Hope everyone enjoys their New Year celebrations. I’ll be in Opobo Town with Pete, Mary and Charles.

It was pretty slippery underfoot and people were getting tired. Indar had decided that the too-small shoes were damaging his feet too much so he hiked down in a pair of flip-flops. In the early afternoon we reached Bokwango village, the end of our walk. After some group photos most of the group returned to Limbe in taxis, Pete, Chantal, Charles and I went to the MountCEO office where we were hugged by the ladies there and filled in an evaluation form.

This picture shows roughly the route we took on Mount Cameroon, my GPS was off most of the time so we actually took much less direct routes between points. In total we walked over 31km, climbing 3065 m and descending 3195 m.

Once I was back at the hotel I had a hot shower to wash off the accumulated grime, sealed up my clothes in a plastic bag to deal with back in Abuja and headed to the restaurant for dinner, beers and brandy.

Fortunately day 3 is a short day, spending the morning walking from Station F down to Mann Spring. We passed the craters from the 1999 eruption, with a surprisingly varied landscape of cinder cones as well as grassland and patches of forest. Another surprise was how quickly plants are recolonising the eruption area, starting with lichens and mosses then the strange-looking “Mountain Flower”


After climbing up several of the cones, and in Charles’s case climbing down into one of the craters we kept going down towards the edge of the forest and Mann Spring camp with a small detour to see part of the 1999 lava flow.

After only about three hours walking we came through the knee-high billowed grass to Mann Spring, a lovely campsite among the trees at the edge of the forest. The porters made up for last night by being especially helpful, our tents were set up ready for us and they had spread out sleeping mats for us to lie in the sunshine. We took advantage of the spring to have a wash and Jonathan made coffee for us. As we lay there clouds occasionally drifted up through the forest.

Later an Austrian couple arrived, they had been told they needed three porters and a guide but ended up carrying the load of one of the porters. Later still a party of nuns (don’t know where from, spoke various languages) arrived. Amy cooked a nice dinner, we had baked potatoes and cheese afterward and joined the guides and porters for a bit of dancing round the campfire before the smoke got too much.

I settled down for the night much more comfortably than the last two nights, sharing a large three-man tent with Jonathan and Indar. The soft grass under the tent made for a very pleasant night.

We had tea and croissants for breakfast and set off at around 7.30am. It was a hard slog again, although some parts were easier than yesterday the air was getting thinner (hut 2 is at 2850m 9350 ft). The landscape above hut 2 looked almost mediterranean in the morning sun, just much colder! We were still stopped to rest more frequently than the guides wanted to.


At one point, as we sat resting, one of the guides pointed out a skinny woman running up the mountain. It seems she’s known as the “Queen of the Mountain” and has won the Race of Hope up the mountain seven times. Last year she managed it in 5 hours 38 minutes and 6 seconds! She was interviewed on the BBC’s Woman’s Hour a couple of years ago.

The landscape was gradually changing again, more barren-looking and covered in old lava. The walking started to get easier again after hut 3, with the path being mostly gravel and cinders. We passed some craters from the last eruption, in 2000, which were still smoking gently. Just after the craters we rounded a corner and could see the summit for the first time.

After a fairly short walk I was at the summit (4095 m / 13435 ft), joining the others who had got there first. It was very windy and bitterly cold, one member of another group had taken to moving on all fours for fear of being blown off the narrow ridge. We stayed long enough for some biscuit and photos and then scuttled back down to rejoin the porters. The third picture below is a part-panorama looking north from the summit.

We descended some tricky steep scree paths to a more grassy and (slightly) warmer area where we sheltered behind a tree for lunch. The walking then got harder again as we descended over rough and unstable lava flows, but at least with views back up to the summit.

We eventually emerged from all the lava into scrubby plains surrounded by gentle, rounded hills and covered in something that looked like thornless gorse. As the sun was starting to get dark we approached a cluster of communication antennas and equipment huts known as Station F. According to Peter (one of the guides) it’s a relay station for some of the oil companies. The porters had already set themselves up in the hut and had apparently never put up tents at that site, not surprising given the lack of level ground and lumpy terrain.

We ended up in an abandoned equipment hut, with the icy wind howling through various gaps in the walls. While Indar was cooking a quick meal of pasta and cheese we made the guide and porters aware of how upset we were about the situation. They brought over some hot water for us, so we had hot chocolate with whisky before going to be.

The savannah close to the forest edge had been badly affected by bush-burning, apparently the local hunters sometimes start fires to drive out wildlife. With the clouds drifting over and the volcanic landscape it gave the area a post-apocalyptic feel. The walking got harder as we trudged up the steep lava ridges, it was difficult to maintain a steady pace because of the many places where you had to take big steps onto lumps of rock. Things were even harder for Indar after the sole fell of one of his boots, he managed to borrow a pair of (too small) shoes from one of the guides.

We had to keep stopping for breaks to let our legs recover slightly, with the gaps between breaks getting shorter and shorter. I was getting very tired by the time we reached hut 2, but still went for a little extra walk with Indar and Otto (one of our two guides) to visit a lava tube cave nearby. Jonathan cooked pasta with a vegetarian sauce. As we were huddling round the fire, out of the icy wind, and drinking our hot chocolate we chatted to a German couple who were doing the two-day tour. There was also a large group of Chinese, working in Cameroon, who were just going to the summit and back.

All nine of us squeezed onto a shelf in the hut, even more cramped because we only had eight sleeping mats between us.

The first group left for the beach only slightly late as a result, with me guiding them to Mile 11 beach. I phoned home, gloated a little bit about basking on the beach while everyone in Scotland was freezing and got a call from my granny in Norfolk. The beach was much busier than when we had scouted but was still lovely, warm water crashing over the chocolate-coloured sand. We had lunch, chatted, read and swam. Everyone enjoyed the Christmas cake that had made it all the way from granny to Limbe.

We wanted to be back before dark, so we left the hotel and waited for a taxi with the crowd on the Limbe road. The hotel security guard wasn’t keen to have a large group of white people hanging around on the road, so he phoned for two taxis and we got to skip the queue (again).

Dinner was back at the Miramare, I had their very nice pepper steak and then retired to my room to pack for our departure up the mountain.

I joined Pete and Mary for lunch at “L’Estaminet de Limbe”, next door to the bakery. It’s a nice little bar and the place where I ate snake for the first time, boa in a delicious sauce after a fish soup starter that would have done as a main course. After a quick return to the supermarket I had my personal supply of snacks for the mountain trip, Cameroonian chocolate and biscuits.

I spent most of the afternoon sitting and reading in the bar or by the pool. Jenny, Jonathan, Kay, Karin, Chantal and Irma arrived in the late afternoon after their speedboat journey from Calabar. They checked in to the hotel and joined us in the bar. Karin was still unsure about whether to join us for Mount Cameroon and hadn’t brought any equipment with her.

The next activity for the day was heading west with Charles to check out the beaches in preparation for Christmas day. First stop was Mile 6 beach, no charge for visiting it but also no bar and a fine view of the neighbouring oil refinery. Next we stopped at Mile 8, which is managed by a local hotel and they charge XAF 1000 to use the beach, which you can see Charles walking along in the leftmost picture below. In the end we decided on Mile 11 beach, by the New Seme Beach Hotel, it has a beautiful long beach with little table, a bar and your XAF 1000 fee is deducted from your bar bill.


Just before the hotel at mile 11 the road is diverted sharply to the left, around the end of a lava flow from the 1999 eruption of Mount Cameroon. The local authorities obviously decided it was easier to build a diversion than to dig through the flow. In fact they’re now turning it into a tourist attraction.

Back in Limbe I walked to the commercial centre of the town: Half-Mile Junction. I had a look around and bought myself an Orange Cameroon, so that I could call home at Christmas and text people in Nigeria and Cameroon. I chose Orange because the only other network in that part of Cameroon is the dismal MTN, I’m fed up giving them money for an exceptionally bad service.

After that I went for a stroll around the Limbe Botanic Garden. Originally set up by the Germans as a centre for introducing plantation crops it suffered from years of neglect but has now been restored and is a very peaceful place to spend a few hours. The garden also contains a small Commonwealth War Graves Commission memorial to some of the soldiers who fought with the West African Frontier Force in the two World Wars (some more information here and here).

The main activity was a trip through to Buea to book the Mount Cameroon trek. We took a drop to Mile 4 motor park and then bought tickets for a bus to Buea. The motor parks actually have ticket offices, unfortunately the man at the Buea window was a bit aggressive. The standard of driving in Cameroon seems to be higher than in Nigeria, fewer mad overtaking manoeuvres and generally less aggressive drivers.

Another drop took us from Buea’s motor park to the Mount Cameroon Ecotourism office. We all sat around the table with the various brochures and information folders and discussed which route to take. Given our time limitations we couldn’t manage the five-day hike taking in the villages and wildlife on the northwestern side of the mountain, instead we chose the four-day hike up the Guinness Trail to the summit and back down via Mann Spring (MountCEO have an Acrobat document describing the route).

We also had to decide on what equipment to hire and how many porters to take. Given that there is very little water up on the mountain you have to carry all your water up with you, at least three litres per person per day. This added up to 12 litres per person for the trip or a total of 96 litres! In the end we decided on nine porters as well as the two guides.

Lunch was at the Buea motor park, I had very nice rice, stew and beans.

In the afternoon we back in Limbe I spent half an hour on the internet checking my email then Pete and I went to check another hotel in case the Miramare didn’t have room for Jenny, Irma, Karin, Chantal, Jonathan and Kay. The Victoria Gardens hotel, above the Miramare had rooms available but was a bit grim and didn’t have the nice views.

After another afternoon swim we walked round the bay to the Mars bar for dinner. The fish was OK, the beers expensive and the service poor so after we had eaten we moved a bit further round to Down Beach. Down Beach is a section of beach with tables and stalls selling beer and grilled fish, similar to Abacha barracks in Abuja but in a nicer setting. After a few beers I ended up back at the hotel drinking a few more and a whisky with Charles.

We travelled from Calabar to Limbe in Cameroon by overnight ferry, tedious but relatively safe and comfortable. Arrived yesterday, checked into the Park Hotel Miramar, fantastic view of the bay and good food.

Today we took a bus to Buea and booked the Mount Cameroon trip, we’ll be going up the Guinness trail and back down via Mann Spring.

More (with pictures) on my return to Abuja.

Happy Christmas to everyone.