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Published: August 5th 2007
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We pretty much drove straight from the border to Limbe, stopping once for a swim/wash in a roadside creek. The first night we camped at Mile 6 Beach, our two trucks plus two from Economic Expeditions (four toilets and four showers between us all!). Despite all the people, it was a beautiful beach, and when we got up in the morning the trees were full of Mona monkeys who quite happily posed for us.
In Limbe a few of us went to the Limbe Wildlife Centre, run by the same organisation that ran the places we went to in Nigeria - Pandrillus. This place in Limbe was more like a zoo than the others. All the animals looked happy and healthy enough - and this life is way better than where they came from - the bush meat and pet trade. Apparently there isn't enough space to create a safe area in the wild or an enclosed sanctuary. So we got to see more chimps, drills, other monkeys and some lowland gorillas. For more info, check out the
Cameroon Wildlife Aid Fund While some people went off to climb Mt Cameroon, the rest of us went out to the
beach to wait.
We camped by a hotel near Mile 11 beach for three days of swimming, relaxing and washing (us and our clothes). A great place to hang out, but nothing like Anomabo Beach (Paradise) in Ghana.
From Limbe we pretty much drove north to Chad with few stops. I set a personal record of seeing monkeys of one kind or another - in the wild - on nine days in a row. Crossing a range on hills part way up was pretty neat, with the landscape changing from damp, tropical and tree covered to hot, dry and dusty almost in the turn of the road. We passed banana plantations and loads of small villages. We met a Sultan in a town called Foumban when we stopped for lunch and some shopping. We saw the Sultan as he was leaving the mosque and was walking back to the royal palace. He had a large group following him, with two guys blowing really long bugle type things , two more fanning him with feathered fans and someone twirling an umbrella (ordinary garden sunshade umbrella) over his head.
More driving...more driving...changing scenery...spectacular scenery...dirt roads...sealed roads...and all those monkeys. Just outside the town
of Garoua we also saw some hippos in the river as we drove over the bridge.
In northern Cameroon we stopped at Waza National Park to do a days game drive. Cameroon is not noted for its wildlife like parts of East and Southern Africa are, but we did get to see quite a few animals, some not quite as we wanted. We saw heaps of antelope of various types (Roan, Kob/Buffon), giraffe, birds (eagles, hawks, cranes, storks...), warthogs, bushbuck or Topi, red fronted gazelle, jackals and elephants. We saw two large herds of elephant in the distance, very nervous of the truck driving past. The reason for this was obvious. Earlier we had driven round a dead elephant lying in the middle of the road, it had been poached sometime during the night before. How do we know it had been poached and had not died of natural causes or fighting? Well, three of its four feet were removed and the fourth was half cut off, its head was butchered and the tusks removed, bits of trunk and brain were lying around nearby. The blood was still wet in pools and flies and vultures had not descended yet.
For some people this was their first contact with an elephant in Africa.
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