Day 101: Cameroon
Soutpiel Safari
John & Jenny
Mon 14 Feb 2011 07:17
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Day 101: Sunday 13 February 2011 Bush camp in the
forest near Ekok, Cameroon. N05 49.030 E008 54.717 Distance driven 118
km
During the off-road driving yesterday I noticed that the
clutch had become very "spongy" and when I got back I found that the clutch
fluid reservoir was empty, indicating a leak somewhere, probably in either the
master cylinder or slave cylinder. On the recommendation of Dr Majib of
the Afi Sanctuary, we drove to Ikom and went to the mechanic who fixes their
Land Rovers. We found a compound with about 20 Land Rovers in various
stages of decomposition!
The mechanic, Ebaye, took one look at the slave cylinder
and said "let's change it"! He took it our, went away on his moto for 20
minutes and came back with a service kit of new rubber seals. The job was
finished in just over an hour at a cost of N2,000 (£8.50)! I was so
surprised that he didn't try to rip us off as "whities" that I gave him
N3,000. By that time it was 1430 and we felt it was too early to stop for
the day. As the border was only 15 km away we decided we might just have
time to cross into Cameroon before the border closed for the day.
It is a rather quaint border post at a bridge over the
river separating Nigeria from Cameroon, the facilities all being in open sided
huts high up above the river. On the Nigerian side, all went well until
Jenny presented her SA passport (the one with the Nigerian entry stamp).
Although the immigration official had been asleep at his desk when we arrived,
he soon noticed that the SA passport didn't have a Nigerian visa. Then
ensued a long discussion about how this had arisen, how it had been the mistake
of the immigration official on entry, etc, etc. The immigration man said
he could not put an exit stamp in either passport. By that time I had my
exit stamp and the car had been stamped out. I could see that he was debating
whether to send us back to Abuja to sort it all out at HQ and was ready to tell
him how neither I nor the car could go back, as I only had a single-entry
visa! As closing time approached we decided to tough it out and let him
make the decision as what to do with us. After consulting "higher
authority" and taking photocopies of everything, he finally gave Jenny her two
passports and just said "go" - no exit stamps! We went quickly across the
bridge into Cameroon where we had a very friendly reception from police,
immigration and customs and all formalities were quickly completed. We
changed money and drove off on the notorious Ekok to Mamfe track, which we found
in good condition as there has not been any significant rain so far this
season. After about 10 km we found a side track and turned off into the
forest and camped for the night.
It was a very hot humid night with no breeze in the
forest. You have a good sluice down with cold water before going to bed but you
are soon perspiring again. You lie in bed and sweat, the mattress and the pillow
soon become wet and then you wake up in the middle of the night, uncovered and
cold, but still wet. You pull a sheet over you to keep warm and wake up in
the morning damp and sticky. Traffic started coming along the road before
daylight so we got up and had a wash down standing naked in the dawn light with
the bugs still biting. The glories of bush
camping!
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