Friendly people - and our first wildlife

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From Benin we crossed into Nigeria and we have spent the past few days driving almost non stop to Abuja, stopping only for eating, sleeping and buying food. It was a long few days! Nigeria has been great so far, not that we've seen much. The people are awesomely friendly, especially the kids, but the adults too, shouting and waving whenever we drive past, kids jumping up and down, its great!! The kids would stop whatever they were doing and run to the side of the road, screaming and waving at us.

We stopped in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, stuck in the never-ending quest for visas. Our passports visited the Sudan embassy, then Chad and Cameroon. So we had to sit around and wait. We didn't get up to much, shopping, eating out (we all ended up eating at a place called Chop Chop at some point), relaxing, emailing, waiting waiting and more waiting. Abuja is a bit of a created city, lots of space, modern buildings, street signs...We camped up in the grounds of a hotel again, on a grassy, scrubby area near the bar. We got one room between the truck so we could shower in the dribble or bucket, whichever was available at the time.

After a few days in Abuja we headed towards Calabar. One day we were stopped at checkpoint after checkpoint, regular police, traffic police, military, and some dodgy nobodies trying to get money from us. One set were really bad, we;d just been through a police check / toll booth when some non uniformed guys threw a piece of wood studded with nails in front of our truck and started demanding money. Alun quickly established that they weren't officials and refused to pay. After 5-10 minutes he asked us all to get out and stand round the front of the truck and try to look intimidating - there were more of us than them! Finally Steve did the logical (but possibly slightly dangerous) thing and picked up the piece of wood and lobbed it into the trees by the side of the road. Just after this some police came up from the checkpoint and laid into the locals saying they were giving Nigeria a bad name and that they shouldn't be hassling the tourists. Cool!

The further south we drove, the hotter and more humid Nigeria became. The landscape became more and more jungle like, and there were more and more checkpoints, all official and all staffed by really lovely people - always polite and friendly.

In Calabar we got our Cameroon visas and visited a Drill Ranch, a rescue / rehab centre for chimps and drill monkeys. Most of them have been either rescued from bush meat poachers or have been orphaned when their mothers were killed for their meat. Some were also previously pets. The baby chimps were really cutes! The drills had formed a large family unit headed by an alpha male with a very bright backside. From here the animals go to a large sanctuary in the hills/jungle (Afi Mountain) for more rehab and an intro into larger groups.

From Calabar we first went to Kwa Falls for a couple of nights R&R, swimming in the river and lazing around. Great - apart from the nasty black flies that liked to eat us. We had a quick stop back in Calabar to pick up Brian and some food then headed to Afi Mountain. What an awesome place. First we went round some of the drill enclosures in small groups. The enclosures were about 100m x 80-90m, full of trees and vegetation and 20-30 drills. There was an enclosure of boisterous chimps who found it heaps of fun to throw things at us- dust, stones, bits of coconut... The younger chimps were in a cage next to one containing an adult male and female, the staff were hoping these would form a new family unit. The 'baby' chimps seemed fascinated by us (or linked humans with attention and food) and we were allowed to play with them through the fencing. We also got to feed them. The older chimps were fed some coconuts, which they broke open to drink the juice and eat the flesh. It was great watching them do this, they knew exactly what they were doing, ripping off the husks, breaking the coconuts open on rocks, checking all the time to see how cracked they were so as not to lose too much juice.

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Photos

Doing dishes after dinner
l-Dave, r-Steve, taken from the roof of the truck

Comments

[anastasia]

aww
they are so cute