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the 'sangha', wich is named after river it's driving on, arrived around 16:00 but there was no car and no germans on deck. with the boats arrival the hole town was suddendly on their feet. some people were looking for a ride, porters were carrying personal belongings and marchandise on board, the police was oberserving the whole show while others were just watching the spektakle for distraction. i looked for the captain, or someone else in charge, who would explain me how to get the bike on board. i did speak to several people but noone seemed to know anything. "it will work out somehow," i thought, "in the end things will just fall into place".
i spotted the white jeep from the gendarmerie which was making its way through the crowd, coming in my direction. "what do they want again?" i thought while a bad feeling started to build up in my stomach. then i realized that the jeep was being followed by a very familiar black landcruiser... i could not believe it, the germans had arrived! we made our way through the maze of people, chicken, pigs and goats, sacks of charcoal, food and other merchandise and umbraced each other with a huge smile. i shook hands with the officer who had been looking for me for half an hour, trying to bring ollie, corina and me together. he was really allright! now there was only the question if there was still enough space for their car on board.
we contacted the CIB and asked them if they could help us with getting the car onto the boat. to my great surprise christian, the CIB manager, was extremely helpful and told us that they would let us use their crane, free of charge. by now they must have understood that we were in fact tourist and no environmental activist.
in the evening the captaion visited us at the restaurant where we celebrated our getting together. he confirmed that there was enough space on board and that we would leave tomorrow. he is a really nice man and we all started to look forewards to the adventure that was waiting for us. the rest of the evening we told each other our stories about last week and i must admitt that i was very happy to be in their company again.