Road Trip Day 4 - Jos to Yankari

I've explained earlier that there's no point in asking for directions in Nigeria. Unfortunately as there's no maps, street signs (or even actual delineated streets most of the time) you don't have much choice. We were keen to go out for dinner to a Lebanese place that was written up in a few guide books of the area. The expats in Jos are old school traders who have been here for ages (we'd found a few others at the Plateau - an Indian trading in goat hides and a Korean bloke who was making lots of money doing something or other). Anyway, this Lebanese place was supposed to be really good, so we thought we'd give it a go.

The guidebook said it was a few hundred metres past a certain place that we had driven past earlier in the day, so it didn't seem like too much of a hastle. On problem is, that absolutely NOTHING has a sign out the front in this place - everything is hidden behind 8ft concrete walls (and most restaurants are built in houses anyway so you never know where they are...)

Anyway, after driving past this place a few times like the book told us we had no idea where it was. So we had to stop and ask for directions. We pulled into the car park of a Mr Biggs (local fast food franchise) figuring they might know of other local eateries. We rolled up to a young bloke who was watching the cars in the car park. It went something like this:

"Good evening"

"Good evening"

"How is it?" "Please can you helps us"

"Yes"

"We are looking for a restaurant..."

[blank stare]

"... a place to eat near here. Do you know any?"

"yes"

"do you know a Lebanese place called the Cedar Tree?"

[Blank Stare]

"it's a restaurant near here.. a place to eat near here"

"um... yes, you can eat here, at Mr Biggs"

"No, not here.. near here... on this road... somewhere"

"oh"

"yes, do you know anywhere else that is not Mr Biggs?"

"yes"

"where"

"just there" he says pointing next door to a place which looked like a bar or something called something that was definitely not Cedar Tree

"no we are looking for a place to eat... it's Lebanese... it's just near here"

"but you can eat here at Mr Biggs..."

"So you don't know this place we're talking about?

"yes"

We had to give up, try driving one more time, rather than the few hundred metres that the guide book suggested, a few km later we passed a place that looked like a restaurant (inside a compound). Believe it or not - it was closed for renovations, but the security guard suggested a place a few hundred metres back towards town (which actually was a few hundred metres back towards town on the other side of the road. $20 later we'd had a three course meal and a few beers!!! You'd barely get a beer and a waiter ignoring you for half an hour in Lagos for $20!!

After walking around town in the morning for a bit while Chris got some provisions for camping - and I must say it is really good to be able to actually walk around a place in this country without any problems!! - we loaded up and headed out on the road once more - destination Yankari a game reserve about 3hrs drive from Jos.

believe it or not, cultism is a real problem in universities in Nigeria..

Entering the town of Bauchi we need some more fuel -we just didn't have two weeks to waste sleeping in the car waiting for fuel to turn up. Now, I must say, while the country had been plunged into a "fuel crisis" and there were huge queues everywhere there was actually fuel everywhere (just twice the price) so there were plenty of filling stations operating illegally offering fuel at hugely inflated prices with no queues - unfortunately only the wealthy could afford to use them. It was cheaper for the locals to leave their cars in a line for a few days than pay for expensive fuel.

If it fits, they'll carry it

lunch by the side of the road

The fuel in bauchi was ludicrously expensive (by Nigerian standards - still cheaper than Oz) so we thought we'd take a punt and keep going. Unfortunately, there weren't any filling stations on the road out of Bauchi - for some reason they were all on one side of town. Eventually we came to a small village that was selling petrol on the road to yankari (just next to the middle of nowhere). Problem was, their generator was busted so there was no power to run the petrol pump. Chris assured us he was an expert mechanic and could get it sorted, so we sat peacefully by the road and watched the world go by while the local kids hid behind trees and walls and watched us watching the world go by

Chris was right, just by standing and watching another bloke covered in grease belt the generator with a hammer, he managed to get the gennie to start. We had fuel

We'd been told that Yankari - the only actual tourist attraction in the whole of Nigeria - was under construction and that there might be a few changes. I'd called their office in Bauchi a few times over the past month or so to make sure everything was ok and that we could camp. The answer, as always was "yes sir it's ok you can do that".

Unfortunately she wasn't quite right. What we thought would be a fairly quite place had been turned into the latest place for the Nigerian Government to waste millions of dollars of oil money. They were building a resort the size of something up on the gold coast that no one would ever visit. It started to make us think that maybe places like the Plateau Hotel in Jos had never actually had a hay day and hard started decaying the day they were finished...

Anyway, after going for a walk around the place with the guy in charge - a really nice bloke who completely agreed with us that this huge marble clad obscenity they were building was a waste of his tax dollars and that no one would ever come (but what could he do) - we found a place amongst all the building works down near the presidential lodge ( another obscene gesture of opulence). We would just have to share with the baboons and warthogs. Lucky we'd seen the Lion King and new that warthogs like poombah were happy go lucky fellas who enjoyed singing and dancing, despite them looking like something out of "razorback".