So we are loving Cameroon… the people, the scenery, food, beaches etc. have been outstanding!!
We left mile 8 (Etisah Hotel) after three days of glorious weather, on our final day we helped some local fishermen get their boat out the ocean and they had a few Grouper on board, so we bought a decent sized fish and headed to the market to buy some coals, cabbage, tomatoes and whatever was available and home to have a lekker fish braai (Stancill it reminded me of our vacation at the Keys!!)
You need to like cabbage, tomatoes, onion, avo, bananas, paw-paws, pineapples, cassava to do this trip! Once in a while you may find lettuce, carrots or celery but that's about it!
The following day we headed into Limbe as it was time to move towards Yaounde as we still needed to get Visas for Congo and DRC. We joined John and Jenny (a great couple we have met doing an overland trip back to SA) for a fantastic lunch at the Limbe Wildlife Park where a South African has opened up a restaurant with her husband whom used to manage Moyo (so the burgers, Pizza and ginger icies were superb)… highly recommended!! We decided to look around town to see if we could find a cheap hotel as we wanted to get moving early the following day to get to Yaounde and it was our 1 year anniversary so thought we would spoil ourselves , and what a find… The Holiday Inn Resort which is towards the main town gave us a room with A/C, massive swimming pool (3m deep), hottish water and a TV with 60 stations for only 14 000 CFA (around R 200.00)!!! I asked the waiter to set a little table out in the garden for us as a surprise for Clauds, so the two of us headed down to a romantic dinner and had the most fantastic meal (Bar fish and pepper soup with Plantane) the only warning about the spot is check your Vodka and Gin as someone is making a buck by adding water to the bottles.
Amazing swimming, surfing not so much!
It was time to head up to Yaounde so hauled through on some of the best roads we have had on the trip thus far and booked into the Presbyterian grounds… what a dump and run by the most ungodly people around, all they are interested in is money and charge for extra water and to plug your computer in. we looked around a bit and the hotels are incredibly expensive or just way too dodge… Ringworm once on this trip is enough! I also drove through the presidential lane again so we had eight cops jumping out at the gringos taking our passports, drivers licence and carne while we still are wondering what the hell we have done wrong. Anyway it is a massive circle with four lanes entering the circle the four lanes continue straight through the circle and exit on the other side, there are road markings going straight through and apart from two small no parking signs on either side there is no way to know that this is now the “presidential lane”. So once again I was sitting with the police… needless to say my skills are definitely improving and after changing the topic of what we had done wrong kept asking them where the church was, we are lost and need to get to the church, we are good citizens and are staying at the church, us god fearing people. So we got another police escort with two cops who showed us where the church was (luckily a different church across the road), we gave them 3000 CFA ($ 6) for their time and waited until they were gone before returning to the original church. I think we have mentioned there are 3 trucks with around 25 people in each doing a similar trip and that every two of these trucks pulled in so the lawn was scattered with tents and 50 people which was too intense for us and we needed to move the next day… oh I almost forgot, Clauds had slight food poisoning too from a funny tin of tuna (no week would be complete without an ailment of sorts).
Camping at St Benedict's Monastery with Julia and Stanley, Niels and the kids (Yaounde, Cameroon)
Monday we hit the DRC embassy after the taxis tried to rip us off and we decided walking would have to be the option, and bumped into Stanley and Julia (an amazing couple travelling with their two kids of 14 months and 5 years… incredible). They thankfully told us where they were staying at the Monastery on the hill so we made the instant decision to go and join them. The DRC visa was pretty straight forward, it cost 90 000 CFA ($ 180.00) each, BLOODY EXPENSIVE. And they were issued to us the following morning at 10h00. We did some shopping as there are really great food supermarkets in Yaounde, as well as great patisseries. We sorted out Mo’s “leaking” problem, so all good on that front.
The shop under the tree that arranged Mo's new light in less than a day from Douala!
We collected our visas the next day to deliver them at the Congo embassy and were told to return the next day at 1, which we duly did and needed to get onto the road to make the 4 hour journey to Kribi for some more beaching! We were told to wait with no explanation and no questions allowed until about 2:30 when they eventually handed our passports back and ushered us out. They were surly, dismissive, and had another agenda which we are yet to work out. We then noticed that they had made the expiration date on the visa the 11th March (must be used prior to this date) which was too soon but when questioned we were told that it wouldn’t be a problem as a visa is a visa! But we have learnt our lesson on this trip and although we could not get any joy out of them, we reckon we still haven’t quite finished with our embassy visits and need to see how we can resolve this in Libreville.
Lope Falls - Kribi, Cameroon
Anyway, we got to Grand Batanga that evening, about 15km south of Kribi and pulled into a charming little place called Etoile de Mer where Andre (Belgian) lives with his 7 year old daughter and they run a small hotel in the back of their house and allow camping in their garden which is right on the shore with a toilet, and shower for use. We ended up staying 3 nights and Andre make tuna carpaccio with olive oil and parmesan for us accompanied with a bottle of blanc de blanc and his home made vanilla, litchi and cinnamon rum. Quite superb! He is an incredible carpenter so his house is beautiful and an auto-electrician by trade so we were sent in to Kribi the next day to his friend Ebaneser to buy a new filter and oil which he assisted us in changing which was great as Mo was nearly due for a mini service.
Camping in Andre's garden - Grand Batanga, Cameroon
On the border of Equatorial Guinea we read about a park called the Reserve de Ca’ampo run or affiliated to the WWF with gorillas, chimps, various other primates, birds etc and decided we would drive there and suss it out for a few nights. Having arrived on a Saturday afternoon, we managed to find the off-duty office manager and we arranged that we would leave early the next morning with our obligatory eco-guard and guide for 2 nights.
Ecoguard and guide and the supposed road through the park
We spent the night on the banks of the river overlooking Equatorial Guinea but not where we intended on staying as the little chalets on Campo beach seemed deserted and after waiting around a while and no-one arriving the house manager of quite a larny house next door offered to set up a room for us for the same price as the chalets (about $6). We drove over and parked Mo round the back and were welcomed into the house for the night (the owner was away in Libreville – not sure how that was all supposed to work but it suited us). He then went to the effort of setting up a little table on the patio for us so we could enjoy the view and we cooked the usual one pot wonder of 2 minute noodles and sauce of sorts. The hospitality of some people is remarkable. It was up early the next morning to collect William our Eco-guard at 5 and drive through to the park to collect the guide and set up camp at the huts they have built near the village. It was about a 45km drive along good dust roads. Bitter sweet as although the roads are good, it is only due to the loggers that have started decimating the forests in the area – the circumference of the trees that go past in the trucks that drive like bats out of hell leaves you with a very heavy heart…….after the adrenalin rush as they clang and rattle past you in a cloud of dust.
Our latest camping spot on the tip north of Libreville. Village Mama allowed us to camp for free for a 'cadeau' at our discretion
We had read in the Bradt Guide that it was possible to drive through the park and we were thinking of doing this at the end of our stay as a more direct route to Gabon. Hah! You can’t even get a car near the park as the last bridge would swallow Mo and the roads in the park are so long gone that it is actually only possible to go on foot now! Unfortunately the park is really nothing to write home about as poaching is rife and although we saw 3 species of monkey and a few birds, nothing sticks around long enough or nothing is even really there to see. It is a very sad situation. The park only has about 50 visitors a year and although it was pricey (about $150 for 2 nights in a cabin with no bedding, electricity or running water, the guide, eco-guard and the camera fee (which we didn’t even use)), no park can possibly be sustained on such an income. We doubted whether anyone patrols the park and reckoned that it’s only when there are tourists that they even enter the reserve. We did however see evidence of forest elephants, buffalo and apparently may have come close to a single gorilla but there are no proper paths and hacking one’s way through the forest is noisy and incredibly hot and frustrating after 5 hours of nothing. It was however fantastic to see the original forest but unfortunately we won’t be recommending a visit and can sadly see the end of this movie already as the logging encroaches on the park and the plan is to reconstruct the road right through.
Crossing the equator - we tried dismally to test out the flow of water down a plug hole on either side but failed! A celebratory swig was easier.
We headed back to Grand Batanga for a night as we needed to get a small part for Mo as we had a small oops! when collecting our eco-guard at 5 in the morning. We reversed very gently into a bulldozer and smashed the rear lights of Mo on the one side. Although the bulldozer wheel was clearly in sight in our camera, the digger was just above our camera and protruded quite substantially. But not a disaster at all. We found Efram in Kribi at around 11am (by asking the Laundromat) who made a call to Doula and promised that he could get us a new one by that afternoon! We gave him til the next day as we needed to get the laundry done and to our surprise, we pitched up the next day and there it was, exactly the right thing, ready and waiting and had been sent using the chiefs service so transport of the part only cost about R30. Somehow when you think Africa could be broken, it can seriously surprise you!
Cameroon's Kribi coast
That night we stayed at Tara Plage in Kribi as we had bumped into Fran and Tom (SA and Zimbo), our other over landing compatriots who we met in Ghana and had the most magnificent tuna steaks with grilled plantain for dinner!
South African Zimbo war!
You will love kitties!
Typical lunch: in Gabon
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