I got back from my trip aroun the Grand North this morning, and this will most likely be my last chance to post before I fly home on Friday. Here goes.
To finish off the semester, SIT went to Limbe for a few days. This is a really nice beach with beautiful black sand. It also has a lot of white people, whether tourists, volunteers, or expats I'm not sure. It was pretty strange getting to the beach on the first day and seeing more white people than black people, but then again maybe this was supposed to help us readjust to the US.
My friends and I who were staying in Cameroon for an extra two weeks intended to climb Mount Cameroon (West Africa's highest mountain) the day following the rest of the group's departure. Unfortunately a bunch of us (3 out of the 5 who were staying, 6 out of the 14 total), myself included, got sick the night before. We therefore scrapped the Mount Camerooin plan, stayed in Limbe for a day to recover, and then headed directly up to Maroua in the Extreme North.
When I say "directly," I really mean anything but. We took a 6-plus hour bus to Yaounde, then had to stay the night as delays had made us miss the night train. The next evening we boarded the train to Ngaoundéré. We had gotten the cheapest tickets we could, and as a result we were extremely cramped. A man actually slept under my seat for most of the ride! The train ended up lasting around 16 hours. After a short break to stretch our legs we got a 6 hour bus to Garoua, in the North province, followed by another 6 hour bus to Maroua. So two days after leaving Li,be, we were finally in the Extreme North! The first two nights there we stayed at a Peace Corps transit house that we were able to contact through other Peace Corps friends. The volunteer there bent the rules to let us stay, and it was really nice to recuperate from travel and to adjust to the heat (the first day in Maroua it was 110 degrees in the shade).
After spending a few days in Maroua, which is a really great town, we headed to Waza National Park. We did two days of safari, riding around the park in the back of a pickup truck. We were able to see lots of Giraffes, birds, warthogs, and antelope-like animals. We were really lucky on the first day, and we actually saw a lion! It roared at us and was a bit terrifying, but luckily we were all safe inside the car.
After that we headed back to Maroua for a few days before heading to Rhumsiki to do some hiking. This is a really pretty area with lots of rocky peaks and rural villages. To get there, we took an hour_long moto ride past beautiful scenery. Once in Rhumsiki we found a guide and headed out for a 3 day trek through the countryside that included a brief foray into Nigeria. It was tough but fun, and it was great to see villages that were so far from the roads. We didn't see a car during our entire hike, but we were able to find a donkey caravan bringing soda from Nigeria. Sprite tastes so much better when it's unexpectedly delivered by donkeys...Our guide was great, and each night he made us delicious, freshly-killed chicken in a peanut-tomato sauce. On the day we got back to the village we were able to see a bit of an initiation ceremony for young men and a wedding. We were really lucky.
We left Rhumsiki on Monday and Have been travelling since. Right now I'm back in Yaoundé, where I'll be staying until I go to the airport in Douala on Friday.
No comments:
Post a Comment