Gandalf Around The World: Brazzaville, Republic of Congo

2019-10-04/10: Brazzaville, an African capital whith a certain quality of life in front of the sprawling Kinshasa on the opposite bank of the Congo. L"Hippocampe" a legendary hotspot for overlanders.

Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo, is a really pleasant city where it is good to stroll. The people there are calm and friendly. They know how to say "thank you" and "please", which is rather rare in Africa (not out of rudeness, no! It's just not in the culture). Even the traffic is fluid and relaxed. We are going to get out of town very easily. When I think of the galleys of Dakar and Yaoundé !!!

We arrive in Brazzaville on October 4th. Our goal is the Hippocampe Hotel, an address known to all overlanders passing through Brazza. This is where we plan to settle down to spend the weekend before we can go to our Angola visa applications on Monday morning.
The warden receives us there with open arms.
We park in the small parking lot in front of the hotel.

The Hippocampe hotel

Gandalf at the Hippocampe

We are going to the Hippocampe restaurant this evening. There we find Olivier, the owner of the hotel. Olivier is a French man in his forties, he now lives in Vietnam with his wife, a Vietnamese woman born in France and who grew up in Germany. He comes regularly to Brazzaville to take care of his hotel. He has to spend a little more time there now than usual because he needs a new manager, the old one having just left him. Olivier lived in Brazzaville from 2004 to 2015 before moving to Vietnam.
The Hippocampe has traditionally been a stopping point for overlanders, although far fewer of them do today. Olivier explains that many of them prefer to skip countries like Nigeria or the DRC by taking their vehicle on a boat directly to Namibia or South Africa.
The hotel restaurant used to be a Vietnamese restaurant, but the new manager had transformed the menu by offering European and South African cuisine. Now that he has returned his apron, Olivier has decided to offer Vietnamese cuisine again at prices that correspond a little more to the "budget" standard of his hotel. He therefore offers us a typical Vietnamese dish, the Bo Bun Nem. This is a fairly complete dish of minced beef, Asian noodles and vegetables. It tempts us well and that's what we order. We do not regret it because this dish is a complete meal that fills the stomach well while remaining light.

Nothing better than a good local beer after a long day!

Christine enjoys her Bo Bun Nem.

Before going back to the motorhome, Olivier shows us the small sanitary facility reserved for overlanders. It is no longer used much because customers are scarce and maintenance suffers. It hasn't been cleaned in a long time but it will be fine with us anyway. This will be our first shower since Lambaréné a little over a week ago.

La Basilique Sainte-Anne

We set off on foot in the direction of the Sainte-Anne basilica.

The vaults of the Sainte Anne basilica in Brazzaville.

We are there in a quarter of an hour. It is an architecturally interesting basilica. It was designed by the architect Roger Erell in 1943. He considered it the culmination of his research into Franco-African architectural synthesis. The interior is truly impressive with its 22m high vaults. We stay there for a long time to appreciate the calm and freshness that reigns there. As we leave the church, we are pointedly pointed out where the urn for donations is. We leave 500 CFA there.
We then take a quick look at the Marian Grotto where a woman seems to do battle with the Virgin, even though we do not understand what she is saying, it is obvious that she is really not happy with her.

The Marian grotto. A Congolese woman argues with the virgin!

Stroll on the Corniche along the Congo river.

This morning the sky is cloudy at sunrise but it will quickly clear and make room for the sun. We intend to go for a stroll on the Corniche today but Olivier advised us to wait until the end of the afternoon because during the day, with this sun, it will be much too hot.
In the middle of the afternoon the sun is no longer so strong. We can start walking in the direction of the "August 15, 1960" bridge and the corniche. We are there in 20 minutes and 1.3 km. The corniche and the bridge are effectively closed to traffic on this Sunday.

Kinshasa on the other bank of the Congo from the Corniche de Brazzaville.

We set off on this very pretty cable-stayed bridge, about 500 m long. Its construction and financing (72 billion CFA, about 110 million euros) still cause a lot of discussion. Opinions are divided, for some it is an object of prestige without much use, for others a road which has made it possible to relieve traffic in the center of Brazzaville.

Christine in front of the "August 15, 1960" bridge

The point is, it spans the small "Ravin du Tchad" and a somewhat more modest structure might just as well have done the trick. However, it must be taken into account that it is an integral part of the southern corniche of Brazzaville which runs along the river, a beautiful four-lane road, 2.5 km long, and that it would have been counterproductive to create a bottleneck in the ravine.
Nevertheless, this is a very beautiful structure with its two 222 m high pylons. It allows us to discover very beautiful panoramas on the river and on Kinshasa, the gigantic neighbor of Brazzaville on the other side of the Congo.

Photo shooting with young girls on the Brazzaville bridge.

Brazzaville seen from the bridge.

A pillar of the bridge.

The sun is still relatively strong and we try to walk in the shade across the bridge. It is indeed a popular place to walk and meet for the people of Brazzaville, but it’s not crowded, I expected to find many more people there.
On the other side of the ravine we find a few small, lively restaurants and cafes but we don't think it's worth stopping there. After two or three photos we turn around to cross the bridge again while the sun is now setting.

Brazzaville

The Corniche is a pretty and wide avenue opened in 2016, that is to say just three years ago. It is therefore very recent, but the lack of maintenance is already being felt: broken streetlights coverings, burnt out bulbs that have not been replaced ... that does not bode well for the future. Billions have been invested in this project but nothing is planned for routine maintenance.

The Corniche

Night has fallen and the entertainment is in full swing. Mainly at a stage where young women in the audience participate in a dance competition. We only dwell on it for a few moments, the time to drink a not-so-good fruit cocktail.
We make our way to the nautical club with its restaurant where you can eat very good according to Olivier. It's 6:30 p.m., why not give it a try. We are seated at a table on the terrace just above the river with the bridge all lit up in the distance as a backdrop. The fact that the illuminated shrouds of the bridge wish us a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2019 does not seem to bother those in charge. Hopefully, however, they will think about rescheduling the year before the end of December.

At the restaurant of the nautical center.

We are not really excited about this restaurant. The prices are too high and the pizzas are good but nothing more, those of the equestrian center of Lomé were a thousand times better and much cheaper. The only interest of this restaurant is its very pretty setting on the terrace above the river.

The sky has thickened with heavy clouds, the lightning increases and the thunder rumbles. The rain is threatening.
It's time to go home because the first drops are starting to fall. Fortunately our hotel is not very far, it takes us barely a quarter of an hour to reach it just in time before the flood.

More Brazzaville

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