On reflection, my favourite country is still Senegal where we hope to return to in the future to visit Simon at the Little Baobab and see a bit more of the Casamance. However, Cameroon is lovely, especially compared to the difficulties of travelling in Nigeria, which we feel we survived better than most. Werner and Gaby hated it and rushed through as fast as they could. In fact, from now on they tell us they are going to go fast, fast to Namibia. They spent 3 months travelling to Ghana whereas we took a little over 3 weeks! They do like to do a lot of culture. Our priority is meeting people and making a balloon flight. I forgot to mention though that when we were in Ghana, just after catching up with the Oasis truck (coming the other way towards the Stumble Inn) I did do a tour of Cape Coast Castle with some of their clients. It was very interesting to see where the slaves were kept for several months before being shipped off to the Carribean by the British. The most horrific part to me was just above the male slaves dungeon where there was a viewing hole from the door outside the Church, the first Christian church built in West Africa. How on earth could the good Christian people worship inside and then look down upon all the suffering below, just as a past-time?
Werner and Gaby left the Ilomba Hotel camping spot on the beach early yesterday morning and will already be in Gabon today. We had originally had the idea of travelling closer together so that when we come to the much more difficult places in Congo and DRC we would be able to help each other. That idea has now been dispelled, as we want to go at a much slower pace. They do have a few problems with visa timings as they got most of theirs before us. So far we are doing well with our visas. We do not want to get to DRC too quickly as we cannot arrive there before 9th March. We have got the Republic of Congo to get through first and who knows what conditions will be like before then. If the rains have arrived, the roads could be almost impassable to us until we reach Cabinda. We are going to prepare by buying buckets and shovels. We already have some sturdy bags and plenty of old tee-shirts which we can hand out to locals to help rebuild the road if we get stuck in a waterlogged hole. We are also comfortable in that we are now well ahead of the Oasis truck so maybe we would be able to latch on to them in a real emergency. My concern that our Angola visa is valid only up to 25th March was unfounded. We have just to arrive in Angola by that date so if we are delayed there should not be a problem. Our aim now is to find a secure place in Namibia for the Enterprise and fly home from there about the third week in April if all goes well. (I may already have written this elsewhere).
Yesterday we were thinking of setting off from Kribi to Ebolowa and Ambam before the border, but it is just so lovely here and we still had a lot of unfinished things to do. Later this afternoon we will go into town for Chris to use a garage workpit to change the fuel filters and we think we should buy some insurance as our Ecowas insurance cover ran out in Nigeria and Werner tells us they have been stopped several times and had to show their insurance certificate for Central Africa. After 3 days of resting a little, a walk along the beach to view the Limbe Waterfall that flows directly into the sea and then a long trip up the river in a dugout boat to visit a pygmy village, today has been more relaxing. It is the first time in our whole trip that I have had the time to do proper 'housework' in the Enterprise and I have really enjoyed it. I get fed up with only having time to wipe the dust/sand off work surfaces before I can prepare food and it's so nice to go into a clean bathroom (wet room) without worrying where to put anything down without it becoming dirty. Chris has had the time to load another mapping system so that we don't have to rely on the crazy routing we had while in Nigeria and have a second 'opinion'.
I am going to have to cut short my musings as we need to go into town. While writing, a fishing boat was dragged up onto the beach and the fishermen have been sorting their catch from the net. Mostly small flat silver fish which they dry, but also a bag full of bigger Capitain, or that's what I understood the fisherman to say.
Later:
It is now the evening. Our drive into town achieved what we hoped: fuel filters changed, although they really didn't need it after all; insurance bought. The full price quoted was 150,000 CFA which Chris bargained down to 10,000.
A little more about the pygmy village visit. We had been promised that there were 2 villages to see, but in the end we were only taken to the furthest one, very close to the river bank. It was a little bizarre that just round the bend in the river there is the new Chinese road being built between Younde and the coast and pile drivers were working to make a new bridge. The inhabitants of the village were not particularly short and there were few of them. We were told the young men were all out in the forest hunting. The children were very sweet. They do not go to school as no-one leaves the village while the chief is alive. He was a very young chief so that does not bode good for the children. They rely on herbal and natural medicines from the trees and plants in the forest. They do quite a lot of drinking though. There were sachets of gin and whisky scattered everywhere we walked. We were offered to watch some tribal dancing but the additional cost was high so we declined. Really, the best part of the 'tour' was the boat trip. It was leaking and we had to do some baling otherwise we were sitting in water. We saw a lot of birds and some small monkeys in the trees above and it was very peaceful with the water lapping the sides of the boat to within a few centimetres of the top.
I will really miss this place. It is probably a very expensive hotel to stay in but our camping has been free. From the beach (and the Enterprise) we can see a tanker near the horizon, supposedly loading at the end of the pipeline from Chad (or is it unloading?), several oil platforms and 2 oilrig support vessels). At night the tanker lights are very prominent.
Chris says I have done too much writing and am probably boring everyone, so I will try and add a few photos. These may be past ones and will not be up to date.
Werner and Gaby left the Ilomba Hotel camping spot on the beach early yesterday morning and will already be in Gabon today. We had originally had the idea of travelling closer together so that when we come to the much more difficult places in Congo and DRC we would be able to help each other. That idea has now been dispelled, as we want to go at a much slower pace. They do have a few problems with visa timings as they got most of theirs before us. So far we are doing well with our visas. We do not want to get to DRC too quickly as we cannot arrive there before 9th March. We have got the Republic of Congo to get through first and who knows what conditions will be like before then. If the rains have arrived, the roads could be almost impassable to us until we reach Cabinda. We are going to prepare by buying buckets and shovels. We already have some sturdy bags and plenty of old tee-shirts which we can hand out to locals to help rebuild the road if we get stuck in a waterlogged hole. We are also comfortable in that we are now well ahead of the Oasis truck so maybe we would be able to latch on to them in a real emergency. My concern that our Angola visa is valid only up to 25th March was unfounded. We have just to arrive in Angola by that date so if we are delayed there should not be a problem. Our aim now is to find a secure place in Namibia for the Enterprise and fly home from there about the third week in April if all goes well. (I may already have written this elsewhere).
Yesterday we were thinking of setting off from Kribi to Ebolowa and Ambam before the border, but it is just so lovely here and we still had a lot of unfinished things to do. Later this afternoon we will go into town for Chris to use a garage workpit to change the fuel filters and we think we should buy some insurance as our Ecowas insurance cover ran out in Nigeria and Werner tells us they have been stopped several times and had to show their insurance certificate for Central Africa. After 3 days of resting a little, a walk along the beach to view the Limbe Waterfall that flows directly into the sea and then a long trip up the river in a dugout boat to visit a pygmy village, today has been more relaxing. It is the first time in our whole trip that I have had the time to do proper 'housework' in the Enterprise and I have really enjoyed it. I get fed up with only having time to wipe the dust/sand off work surfaces before I can prepare food and it's so nice to go into a clean bathroom (wet room) without worrying where to put anything down without it becoming dirty. Chris has had the time to load another mapping system so that we don't have to rely on the crazy routing we had while in Nigeria and have a second 'opinion'.
I am going to have to cut short my musings as we need to go into town. While writing, a fishing boat was dragged up onto the beach and the fishermen have been sorting their catch from the net. Mostly small flat silver fish which they dry, but also a bag full of bigger Capitain, or that's what I understood the fisherman to say.
Later:
It is now the evening. Our drive into town achieved what we hoped: fuel filters changed, although they really didn't need it after all; insurance bought. The full price quoted was 150,000 CFA which Chris bargained down to 10,000.
A little more about the pygmy village visit. We had been promised that there were 2 villages to see, but in the end we were only taken to the furthest one, very close to the river bank. It was a little bizarre that just round the bend in the river there is the new Chinese road being built between Younde and the coast and pile drivers were working to make a new bridge. The inhabitants of the village were not particularly short and there were few of them. We were told the young men were all out in the forest hunting. The children were very sweet. They do not go to school as no-one leaves the village while the chief is alive. He was a very young chief so that does not bode good for the children. They rely on herbal and natural medicines from the trees and plants in the forest. They do quite a lot of drinking though. There were sachets of gin and whisky scattered everywhere we walked. We were offered to watch some tribal dancing but the additional cost was high so we declined. Really, the best part of the 'tour' was the boat trip. It was leaking and we had to do some baling otherwise we were sitting in water. We saw a lot of birds and some small monkeys in the trees above and it was very peaceful with the water lapping the sides of the boat to within a few centimetres of the top.
I will really miss this place. It is probably a very expensive hotel to stay in but our camping has been free. From the beach (and the Enterprise) we can see a tanker near the horizon, supposedly loading at the end of the pipeline from Chad (or is it unloading?), several oil platforms and 2 oilrig support vessels). At night the tanker lights are very prominent.
Chris says I have done too much writing and am probably boring everyone, so I will try and add a few photos. These may be past ones and will not be up to date.
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