His name was Little red Ted. And he was well beaten up scooter. But a scooter that took care of my transport troubles in Banfora. And we got on rather well. I got hold of him in Bobo from a friend. And at first I was a bit bewildered to how am I supposed to take him to Banfora. Bobo to Banfora is quite a ride. And besides I have already got a bus ticket for myself. But as always things in Africa are less complicated. So you’ve got a scooter to transport? No problem, we’ll put it on the bus! Along with the bunch of other things, such as car machines, huge bags of animal staple etc…
Upon arriving to Banfora it was a moment of truth for me. See I hadn’t ride a scooter with manual gears in ages. Besides I had my huge backpack with me that needed to be transferred to the hotel first. Which I was yet to find. The first few meters were a bit shaky but the rest was surprisingly ok. The backpack safely stored in the hotel room I set out to discover the natural beauties around Banfora. The dirt track took me to Karfiguela waterfalls some 12km outside Banfora where I have met a polish guy that would latter turn out to be quite important to me.
By the time I was leaving the place it was about an hour to sunset but yet I have decided to go and checkout Les Dômes de Fabédougou which are nice and strange rock formations a few kilometres from the waterfalls. On the way there the Little red Ted and I have picked up a local man looking for a transport. And upon letting him go I made this mistake. Taking my legs off the pedals and putting them on the ground I moved the left one to close to the pedal itself. Which was sharp as a knife. And very obviously slide into flesh and did a few cm cut. It wasn’t that bad at all but for all the blood. But hey a cut like that would not stop me, right. So I drove on.
I was enjoying a beautiful sundown at Les Dômes de Fabédougou when I realised I am the last one around and it might be wiser to actually start going back to the town as my little red scooter did not really have working lights. I mean they were kinda working but… but they would barely pass as a parking lights back home. So I started rushing back towards Banfora on that dirt track. It was really getting darker and darker and I could barely see the road now. At the point where my road and the one from the waterfalls joined together I have almost missed the whole track. But it was right there and then that the polish guy and his friends drove past on their bikes and alerted me to the minor detail of being on the wrong path.
From there on we were riding together. Them in front and me following them and their nice shiny lights beautifully lighting up the road. That went on for a few kilometres until a moment my Little red Ted suddenly stopped. Just like that. One moment we were riding along the others and the next he just went quiet. And I stopped. And the rest of the guys too. And we all started congregating around Little red Ted. In the dark. Trying to figure out what is wrong with him. Why he feels sick.
We have checked the few obvious things one can check in the dark and without real knowledge in bike mechanics. Like if there is any gas left. Or whether is just a glitch and it would start again. But nope. Plenty of gas and no way of changing his mind.
So we started thinking of solutions. The ideas included everything from pushing the bike to the town to hiding it somewhere in the bush and coming back with the mechanic. But at the end I got towed out. Or more precisely I got pushed out on the dirt track in pitch dark. One of the guys was driving alongside me and used his leg to push me out. Needless to say it took ages and a lot of effort but it was fun. Especially trying to balance the poor scooter while not seeing much at speeds close to snails pace. But at the end we have made it to outskirts of Banfora where we managed to find a bicycle repair shop with a light just to discover that the wire to the spark plug got cut. And after a quick and easy fix the Little red Ted was happy again to carry me to well deserved cold beer.
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