The hardest part of any Voetspore tour is to get the logistics right: fuel, airtime, local currency and food. On the Congo River, food proved to be a problem.
We had to wait for 18 days in Kisangani for a boat and we spent another 28 days on the river before we reached Kinshasa – and we’d only packed enough food for two weeks! On deck, though, there were a few hundred other people who also had to survive. As the boat made its way down the river, villagers living along the banks paddled up in pirogues to sell their wares. Most of the food items were unusual to our mzungu palates: roasted monkey and crocodile, worms, snakes, smoked bats, cane rats… We mostly stayed away from bush meat, but…