Terrible Road | Warning

Road from Brazzaville to luozi:
Very good tar road to kinkala. Dirt to border which was not too bad. No man’s land was pretty rough - used low range for better control and high clearance was good but not essential. Similar for half of road to luozi. Got stuck once due to low clearance but other than that all good.
Road and scenery are amazing, with glimpses of the mighty Congo! We did it with 2 days of dry weather so road quite dry. I would NOT attempt this in the wet!

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DRC->RC
With an overloaded not lifted Mitsubishi Pajero with A/T tyres, road was considerable dry due to no rain for approx. 2 days.

Luvo border (Angola/DRC) to Malanga is all tarmac bit slow because of people, traffic, trucks (1.5h for 50km), RP111 from Malanga to the ferry was relatively good piste with small washouts and one bigger mud puddle (4,5h for 100km).
Luozi to Ndalatando starts as a pretty ok gravel/earth piste but gets worse after about 20km. The last 20km before reaching Ndalatando were the most challenging for us. We got stuck in big mud puddles twice but could easily recover with mudboards and shovel. There was one extreme steep incline on loose gravel which i think would not have been possible without low gear.
The nearer you get to Ndalatando the more rock crawling it gets. Took us 4,5h for 60km.
The 7km from Ndalatando to the border stone were not worse than the section before Ndalatando, I would say almost the same if not even a bit better. took us 1h.
In RoC roads are a relief after the DRC sections. We took the road via Boko which is probably manageable in a 2wd but still very slowly due to washouts if you wanna care about your car. Took us 2 more hours for 40km. From Boko its good tarmac.

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Agree with timings of the last comment, we drove a bit faster but didn't have a broken leaf spring ;). Road between the borders is bad, two short bits are quite technical and definitely require 4wd with high clearance.

After the border to Luozi first 20kms or so still really bad, but road gets better the closer you get to Luozi.

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I agree - very bad road from Luozi to Border Post DRC. 4,5h. From N’dalatando to Border RC bit difficult, 1:15h with broken leaf spring. But good for 4x4 trial lovers. No 2WD, high ground clearance required

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Update dry season 2022: from Luozi to Ndantanga borderpost it took me 5hours. From Ndantanga to border RoC it took me 45min, very terrible road indeed, rock crawling all the way. From RoC road is amazing! Good gravel piste. I did not take the right to Boko, but continued straight to Luomo, which leads to Louingui through beautiful curved-roads landscape. Took me 1.5hours.

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Important information!!! This road is blocked one of the bridges between Tombo and Boko is broken you can't pass!!!

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Crossing DRC to RoC in a Land Cruiser with M/T tyres after a night of light rain at the onset of the rainy season:
Lufu border post to Lwozi barge: 3.5 h first gravel, then tar, then a surprisingly good gravel road.
Lwozi to Ndalantando: 3 h, we reduced tyre pressures to 1.5/1.0 bar rear/front. Several mud puddles, the deepest probably 50 cm deep, hammered through them with rear diff lock engaged, no issues and far from any chance of getting stuck. Some sections are rutted clay soil, so quite slow. All in all, not at all dangerous and little risk of getting stuck if you're well equipped and know what you're doing. Quite a bit of traffic, but only locals on bikes, but there were fresh truck tyre tracks, too. Would advise to wait at least a couple of days after heavy rains, though.
Ndalantando to the border stone: 45 minutes, probably the worst section, as it also sees least traffic. Rutted clay and some mud.
Border stone to Boko: 1.5 h including stamping in at Tombo. Recently graded gravel, soft and wet but quite a relief after the DRC section. Only a short section with minor washouts.
Boko to Brazza: 2.5 h including immigration and customs formalities and city congestion; all tar.

Bottom line: we had expected it to be worse, wasn't very challenging in our vehicle, would have been impossible in a 2x4, though. The scenery is quite nice and sad at the same time, as you go through deforested hills all the way. We're quite happy, we didn't do those extra 900km going through Cabinda for the sake of better roads. So all in all a nice little adventure!

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From RDC to RCongo
1. From Lwozi to border the road is bad, broken. It takes us 3,30h for 60Km.
2. The road from the border to Boko has been improved, and they are still working on it. At this moment there is only 1 or 2 bad Km. We have had no problem, althougut the wet season has started, but be carefull with mud.

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Its fun when it's dry but can't imagine what is happening here when it's raining...
We made a distance from Lwozi to the border of DRC in less than 3 hours but it was totally dry. No 4x4 needed only high clearance.

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The road crossing from Boko (Republic of Congo) to Lwozi (DRC) is truly terrible – worst road I’ve come across along the route from England so far.

To Boko: Good tarmac road

Boko to RoC Border Post: Really bad road for around 22km then great gravel piste for final 14km or so. The 36km took us almost four hours, including getting stuck in mud once and having to dig ourselves out. It looked like the final 14km was newly built and continued directly north so maybe there’s a new road that doesn’t go via Boko. Worth asking around, a truck driver did seem to indicate there was an alternative.

RoC to DRC Border Posts: Only about 11km but took us around 4 hours, partly due to getting stuck once (grounded in mud) and having to wait for a truck to pull us out. Even without this it would have taken a couple of hours.

DRC Border Post to Lwozi: Just under 60km of quite mixed road. A few good bits and others that were terrible. We didn’t get stuck but easily could have in the long muddy sections near Lwozi and there were lots of sections with very deep ruts where we had to go well below walking pace. Took us about 5 hours in total.

From Lwozi: After the boat the road is much better. A few bad sections but nothing like this.

Note that all the above was done in a Suzuki Grand Vitara which is a 4x4 but has quite low ground clearance (we used low range a lot and definitely wouldn’t have wanted to be in a 2wd). A land cruiser would probably do it faster but we didn’t actually see any other normal cars – just a couple of massive trucks and the occasional motorbike.

Also don’t let me put you off. It was a great crossing and we’re glad to have done it, just be prepared for a bit of pain!

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