Patrick's Postings

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Cameroon

Our 2+ week trip through Nigeria has come to an end and we are now in Cameroon. We were lucky to get our Angolan visas in Abuja (the tour leader flew back to Abuja from Calabar in order to go to the recently opened Angolan embassy there). The Angolan visa is the most unpredictable of the countries that we are visiting, and other trucks in the past had to fly over Angola (at the cost of the passengers) and get on a new truck in either South Africa or Kenya. So to have them in hand makes the path forward a little easier.

The roads, however, have just begun to get bad. Either there are huge potholes in the pavement (no more than 25mph on the roads to avoid them) or there are huge ruts in the dirt roads from when cars and trucks went through and got stuck during the rainy season. It took 15 hours to go about 200 miles, with the last 30 miles taking 4 hours. And the roads will only get worse when we hit the rain. Fun, fun, fun.

I have decided not to try and trek to the summit of Mt. Cameroon, but will instead do a trek at the lower elavations. The overnight trek at Afi Mountain raised some concerns with my lack of fitness, and I thought it would be best not to try and push it too hard. The other treks are no cake walk, but at least they are only 6-8 hours (or less) and not as strenuous.

Will be in Cameroon for the next week and a half before heading to Gabon. By that time we will have all of our visas that we will need to get in advance, so we will be tackling the roads of Gabon, the Congo, the DRC and Angola in as little time as possible in order to get to Namibia. There are no places to stop in most of the places we are heading to, so there will be 10-20 days of bush camps in the rain before we get through. More fun.

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