Road Trip Day 1 - Abuja

So, after an interesting start, we jumped on a plane up to Abuja courtesy the good people at Virgin Nigeria - the only flight we've taken anywhere around here that wasn't filled to the point of overflow - very nice!

Anyway, by the time we get up to Abuja, Chris is still trying to get the car fixed through some of the local Mobil guys, so we just catch a cab into town. Unlike Lagos cabs, this car was actually roadworthy, had air con and was quite reasonable. As it turns out, the whole of Abuja is like this - it's another planet! There's proper roads, not millions of people just wandering around, actual public transport (proper western buses with conductors and everything?). They've even banned okadas, so there's not thousands of motorbikes darting all over the roads and footpaths - yes that's right, they have footpaths too.

look, real roads with no traffic!

(i didn't take this one, but the centre of Abuja is very spiffy and in very diplomatic style has a massive mosque just down the road from a massive church, just in case you can't decide)

So while the car was still getting fixed, we checked in to the hotel - African Safari - cheesy name, cheap hotel what more can you want. It was in a nice quite suburb so we went for a wander through the local markets for a bit. When we got back, it was mid arvo and the car was supposedly fixed so we thought that we should at least have a little drive around town.

even out in the villages around town it's nice and clean (comparatively)

Unfortunately as it turned out, going for a drive maybe wasn't supposed to be on the cards for us. After only a few minutes driving, as we'd just got out of town on one of the motorways, we started smelling a really strong petrol smell. On pulling over, we realised that the car was leaking petrol! Just what you need on a road trip that just happens to coincide with a country wide fuel shortage!! Seriously, you can't make stuff like this up!

Anyway, it turns out that the guys that "fixed" the car hadn't done a very good job. So we called the local Mobil guy and he was nice enough to bring out the mechanic and give us a lift back to the hotel. All that was to be done now was sit on the balcony watching the sun go down, having a couple of beers... (three or four hours later Chris got back with the car, this time actually fixed)

We were all hoping that this wasn't a portent for the rest of the trip as we still had a good 2000km to cover and hadn't done more than 10km so far before coming to a grinding halt. Anyway, they say new days are supposed to bring new fortune, so after a quick bucket shower (many places don't have running water in the mornings so you have to stock up) it was off to bed on day 1...

the African safari

this guy has really good phones, apparently he can hook you up with the man upstairs...

Need more boot space on your Okada? Try the new Maxi-okada
(seriously, these guys were doing over 80 with no problems)

The things people do...

I think the guy that lives here never really got over being sacked from Nigerian Airways as a pilot. Legend has it he still sits up there making whooshing sounds late at night....