar midnight between Thursday and Friday. Mali is one of the three friendliest countries I ve visited (the other two being Romania and Viet Nam) but those engaged in tourism have an unrealistic view on how much tourists are willing to pay for the quality they deliver and those
responsible for public transport have no idea what-so-ever about what quality is. And if you like to photograph, don t go to West Africa at all. I have taken exterior and interior pictures of railways in 75 countries around the world, including Iran, but never experienced anything like the reaction when I took an interior picture of the dining car in the Bamako-Dakar express. And as an architect I take pictures of buildings, and I find it hysterical when people shout No they are not even in my picture! Many mosques, including the Grande Mosque in Djénné, are off-limits to non-muslims as the West African muslims are the world s worst hypocrites. They don t mind drinking alcohol, they don t care too much about ramadan, but do they use their religion to prevent tourists from entering tourist attractions and taking pictures! As a non-muslim I have visited the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, the new, big National mosque in Kuala Lumpur and the famous Imam Reza mosque in Mashhad, Iran without any problem but in Djénné, Mali, I wasn t even allowed to enter the foryard of the world s biggest mud building, although this building is used for what it s worth by the Mali tourist authorities to attract visitors. The unusually punctual ship WIKING was 17 days delayed already before I left Europe. In Ségou I had got the message that it wouldn t even leave 19 th but approximately 22 nd December. So I had to stay in Dakar and wait for three weeks. During the three weeks in Dakar I met as many dishonest people as during a fifty years lifetime in eighty-three countries before that, but still didn t lose more than totally 33 000.- CFA (around US$ 50.-) in the city and 20 000.- of those were actually on the Sunday leaving Dakar for Bamako. I tried to get some information about possible excursions around in the area, but the local tour operators weren t particularly interested in giving information nor suggestions. However I visited the UNESCO protected former slave island Goree twice and the little village Ngor, close to the westernmost point of the African mainland, once. The ship finally arrived 25 th December late in the evening. The ship s agent in Dakar fetched me and we went to the port police, who refused to give me an exit stamp! I could not leave Senegal on a consulate visa by freighter, although I had arrived the country that way!! So I had to go back to the hotel, the agent had to spend much of the forenoon of Friday 26 th corresponding with the Interior Ministry and again we called the port police at 11.30 a.m. The ship was supposed to sail at noon. No, the police would still not let me out that way. For two and a half hours we sat at the port police station before they finally stamped my passport and I could board the waiting ship. The ship was Antigua-registered but still with Hamburg as home port. I had a very nice and large cabin on the 4 th deck. There were five fellow passengers on board; a Munich guy who was going to Rio de Janeiro and four round trip passengers; a Bavarian couple and two Swiss men, sharing cabin. The four performed as a very closed and excluding group. The captain and chief was East German, the 2 nd engineer Romanian and all the others Filipino all very nice except the 1 st officer who obviously didn t like passengers. After Dakar we called Abidjan on the Ivory Coast and arrived Monday. To me and the Swiss men Kapitän Zylmann had said that we could not go ashore in Abidjan so we had no visa. I thereby saved a lot of money, as my travel insurance company would have demanded war risk supplement on a day-by-day basis, had I had the opportunity to go ashore. The Swiss were however very disappointed. The Germans had visas. The Bavarian couple made a most unsuccessful sightseeing. The Munich guy tried to fly to Brazil from Abidjan, because the ship was so very delayed, but didn t find any suitable flights. We were supposed to dock in Abidjan during the day
only but couldn t leave until afternoon New Years Eve. Shortly after the departure a fuel pipe broke and the engine stopped, however was repaired after one hour. Sylvester was celebrated in the Atlantic. 1 st January four blind passengers were discovered. Two claimed to be from Sierra Leone and two from Nigeria. 2 nd January three more were found. Now suddenly nobody was from Sierra Leone but three from Nigeria, three from Ivory Coast and one from Ghana. They had no shoes and very little clothes. They were locked into a cabin. Arriving Zarate in Argentina Friday 9 th they were questioned by the police and now all seven were from Nigeria. The Argentines didn t let them disembark but their police escorted them to Uruguay, where Uruguayan police took over. In Uruguay none of them could speak English any longer, only French! The ride up the narrow Rio Parana de Las Palmas from Rio de La Plata to Zarate was spectacular. I intended to disembark in Zarate to take a bus up to the Iguacu Falls and then embark again in Rio de Janeiro, but the buses from Zarate to Puerto Iguazu were full that day and the next, and later I could not go if wanted to catch the ship again. A rainy Saturday afternoon we arrived Montevideo. As I had seen the city before I did not go ashore. We were supposed to leave in the night, but 11 p.m. our blind passengers hit and injured one of the watching Uruguayan policemen and fled the ship. The captain had to meet at court Sunday. Five were found, one slightly injured in the leg. One of the five was under fifteen, the other four were brought back to the ship, not without some beating (don t hit a South American policeman!). Now they were locked in to a much more escape safe store room. The charterer CSAV had agreed with the Brazilian authorities that they could disembark in our first Brazilian port of call; Rio Grande. At one point the captain feared that we would have to wait for ten days in quarantine, because the blind passengers had no yellow fever vaccine! We later heard that one of the two blind passengers not found after two days was found drowned in the harbour of Montevideo. We called Rio Grande Monday evening. The four blind passengers were collected by police pick ups and chained to the loading space and we never saw them again. Rio Grande was a sleepy but charming little town. We left in the night and arrived Santos Wednesday afternoon. I made a tour by a veteran tramway, together with the Swiss passengers. Thursday afternoon we arrived Rio de Janeiro. I went by the Bodinho, a most charming metre gauge, very steep tramway climbing up to Santa Theresa. Then I strolled around downtown, before entering the ship again. We left during the night and arrived Fortaleza Monday 18 th January. Here I visited an Internet café to find out about train and ferry schedules for my return trip from Rotterdam to Oslo and had a nice meal at a beach restaurant. Again we left during the night. We passed Madeira the night between Sunday and Monday and arrived Rotterdam Thursday 29 th. In the morning the weather in the Channel was bright and the cliffs of Dover and the coast of France could be seen at the same time. We got the pilot by helicopter and docked at 7.45 p.m. I had one and a half hour to catch a train to Brussels, enabling me to reach the Oslo ferry from Copenhagen next evening. Now the Dutch customs decided to perform a total customs control of the entire ship and its crew and passengers. They couldn t care less if I and the Swiss, who also had decided to disembark in Rotterdam, would catch our night trains or not. Just twenty minutes before departure I arrived Rotterdam Centraalstation without any ticket, and could get ticket no longer further than to Brussels that late. With only
ten minutes margin in Brussels, due to train delay, I caught the night train to Hamburg, and continued to Copenhagen in the morning and by the ferry to Oslo Friday evening. Last updated 27 th July 2015