Caboose

Got up and wandered down to the restaurant for breakfast, pancakes, nice baguette with butter and jam and real coffee!

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.
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A quick update as I’m in an internet cafe.

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.

Once it got light outside I kept peering out of the windows of the ferry to see if we were near land. Just before 7am we could see small Mount Cameroon (locally known as Etinde) appearing through the mist. Shortly afterwards the crew served us each a cup of tea and a cake. I stood out on deck for a while with Charles and Amy, watching the coast go by.

Around 9.30am we berthed in Limbe’s harbour. It took a while before we could get off, as everyone struggled to unload their luggage and negotiate customs. We just sat in the cabin and waited for things to calm down. We had to show our bags to both customs officers and soldiers and then settled down in one of the warehouses while Pete retrieved our passports from immigration. Pete is an exceptionally calm person and he managed to wear down the officials so that we got our passports stamped without having to pay anything.
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On Sunday Indar and I had a very early start to get to the Cross-Country bus terminal over in Utako district. Most of the bus companies don’t run services direct to Calabar. The terminal was pretty chaotic, with no indication of which bus was going where. After a while we were pointed at the Calabar bus and it soon became obvious that luggage was going to be a problem.

Cross-Country have a fleet of Volkswagen minibuses with two seats beside the driver, a row of three seats, a row of two and the back row of three. Between the back row and the tailgate there is a tiny space for luggage. Nigerian bus companies don’t seem to have caught on to the idea of roofracks, so all our bags (and some of the passengers had a lot of bags) had to be squeezed in. This took a long time and quite a bit of arguing, with the guy loading the bags demanding extra money from some of the other passengers.

We eventually set off, at which point the driver admitted that he had never driven to Calabar before and was unsure of the route. We then stopped for fuel, the petrol station had the marvellous safety sign in the picture below.

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On Sunday Alex took Marebec, Dave and I for a walk up Aso Rock. This is the inselberg that dominates the Abuja skyline (when it’s not too dusty to see it). The plan was to walk up in the afternoon, watch the sunset from the top and then return to Alex’s for dinner.

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To celebrate the end of fasting many towns in Nigeria hold a Durbar. In the past this was the Emir’s review of his troops, with cavalry regiments contributed by each district. Alex originally organised for a few of us to travel up to Kano for the Durbar there but in the end he couldn’t make it because of work commitments. Instead his sister Viviane joined Dave, Marebec, Kate and myself for the long and dusty journey north on Wednesday.

Once we had checked into the hotel we had a late lunch at a Lebanese bakery near the Central hotel then headed to Kano’s famous Kurmi market. The market was very quiet because of the public holiday, many of the stalls were closed, but we still had a quick walk around. We also went for a quick stroll along the street outside.

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Alex took us on another picnic on Sunday, this time travelling a bit further to Gurara Falls. The falls are usually listed as one of Abuja’s tourist attractions despite being about an hour away to the west.

We left Abuja in sunshine, drove through some very heavy rain and arrived at the falls just in time for the rain to hit there. The good thing about all the rain was that the falls were very impressive.

After sitting in a small shelter for a while the rain eased off and we tried to find a suitable spot for the picnic. The rain kept coming back though and Alex’s usual spots were underwater so we retreated to the car. After eating some houmous and lebanese bread in the car we drove back to Alex’s house, where he cooked the chicken we were supposed to barbecue at the falls.

We took the kittens to the vet last night. They needed their deworming and rabies injection and we wanted to discuss neutering. We had also been increasingly certain that Tracey and Sue were in fact male.

They were registered and wormed, we’ll have to go back for the rabies jabs and book them in for neutering. The neutering will be much cheaper because they are both male. This means that they need to be renamed. We’ve decided to adopt Jenny’s suggestion of calling them Russell and Evans (the surnames of Tracey and Sue).

Father Noel is leaving Nigeria for a while, heading back home to Ireland and spending some time in Kenya. Karen’s parents were visiting too and she wanted to show them Kabba. So on Friday afternoon a convoy left Abuja for Kabba. There was the usual drinking and wearing of silly hats:

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Dave, Marebec and I took Friday off work and met Phyllis horribly early in the morning for the eight-hour trip up to Sokoto. The early start was both so that we can complete the journey in daylight and because the cars at Jabi motor park fill quicker early in the morning.

Before long we were off, with the road gradually deteriorating once we passed Kaduna. The bush on either side was noticeably greener than in February and we saw quite a few camels and donkeys along the road once we got further north. We also had an unexpected (but short) stop in Zamfara state when one of the car’s tyres burst.
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