Bienvenue à Cameroon be-yatches!

Last year, we spent a few days down in Cross River State (down near Cameroon) visiting a primate rehabilitation group called Pandrillus. Their HQ is in Calabar and they have access to a large chunk of jungle about 4 hrs drive north near Obudu called Afi Mountain. Here, they've built a few cabins and when they can, try a get a few like minded tourists to stay and help pay the bills. The group was founded by an American couple - Peter Jenkins and Liza Gadsby - who some 16 years ago were driving across west Africa and stopped in Nigeria to get a new battery. I'm not sure whether they ever got the battery or whatever, but they've been doing great work rescuing endangered animals from the bush meat trade ever since.

Anyway, apart from a few solar cells, there's no power at the jungle camp at Afi, so evenings are spent whiling away the hours talking crap and drinking warm beer... It was during one of these sessions that Peter mentioned another project that they fund down in Limbe, at the foot of Mt Cameroon. Apparently, he could organise a boat to take us form Calabar across the border to Cameroon - sounded great!!

12 months later, with the Presidential Inauguration coming up and a long weekend looking promising, we decided (probably over another late night beer) that we should head down to Cameroon and check this place out. Limbe used to be an English colony called Victoria so we figured the French thing wouldn't be too much of a problem. Easier said than done! On calling down to Calabar, it turned out that Peter and Liza were both in the States having a well earned break - but a nice young volunteer gave me the number of a bloke who could set us up with a boat. She couldn't remember his name, other than to say "He likes being called 'the generale' so just call him that". Now, for some reason the Cameroonians must have had large hangovers after their national day celebrations as the embassy in Lagos was shut indefinitely for nearly a week - the security guard out the front kept saying "oh yeah, everyone should be back tomorrow..." About this time Todd, the third member of our intrepid team, realised that his passport was in the states getting visas for the DRC... so he was out. Suffice it to say, we managed to get a flight to calabar and "The Generale" had agreed a boat and a price, we got our visas all with a good half a day to spare before we left Lagos - word of the wise, don't try and do anything in a hurry around here...

Calabar is a great little town. So much cleaner than Lagos, less traffic and much easier to gt around. We found a nice hotel and went for a wander on the Saturday afternoon - it was too late to try a boat ride down to Limbe. The generale didn't seem to mind that we'd be interrupting his sunday morning with the boat, so after a nice plate of jollof rice and chicken we were both in bed by 8:00, ready for the boat ride...

The generale had said for us to meet at the marine police jetty, which after a little detour, we managed to find, thinking that we'd then go to a nearby jetty to leave... As it turned out, "The Generale" was exactly that, an officer in the Nigerian police force who had a nice little business running boats across the border. Surprisingly, though, he'd called an immigration agent to stamp our passports (at the charge desk of the police station - being the only free space) and it was all quite legit. (except I guess for the bit where we handed over a brown envelope full of money to the policeman for the boat hire - we probably should've thought that one through a bit more...) So we boarded a small fibreglass dingy on a dock with half a dozen fancy new police boats, and proceeded to drive past the good boats a keep going!! Oh well, we didn't really know where we were going, so there wasn't much point arguing with Henry was driving...

leaving Calabar with Henry

our view for the next few hours

Like most rivers around here, Cross river is a big brown swamp with lots of palm trees

Now we have to admit, in all the running around to get to Cameroon, we never really bothered to have a decent look at a map and work out exactly where this little boat of our was going - Henry assured us that he knew where to go - but like I've said before: there's no point asking for directions around here coz no-one's ever gonna say "I don't know" they'll just pretend they know and point in any direction. The build up t the wet season had started a few weeks earlier and there'd been a serious storm the night before while we stayed in Calabar, so we were both praying for good weather - that we got, in fact we got a little too much! The sun was out and our sunscreen efforts weren't very good (particularly as most of it washed off from the ocean spray).

So four hours later, looking rather burnt and with sore bums from the little plank we'd been sitting on in the boat, we arrived in a small border town of Idenau. man was it a border town. There were little dingys just like our everywhere being crammed full of stuff to take back to Nigeria - a really bustling trade by the looks of it. Glad to be on dry land, we did the usual rounds and said hello to the customs man and then walked up to the immigration guy - no-one seemed to think anything was out of place that a few whiteys had turned up on a Sunday arvo in a little fibreglass dingy. I was actually quite amazed that we didn't have to dash anyone to get across the border. A friendly young bloke had helped us make it to all the relevant people and quietly suggested that we were better to head out of town to the "motor park" - an African invention where bush taxis and minibuses never actually enter a town, stopping a few km out (too long to walk) so you always have to catch two taxis to gt anywhere - anyway, we grabbed a couple of okadas and headed just out of Idenau to haggle for a bush taxi down the road about half an hour to our hotel (unfortunately our phone lines had been down in Lagos for a week or so, so we hadn't been able to call and book, but didn't think it'd be a problem). When we got there, though, it turned out the CFA we had (from Benin republic) were no good as they were West African CFA not Central Africa CFA (as opposed to East African CFA) - will the French ever work anything out the easy way??? But easy as pie, our new little helper took some Naria back into town to change and believe it or not came back!!! I was most impressed. A few locals had been waiting for us and so we quickly piled in to a little van a headed off.

It wasn't till we got back to Lagos that we really had an
understanding of how far the boat ride was (you could
see oil platforms flaring over the horizon the whole way)
You can click on the picture to get a better understanding
of our little dingy ride... (and why our bums hurt so much
when we finally got ashore)

Seme New Beach Hotel with Mt Cameroon behind

The area around Mt Cameroon is apparently one of it's kind in the world. You literally go from sea level to over 4000m in a matter of kilometres. Also, as the volcano is still active, every thing's always changing up there, hence lots of rare and endangered plants and animals. The last volcanic activity was in 1999 and 2000 when apparently a lava flow was heading straight for the hotel, but hit a valley and came down about 800m further down the road - close!

Anyway, we'd just assumed that Mt Cameroon would be obvious, but due to all the activity, it's got hundreds of false peaks and spends a lot of its time hidden in tropical clouds - not quite a picturesque Mt Fuji.

Mt Cameroon from the West

Following on the volcanic theme, all the beaches around here are an amazing jet black!! It is quite bizarre to be swimming in absolutely clear water (again strange) with the finest black sand on the bottom.

Again on the volcanic theme, across from Mt Cameroon is the island of Bioko which forms part of Equatorial Guinea - again formed by large volcanic peaks (the capital Malabo is at the bottom somewhere). makes for a great view we must say!! Particularly with the black sand...

View of Bioko across from the Hotel

Between the coast and Mt Cameroon is a smaller peak (still well over 1000m) called Mt Etinde which is much more photogenic and sits quite nicely behind the port town of Limbe.

After a long first days travel, we were both glad to find the hotel and relax. That gladness was increased about fifty-fold when we were asked by the waiter if we wanted draught beer - the first not out of a bottle for the best part of a year!!


That night we went to bed to storm, and then woke up to a storm - a real storm. The kind of tropical storm that you see on TV where all the Palm trees are bending over to touch the ground. Now, after a long day the day before, we didn't really care as a sleep in sounded like a great idea, and you always feel warmer when you can hear rain of the roof of your room knowing that you're all nice and dry...

After a few hours, the storm blew itself out and we meandered into Limbe (basically involves waiting by the side of the road for a shared taxi to come by and negotiate a price to be dropped somewhere along route)

First stop was the Limbe Botanic Gardens - apparently one of the best (and largest) in Africa. regardless of whether that's actually true or not, they certainly do have the right spot - right on the coast on a small rise overlooking town, with Mt Cameroon on the back doorstep. An absolutely perfect spot for lunch.

View from the Bot. Gardens Limbe (Bioko is in the background on the right)

The Botanic gardens is massive cover quite a few hectares, so we figured we needed a guide to help us navigate through the huge collection of native and exotic plants (inc a large collection of plants used for traditional medicine). The woman selling entrance tickets kindly obliged us a went off to find a guide. We figured that she'd just walk outside and find the nearest guy lying around who could pretend to know what a plant was. to our surprise, a bloke turned up who believe it or not had a PhD in Botany!! (shows that it doesn't matter what education you have around here, you still probably won't get a job). anyway, this guy was pretty good - knowing all the fancy names for the plants and taking a few leaves from each medicinal plant and letting us have a sniff and try and work out what it was (we didn't guess too many). Interestingly, every medicinal plant seemed to be able to cure at least five completely unrelated conditions - and according all the stuff we looked at, about 90% of the jungle can cure impotency!! ( the other 10% will probably just kill you...)

Interesting leaves
False Banana Flower
Strangler Fig

The next day (after eating some fine local fish for dinner back at the hotel), we rose to a beautiful sunny day, had a quick swim and after a little breakfast headed off down the road to have a look at the lava flow from the last eruption in 1999. The lava flow, which is a good 15m or so thick, had gradually wound it's way down the side of Mt Cameroon, crossing the old Limbe Road and stopping some 200m from the coast (no one knows why..) So now the dead straight road takes a little detour around the lava...

(you can just see a truck at the base of the lava to give you an idea of it's size)
click the picture for a bigger version

I found a satellite picture on the web which shows the size of the lava flow

You are able to climb up the flow (apparently all the way to the top - but your shoes probably won't last that long) It was amazing! This huge, and we mean huge, amount of molten rock has come down the mountain - completely destroying everything in its path - and created this huge wall that nothing but birds can cross.

The view from to top of the lava was awesome!

This is a pic one of the locals took during the actual eruption

After a morning getting all volcanic, we decided to head in to Limbe again and check out the Limbe Wildlife Centre (the reason we'd heard about this place in the beginning...) Again, we were supplied with a guide who was a volunteer (he'd been there for 8 years since he went as a kid and decided he wanted to study animals - now he's at uni in nearby Buea)

It was both amazing and sad at the amount and diversity of animals they had (all either rescued from or orphaned by the bushmeat and live animal trades). They've been running education programmes in the hunting villages bordering the jungle areas, but there's still a long way to go - so much so that the centre is in desparate need a safe are to re-release animals back into the wild so that they have more room.

One of the inhabitants was this extremly rare forrest tortise. A village of hunters had been keeping her for generations - making her well over 100 yeas old!! Although the hunters didn't want to give her up, they couldn't look after her and apparently still drop in to say hello to her every now and then...

Down Beach fishing area - Limbe

Being a small fishing port (actually every town on the coast of West Africa is a bloody fishing port) Limbe has great seafood. Whilst we didn't have any at down beach where it's cooked on the spot in front of you, we did stop a a little place that had some land by the water where we had a very relaxing fish and friend plantain lunch. We'd had to go to a bank earlier to change a little more money for the trip home, despite the fact that we'd been told that no-one really wanted to buy US Dollars. Regardless, the people at this bank were all just sitting around with nothing else to do so they didn't seem to argue. Unfortunately we'd forgotten to bring passports or any ID, so when they needed something for the currency exchange forms we presented them with an old security badge for our compound in lagos (that had expried months ago)- surprisingly it worked and we got a really good rate (I'm pretty sure they had no idea what the official rate was and just came up with a number...)

View across Limbe waterfront (Mt Etinde in background)

West Africa has lots of cool lizzards (these ones looked much more healthy than the ones in Lagos that seem to live off trash on the street)

So after three nights at Seme beach, we'd both had agreat time and it was time to make the long journey home. Our boat driver Henry had hung around in Idenau for us to come back, and after a great waste of time (and money) we'd cleared the local fisherman's union, customs, the harbour master, and immigration (hope I didn't leave anyone out...) We thought we'd never bloody leave. But, after a hour or so, armed with some extra ballast [6 crates of beer and a whole buch of other crap for "the generale" that henry had procured - and some random guy] to keep the boat steady (and much more comfortable than the ride down) we trundled out of Idenau on on to the high seas. Thankfully despite the recent stormy weather it was nice and calm and made for a fairly smooth ride. (a place just out of Idenau records an average of 10m of rainfall a year - that's right 10 meters not millimetres!!)

Three and a bit hours latr we finally saw Calabar in the distance and were glad to again hit dry land. This time we had plenty of sun cream and didn't get lobsterified. The rest was easy - I called the immigration guy and his mobile and he came down and stamped us back into Nigeria, we caught a couple of okadas over to the airport and slumped down at the bar for a quite gin & tonic before the plane came.

Calabar Airport

An amusing sticker we found whilst waiting at the police station in calabar