Our last night in Nigeria, was at a secure location in Yola. We opted for easy hotel restaurant 
food and asked the waitress what was on offer. We were surprised when she first said, “You people don’t swallow food, do you?”. I know we look a little thinner than when we started this trip, but… maybe she suspected we were bulemic? Was the food here so bad that most visitors immediately spit it back out?
We couldn’t be sure exactly where the suspicion originated, but we convinced her we could swallow and digest food at will, and were hungry enough that anything on a plate would be consumed and kept down.
Next morning, we performed our miracle again with breakfast, all chewed and swallowed and everything. We were close to the Cameroon border crossing, shown as a road across a river on our map, but our previous travel companion, Mikey, informed us there were no such luxuries and pirogues/canoes were the order of the day.
At the Nigerian exit post, tucked away at the back of a village with sand streets, the operation of our pasty white bodies was once again called into question. This time it wasn’t digestion, but respiration, Linz was asked if the water packs we wear on our backs contained oxygen. We explained, that despite our crazy appearance, we could actually breathe the same atmosphere as the locals, the back pack and tube were purely for hydration.
There was a short delay stamping our paperwork at customs whilst the ‘boy’ was sent to moisten the long dead ink pad with water. The customs officer was a little disappointed I wasn’t carrying a spare ink pad, nor was I willing to give him cash for a new one, but he wished us well as we left.
We eventually reached the river banks, after following a few local mopeds through multiple twisty, dirt tracks, no signs here. Linz looked at the steep river bank and said, “You’re doing this”. I found a guy with a boat and arranged for our bikes to be transported to the other bank, then set about lowering the bike down the steep, sandy slope. Me and about 3 million other blokes manhandled bike into canoe and Linz was positioned atop the combo as it set sail. Linz’s nerves subsided a little as she realised the water wasn’t more than a meter deep and even she could have stood without drowning.
I left Linz and her bike on the far bank, so I could repeat the process with my bike, same slope, same 3 million blokes. It was only as we were slowly heading across the river for the second time that I noticed a much smoother, easier and well used ramp down to the water’s edge, about 200m from where I’d wrestled with our bikes. Hindsight is frankly a gloating pain in the ass.
With both bikes on the far bank and my boots full of water, I had to pay for the boat and the 3 million helpers, but managed to get the whole gig for just over a fiver. We carved a path through the deep, soft sand to the town and introduced ourselves to the Cameroon police and customs. Before long we were on an 80km piste heading for tarmac which would take us south. Once on the tar road the sun was getting low, so we stopped at a village and asked some smiley folk for a place to stay. There was folklore of a camp ground near the next village, though nobody had ever ventured far enough to confirm the rumour. At the next village we were pointed in the right direction and once again joined the piste in search of home for the night, or a good looking bush camp.
Linz was looking pretty orange by this time, having absorbed most of the dust spewing from my bike and her dreams of a hot shower were fading fast as the sun dropped below the treeline. Out of the blue a sign appeared for the Campement de Grand Capitaine… never a guarantee out here, but even if abandoned it would do for tonight. As our sheer luck would have it, Grand Capitaine turned out to be a beautiful, well maintained, riverside location with a well-stocked bar, top restaurant and immaculately kept rooms with hot showers! Conveniently placed, 50km of dirt track away from the tar road, the site seemed to have suffered none of the usual neglect and was exactly what we wanted… though didn’t really need, we’ve just gone a little soft from weeks of the Grand Hotel in Niger!
As the sun rose we spent an hour by the river, checking out the crocodiles and taking photos before heading back out to the tar. A quick look at the map and we realised the 50km piste to the tar ran straight through Bénoué National Park, one of many in Cameroon. Shortly after leaving the campement we crossed a bridge in the National Park and stopped to admire the view. We soon realised that the view included antelopes, baboons and hippos! Time for some more photos and a general feeling of well being at seeing wild animals without having to pay or be guided.
Back on the tar road there were a few more groups of roadside baboons, one unnecessary police checkpoint stop and pleasant mountain pass before we dropped into Ngaoundére for another over night stop and a trip to the ATM to stock up on local currency. The overnight in Ngaoundére was at a cheap auberge out of town, notable for the piles of ratshit in the bathroom, ratshit on the bed and ratshit in the small non-working fridge, so it wasn’t even cold ratshit… typical.
Our goal for the next few days was to reach Bamenda, 800km away, but we had no idea of road conditions or quality. We found the road dusty, hard and devoid of tarmac and it left me with a puncture 20km outside Ngaoundére. We made it to Tibati and stopped for the night before enjoying another day of similar conditions. Just beyond Banyo the road builders had been busy, stretches of pristine tar alternated with prepared piste and made a welcome change from the truck-sized holes and dust. Fun was had until things returned to their pre-Banyo state and we reached Foumban for another night of scrubbing orange dust from our skin. Finally we had just less than 200km to go, all tar, and arrived in Bamenda with plenty of the day left.
Bamenda provides a good starting point to follow the Ring Road around Mount Oku. It’s not exactly a road, mostly dusty or stoney tracks, with some short stretches of tar. We’d heard it was worth the effort for the scenery, so decided to take a couple of days in Bamenda to recover and give the bikes a quick check before having a go. The Africa Nations Cup football was at semi-final stage as we arrived and we spent an evening drinking too much with a couple of local guys, Vincent and Peter who bought us a drink when Cameroon won their semi game. The celebrations in Bamenda continued well into the early hours.
The next morning we should have been on the ring road, soaking up the terrain, but instead we were hungover and ate junk food. The ring road would have to wait until tomorrow.
