At The Top

What a way to celebrate our 1st Wedding Anniversary!

On Track

Hey Friends and family,

Well as Clauds has already mentioned we are back… eight days of dealing with the Nigerian Immigration and the thought of updating the blog was rather depressing.

We are currently sitting at Mile 8 beach in Limbe with a stretch of black volcanic beach in front of us, a palm trees for shade and a few fishermen pulling in their catch for the day, I spent a few hours this morning snorkelling around the rocks, the ocean is incredibly clear so you get a totally different feeling under water with the black base… get jealous!! The area we are currently in gets the second highest rainfall in the world being over 10 000 mm per year, crazy however we have lucked out and have only had one downpour and have had superb weather otherwise.

Mount Cameroon was spectacular but hell on the quads, the scenery was like nothing we have ever seen before with old and new lava flows and craters… thanks to Shaun for the biltong and great steaks from SA we finished off the last two steaks last evening over a lekker braai and they were scrumptious (don’t think we will have meat like that for the next few months). Before I forget I better add that Clauds also got stung by a bee up on the mountain but this in comparison to all the other disastrous episodes seems incredibly mild… my wife is an absolute trooper and never looses her GO attitude.

When we finished Mount C the six of us piled into Mo and headed to a little beach resort at mile 11 called Seme Beach Hotel, it was great to have warm water and a clean bed for two days, we ate burgers at the restaurant and had a romantic dinner once everyone left of chicken and chips (surprise surprise for Africa) which was great. The hotel had a very cool spring flowing through the grounds which had fresh water trout and bass (I think), so I put on the goggles and did a few laps (I could swim for about 90m in one direction and check out the fish which was awesome).

Yesterday the 16^th we packed up and started driving further West to see what we could see, the road ended at a lagoon in a small town called Sanje so we packed a picnic lunch and caught the little Pirogue (makoro) over to the beach side (the guy working the boat had to have been the most defined muscular guy I have seen before, think I should take up running a little ferry for a few months after this trip to cut off the beer gut that seems to be developing). The beach was not great as it was steep but we found a palm tree facing the lagoon and mountain and had an enjoyable afternoon, its rough here in Africa… we then hopped back into the car with two locals and drove them to thier village while we tried to find some fresh food and a place to sleep for the evening, we arrived at mile 8, a little gem of a spot with no one else around so I think we will spend a day or two here while Clauds burns heal.

Mo has been great with almost no problems, however for the past few days I have been trying to dry out the passenger floor, there is pooling of water which has been baffling me, I thought it was condensation of the a/c unit, then I thought the rains were leaking somehow through the new roof carrier on her top, but this morning after much investigation I discovered that it is the a/c unit. Right by the center consol, under the dash by Clauds feet, water was dripping from the a/c unit, I unscrewed a few bolts and opened up the plastic container slightly and collected around half a litre of water, so in total I think I have collected around 1 litre… Dad, Ed someone please call a mechanic and let me know if the a/c filters are blocked or if this is normal, perhaps with the slow 4x4 and the a/c being on with the exhaust pipe right there this tends to happen (I don’t think it is right though).

So either than that life is sweet and its time to take a goef in the ovean, cheers from the J’s!!    

Getting the lazy legs going again………….12th Feb

Off we set for our 2 night, 3 day hike to summit Mnt Cameroon, and to experience the vastly contrasting countryside from humid jungle to savannah to black volcanic rock, craters, and of course shale and scrub as you get higher.

like land coral

Porters and a guide are obligatory but thank-goodness as you need to take plenty of water, food, sleeping bags, tents etc and it would be impossible to manage all of that for most. What an amazing experience and thank-you Dawn!!! for inviting us and the SA Woolworths stopover and all the catering, we ate like kings! And so glad we could join you – was clearly supposed to work out.

waiting for our guide and porters - African time!

Mount Cameroon last erupted in 2001, and the craters in the photos are from 1999 so very much still considered an active volcano, the eruptions kept at bay by the villagers appeasing the mountain God with sacrifices and dances. It is apparently said that the Mountain God lives in a cave on the mountain with a sugar cane plantation at the entrance to the cave and anyone is allowed to eat as much sugar cane as they can whilst there, but cannot take any away with them. From this the principle of take nothing but photos, leave nothing but footprints has been borne.

and we're off!

But it is NOT easy! If you don’t have much info on climbing the mountain (as we didn’t from Lonely Planet - Africa), and without any briefing before, be warned that it is difficult terrain over 3 days, and you climb from near sea level to 4085m by lunchtime day 2.

up, up and away!

are we nearly there??

No windy path, it’s just straight up, or straight down. In fact you can see the same village you leave from all the way up. Once you reach the summit, you then take a slightly more meandering path down and through some of the most fascinating scenery we’ve ever seen to Man Springs, but it’s a 17km walk on day 2 which includes summiting so it is challenging, and a 14km walk on day 3 all the way down on sore legs! But we really loved it and would definitely recommend it – you just need to turn a blind eye to the litter around the resting huts and take a tent rather, instead of sleeping in the huts which are past due a shake up. (so much for the Mountain God principle J)

like land coral

is that slippery path really on the edge of the crater?

"Queen Caterer" Dawn

horses on the back volcanic beach at Seme Beach Resort, Limbe

Dusk on the black beach sand

Wet Jungle roads? The least of our worries now…10th Feb

Wahooo!! Cameroon! Immigration and customs was a doddle at Mfum on both sides of the river and Cameroom was a welcome sight. In fact, when we checked out of Nigeria, Immigration even asked us whether we had come in through an unmanned border rd and had then gone to Head Office for the stamp (as it was clearly from H/O) – which didn’t seem an issue at all and was clearly not the first time this had happened.

Whew - Cameroon Jungle roads still dry (just)

Cameroonian bridge we went over as we crossed the border.

Anyway, the rains haven’t really started so the roads were still ok but it’s clear how they could become very tricky very quickly. We drove all the way to Buea and set up at the Presbyterian Synob Office which is the starting point for climbing Mount Cameroon which we were going to do on the weekend with Dawn (friend from work based in Lagos) and her friends. I unfortunately had a small run in with a pot of some boiling oil that I dropped whilst trying to tip out……hmmm. Anyway, no emotional scars, maybe just some reminders of Cameroon for a while……maybe a long while….

from the frying pan into the fire

Have passports, will travel ………..9th Feb

So of course we hit the road just before dawn and headed for the border. The road was surprisingly good all the way to Ikom, besides a patch just on the other side of Makurdi. We stayed in Ikom (10 hrs/630km from Abuja) at a pleasant hotel called Jangded in Ebusam Cr where we had a “Point and Kill” which is essentially a term for selecting your catfish which is swimming in a small pool and having it cooked the way you prefer. We didn’t partake in the point bit or watch the kill bit but it was surprisingly good with yam chips and the tomato ‘soup’ (stew) Tony cooked it in.

Cutting a very long story a little shorter....8th Feb

We now have an Angolan Visa as you can only really get a transit visa anyway unless you are prepared to hang around for at least a week etc but our issue snowballed as now Cameroon didn’t want to issue us a 30 day tourist visa whilst we had 2 escorts (duh! who would?) and only a transit for 4 days with the option of going to the South African High Commission in Yaoundé to explain our situation and ask them for help……it is quite possible that one would not even make it to the capital in this time…….but with much begging and pleading and our escorts now explaining that they were there to assist us in any way, the head of Cameroon luckily had a personal immigration issue to resolve so tit for tat, we got sorted – which resulted in us having an escort back to immigration that afternoon by the Nigerian Officials and the Head of Cameroon embassy with his driver – was becoming loony tunes! But we did share a giggle with our officers who pointed it out.

So back at immigration, for over a week and our “file” has grown to over 25 handwritten pages and is still being passed around from office to office. We were then sat in front of an officer who is a lawyer and we got to write our entire statement being warned that anything could be used against us blah blah but besides wondering if we were going back to square one with a pending court case,  we were relieved that someone, that was at least literate and articulate, had now asked US for our story.

He also said that he understood what we were going through as he had been stuck (as an immigration officer) at another country’s airport without a visa (for a whole 20 mins! before he was sorted) and again we had to make it clear that we had visas!!!! We were then put in front of the Deputy Head, a Dr with a string of academic acronyms behind his name and an office full of awards and accolades, and were told that he ‘was going to give us a soft landing, but we had broken the law by not reporting to immigration and not having visas’. Argh!!

So we showed him the signed proof that we had that Head Office had been consulted prior to us driving to Abuja and that we had visas and with a very puzzled look on his face, as the file had reached him previously in the week, he said that all we needed was an ‘endorsement stamp’…YES, breakthrough!!!!!!!  He clearly at that point could not understand why anyone was wasting his time, and ordered for us to get the blooming “endorsement” stamp, reprimanding his colleagues/subordinates for mismanagement. 8 days of emotional abuse and we were sent to the original office where we started and were out within ½ hr with our silly little stamp! And have collected quite a few business cards for a ‘definite catch up’ in SA someday! So we are now sorted just before the final instruction was to have another escort to the border. Obviously that was clearly unnecessary once the small requirement was clear.

….Definitely the most frustrating 8 days ever.

But all in all, we still need to add that Nigeria was completely different to what we expected. We found the police and locals friendly and welcoming and although we’ve never seen so many guns and everyone in a uniform greets you with a massive rifle slung across their chest, we never felt threatened and all things considered, we thoroughly enjoyed Nigeria.

The Saga continued...2nd Feb

Well it’s not over til the fat lady sings but after spending 9 hours at immigration on Monday (31^st Jan) staring at people doing nothing staring at us doing nothing, without passports and being told to exercise patience, we eventually left (at 6pm) once everyone had gone home (home time being in the air from about 2:30 after having literally done nothing all day and were told to return the next morning.

Without exaggerating, we sat in an office with 11 people and 4 of them did absolutely nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing but either sleep, stare, stare some more or page through the same couple of pages of the paper, the others might have stamped the odd passport, it was actually rather fascinating).

Do not take this route into Nigeria!

Tuesday we arrived armed with snacks and books to read (as we were obviously offered nothing the day before) and again we sat an entire day in waiting rooms waiting for we weren’t sure what, catching a glimpse of our ‘file’ that got bigger and bigger with more and more reports and notes written into it. No questions were allowed and obviously no pressure from us as you just can’t rock the boat. Somewhere, in the lower ranks, there was a MAJOR misunderstanding and with a mixture of complete incompetence, arrogance and broken telephone, our matter had ended up with the Head Controller of the Immigration Services, “Madame” who now wanted to see the file.

By now we had even managed to win some high ranking officers onto our side and having had an apology for the misunderstanding and an acknowledgement that it is not our fault if there are roads on the map that are not patrolled, we were still getting nowhere.

Late Tuesday now, it was agreed by Head of Operations that we would be escorted out of the country by an official (called Controlled Exit) once we had been accompanied to the Angolan and Cameroonian Embassies. So off we went again this morning to Immigrations (which is almost 40km away I might add!) and were preparing ourselves for another day of little progress. But we only waited about an hour and were assigned 2 officers to escort us. Already this is ridiculous as essentially if we were such a risk, we should never have been allowed out of anyone’s sight, but it’s clear that the mistake has been on their side but with all the commotion and senior involvement, there was no backing down and the process needed to seem rather formal.

So off we went to go get 2 visas in the next hour and begin our controlled exit with 2 surly officers treating us as if we were human traffickers by refusing to communicate at all. And guess what, you can’t just crack the whip and get 2 visas for other countries in an hour, surprise surprise!!! And we need to follow the normal process which was apply today for Angola and collect on Monday! So all that’s happened so far is that we have been kept in the country longer than we would have been in the first place. Whilst driving there, I managed to catch a few glimpses of our endless handwritten reports and figured out why the high ranking officer who was eventually on our side was laughing at our report and admitted that we were clearly being used as a punching bag as apparently the South African Embassy is messing with Nigerians at the moment. Still not sure how making an example of us was going to get back to the SA embassy.

Anyway, so the first section of the report specifies which Section of which Act of which Year blah blah we contravened and that we had already been in the country illegally for 3 days – which of course is not true as we had visas. The next section was a specific request “seeking approval for further interruption of journey and final repatriation of the couple” – approved! Ah hah, so go ahead and see how long their patience lasts…..ok, you win, this is a very silly game….The next section had something about how we were misled by Kontagora and that the border was in fact not manned. Thereafter, another report suggesting that officers assist us in getting visas and the last one I managed to read specified who.

View of Mosque from Sheraton Campsite and morning wake-up call

So that’s where we are, 10 days at the Sheraton Camp Grounds instead of 5, and we are sure that they could not be bothered to actually escort us out the country personally. In fact, not long into our travels today with our escorts, when it was clear we were not criminals, we were showing them on the map where we were going, got invited to the one guy’s wedding later this year, were told that immigration was clearly messing in our affairs and we would be given a letter for the border which would also quickly get us through any police stops so that our journey wasn’t interrupted any further – go figure! We didn’t even need to take our escorts back to the office as we offered to pay for a taxi for them and after a call to the office “to confirm finalization of their assignment – sir!”, we went on our way….we even got to the point of familiarity of sharing a bottle of peanuts.

But the fat lady has not yet sung and we have to report back to immigration once visas are complete for our final direction on which border we exit etc.