Angola: It's not like they said

Check out this awesome, awesome trip log hidden in the forums at ADVRider.com. And thanks to the chap on BikeNomads (site | yahoogroup) who originally posted the link (sorry, I've managed once more to forget my yahoo password and can't log in to check... apologies.)

The trip log is pretty fragmented, so I am posting a series of links (in order to allow you to hop from 'chapter' to 'chapter' without having to read the various comments (mostly appreciative comments, some information on local customs/ethnicity etc) between the actual posts...

Post 1 | Post 2 | Post 3 | Post 4 | Post 5 | Post 6 | Post 7 | Post 8
Post 9 | Post 10 | Post 11 | Post 12 | Post 13 | Post 14 | Post 15
Post 16 | Post 17 | Post 18

Excerpt:

The longer we ride the more intense it gets. The sand is so thick and waterlogged it's hard to believe. At one point the drag pulls me down until I'm in 1st gear with the throttle wound to the stop. The motor don't rev out though. It sits in the fat part of the torque curve. The bike bellows like a wounded animal and it kills me.

It just kills me.

No motor should be abused like this. It goes on for a good hundred metres. And there's nothing you can do. I'm on the pegs, murdering the bike and moving at just above walking pace. If I tap off for just a second I'll be stuck, with no way to get going again. And if I get stuck I get fucked. It turns into a refrain in my head that I can't control: "If you get stuck here, you get fucked here".

Disclaimers:
There's some nude tribal women in the logs... Some expletives employed... Oh, and it might take a couple of hours to finish reading the thing...

Update:
Since I am on the subject... Another trip log I really love (have a print out at home that I return to now and then; don't ask me to explain why) is Beth Dixon's at motorcycle.com. Well, I found it at this page again, so I decided to post the link to her trip as well. Scroll right to the bottom of that page and start from the bottom link up...