Home Again
After 27 hours of travel, I made it home safe and sound.
I decided it was time to come home. The truck problems have kept us in Cameroon, and the parts still haven't arrived yet to repair the engine. Even with the best case scenerio of getting the parts on Monday and leaving on Tuesday, we still may not make the Angola-Namibia border until the beginning of April. To fly home either from Angola or to Nairobi to catch my flight would have been too expensive, especially since the next few weeks would be spent in the back of the truck for 14 hours a day. Add into that the fact that the part of Angola that we are going to has bad roads with land mines located just off the road and the fact that Congo has been rated as the most dangerous place to travel in the world (yes, apparently more dangerous than Iraq and Afghanistan) and the decision was a no brainer.
So we didn't leave Cameroon today due to engine problems. I guess it was only a matter of time before the truck gave us problems, so better in a big city than in the middle of Angola. At the moment we are waiting for either a new head gasket to arrive from somewhere else (the UK, Tanzania or Germany, none of which are close) or for a new one to be machine here in Cameroon. I think I would rather wait for a new one, but I'm not a mechanic and I go with what Paul, our driver, decides on.
Tomorrow we head out of Cameroon and into Gabon. We will only stop in a handful of cities in the next few weeks, so there won't be much chance for internet or email. The roads will be rough and the weather hot and wet (we should run into the real rains soon). From Gabon we will head into Congo, the DRC and into Angola. Angola alone should take almost 2 weeks to cross. All plans have us in Namibia sometime around March 21, though it could be earlier or it could be later.
The coastline of Ghana is full of beautiful sites and beaches, as well as a lot of historical landmarks. The lighthouse below is in the harbor of Dix Cove, a vibrant fishing village. The lighthouse is a remnant from the British fort that still stands high over the harbor.
The harbor at Dix Cove itself is full of fishing boats that are constantly coming in and going back out. They catch large numbers of tuna, swordfish and sharks, all of which can be bought fresh. The boats themselves are all brilliant colors and are loaded to the top with men and gear.
Kakum National Park in Ghana boasts one of the great canopy walks in Africa, if not the world. It is over 500m long and is suspended high in the canopy of the massive jungle trees. It is quite high and the bridges sway back and forth. It is basically just a net that is suspended with a ladder for you to walk on. Not the best thing for someone who doesn't like heights to do (I have done another canopy walk in Nigeria with better results, thankfully).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.
We've spent the last 2 weeks making our way from Abuja to Calabar, in the southeastern corner of Nigeria. A few days were spent at Yankari National Park, where we saw some animals on game drives and on walking safari. I thought that the previous encounter with an elephant at Mole NP in Ghana was scary until we came upon a hippo on one of the walks. We thought we had accidentally cornered it in a rock formation, which could have been dangerous. We just slowly walked back to the truck and headed on our way. There were also elephants, bushbucks, waterbucks and roan antelope in the park.