Courtney Allen is a Canadian who hitchhiked from England to South Africa last year.

I was in the Republic of the Congo with a friend, Timo, and we were hitchhiking. Anything we wanted to do that was touristy was just from word of mouth. We were asking around for input from locals or other travelers that we met. So we were given this place. This guy showed us photos of it on his phone, and he gave us a longitude-latitude pin on the map. It was this beautiful river, crystal blue-green. You could see through the water. There were no fish. It was just crazy beautiful. And it wasn’t really in a village. It was just four straw huts in the middle of nowhere. We were dead set on hitchhiking to this place, but to get there, we were convinced it was going to be at least a 20 kilometer walk once we got off the main highway.

We ended up hitchhiking this work truck. The guys were doing delivery, so we stopped to pick up a bunch of puppies, we stopped to drop off a bunch of chicken feed and goat feed. We stayed with them for seven or eight hours, a ridiculous amount of time. Their truck kept breaking down. We even stopped a couple times because their engine was overheating, so we had to pull over and go look in the forest to try and find water that we could use to cool down the engine. We were driving on—I wouldn’t even call it a road. Just by some stroke of luck, it was the trail that we thought we were going to have to hike down to get to the river. We were so confused, because this road isn’t made for trucks, so where are these guys going? There’s no way they’re going to the four hut place that we need to go to. And they didn't speak English. So we had no idea. We were like, “How is it even possible that they’re going this direction?”

Turns out that they were going to the middle of the bush. There was a cow tied to a tree, and they were driving to pick up this cow. We hadn’t seen people in a long time. It was really in the middle of nowhere, no houses, no buildings. There was just a cow tied to the tree. They picked up the cow and put it in the back of the truck. From there, it was only a seven kilometer walk to the river. It worked out so well that it was just surreal. It really feels like a dream. When we got out of the truck, we walked the seven kilometers. I remember smelling burnt fields on the way. It was dark at this point. 

Then we got to the place. It really was just a couple houses made of clay and straw. Then, right by the river, we set up our tent. The families came and congregated. They spoke some English, and I speak some French, so we could communicate. They were like, “What are you doing here?” And we were like, “We don't know what we're doing here. We just showed up because someone gave us this point on a map.” There was one guy, he had a baby in his arms. He kept trying to give me the baby, and I was like, “I need to set up camp. I'm hungry. I need to boil some oatmeal. Thank you for the baby, but I have stuff to do. Maybe give me 30 minutes.” I had sugar packets in my bag, and all the kids wanted the sugar packets. 

We hung out a bit, but we were so tired. The morning was when it really hit. We could see the water with the sun out. They had these hand carved canoes that they would use to cross the river. To see a log that they had carved into a boat was so cool. I was having coffee by the river and one of the girls from the night before, she was maybe 15, got into one of these canoes. She crossed to the other side, set up the canoe on the bank, and then went into the forest for an hour. She filled the canoe with, it looked like, 100 little orange fruits, and came back. Then I just sat with her on this little dock and we started to eat the fruit and throw the seeds into the water. We weren’t even speaking to each other, she was just handing me fruit. I still, to this day, have no idea what they were. Inside, it was sour, but kind of milky. It made your hands really sticky. 

We stayed until 11 a.m. Then we hiked out, five or six hours, not in the direction that we came from, but to a different road. From there, we found a tour guide, weirdly enough, with one of those trucks where they have their Instagram handle on the back, all decked out.

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