New Year’s Eve at Obudu Cattle Ranch

We awoke early on new year’s eve to hike the waterfall trail. This was billed as a 6 hour hike, but became an entire day trip once we stopped for lunch and time to swim in the waterfalls! The scenery was absolutely stunning – mountains, trees and waterfalls, definitely the most beautiful place I have seen here in Nigeria. The hike was hard though – up and down mountains with slippery rocks and climbs up! I realized how unfit I have become and found myself at the back of the group during the hike, but it did have the added bonus of allowing me some great photographs! My new year’s resolution was obvious – to get fit again! The last uphill nearly killed me, I managed six steps then rested, then repeated! But I was warmly welcomed at the top by my fellow VSOs! I strongly considered taking the Okada (motorbike)  back to the lodge, but I decided to finish the hike by foot and made it all the way home! I was proud of myself!

Setting off on the walk - all the way down to the waterfall!

Waterfall number one!

The breathtaking scenery

A well deserved rest!

Waterfall number two!

REAL milk and beef - yummy!

The top of the cable car!

After a short rest and extremely cold shower, we went to the Steak House for a nice meal to celebrate new year. There’s no point being at a cattle ranch without having a good steak! And the steak was awesome, accompanied by chips, veg and garlic bread – yummy! From there we celebrated midnight by the bonfire and even had fireworks – though we all ran when one of the fireworks was aimed accidentally into the bonfire (luckily no damage done!). We danced to the obligatory Azuntu, your waist, chop my money and sweetie love before heading to bed for a well earned rest! 

 

Calabar Rocks to Obudu

One of the biggest highlights of the Calabar Carnival time is a concert in stadium by big acts – and this year it was my favourite Nigerian band P-Square and Akon!! So 8 of us decided to stay an extra day in Calabar to see the concert and 5 of the group went on ahead to the mountains of Obudu. In typical “Oebo” (white) fashion, we tried to buy tickets for the concert days in advance, only finally to be told that they would be printed and ready for sale on the day – you’ve just gotta love the laid back and optimistic ways of Nigeria! So finally with wristbands on we headed to the stadium and were treated to a great concert, P-Square were fantastic live, great dance routines and really good vocals. The crowd loved Akon, at one point a fight broke out and Akon tried to crowd surf to “stop the fight as there are no fights at an Akon concert!” But of course all that happened was the crowd took his shoes, necklace and anything they could and his security team went crazy! The guy is brave, you have to give him that – oh and he has a mighty fine body too! So crowd surfing was replaced by zorbing – yes Akon got into a giant inflatable ball and ran over the crowd in it – hilarious!! For me the best highlight was the finale at the end – ok it was now 2:30am and we were tired, but seeing Akon and P-Square sing my very favourite song – Chop My Money, well it was awesome and I danced like a crazy person, much to the amusement of the Nigerian people around me! I think more took photos of me dancing than they did of the stage!!

Tired but happy we all climbed into bed around 4am, for 2 hours sleep as we were leaving for Obudu at 7am! We wearily began the journey with our hired cab driver – already paying a little over the price for a less crowded vehicle, but then had the true Nigerian 419 (fraud) experience on the way! We got to a road junction, about 15k away from Obudu according to the road sign. Our driver told us to get out the car or pay him and extra N10,000 (about £40) to take us to the cable car! His reasoning was it was still 2 hours away and a bad road! Thankfully I’d seen the 15k sign and remember reading the road from the junction was tarmac! After much shouting and threats (from me!) to steal his car – we renegotiated it to N2,000. The sad thing was we made great time and he was a good driver and I was going to suggest tipping him anyway – but his demands left a bitter taste in my mouth.

For me this is one of the most difficult things about Nigeria, money and negotiation. As a white person you are believed to have more money, which to some extent is true, but mainly here in Calabar on my own I’m not really paying too much more than locals. Get a group of white people together and you have so much difficulty to negotiate a reasonable price, or they use your lack of knowledge to demand more money. It became a daily hassle for us all when travelling in a group. And it is hard to convince someone that if they just gave you a good price at the beginning you would use them again and they would get repeat business. The mindset is to make as much as you can immediately, which for a long-term business strategy is not great. Having said that not all Nigerians are like this, many are kind and generous and go out their way to help us negotiate good deals or even pay our taxi fares.

So we finally arrived at the Cable Car tired and a little jaded. But for me this disappeared once the cable car began its ascent up the mountain and the spectacular scenery came into view. Obudu Mountains are absolutely stunning, and should be a huge tourist attraction. We made our way to the top, admiring the view all the way, and met the brother of Abebe, the lodge owner! He escorted us to the lodge and we were welcomed so well by Abebe and his staff! As our taxi driver had made good time (despite the argument), Candace, Stacey and I went on a short hike to the Tree Canopy Walk and the Grotto – a nice way to stretch our legs after the 7 hour journey! 

Candace, McKinley and I

View from our cable car

The Crazy Mountain Road!

Candace and Stacey braving the canopy walkway!

The Grotto

My favourite Obudu photo

Calabar Carnival!!!!!!!!

So the day finally arrived! Since I arrived in Nigeria everyone had been commending me on my arrival time – I was here “in time for carnival!!” Off we set again to Mary Slessor, plan had been to leave early, but of course the carnival procession left 2 hours late, so we had a nice morning chilling at the house. Thanks to the TV channel we were interviewed by yesterday, we could follow the carnival’s progress on our next door neighbour’s television! So around 1pm we headed back to the same judging area, only this time the crowds were huge! Thanks to hanging out with the press yesterday and Leanne’s impressive camera and note-taking skills, we were allowed to sit on the curb between the two road lanes – but unfortunately we quickly became surrounded and crowd control set in with their whips and sticks (I’m not kidding) to control the crowd. So we were then moved into the press area, away from the crazy crowd and had a great view, accompanied by a very numb bottom from sitting on tarmac! But this was all forgotten when the carnival commenced – the five bands in the carnival came parading by in their spectacular costumes and amazing dance routines! First was Passion 4, who were last year’s winners and my favourite – their costumes were definitely the best! Then came Freedom Band, followed by Masta Blasta, Seagull Band, and finally Bayside Band. It was a great event, I’m full of admiration of those in the carnival as they go along a 12 kilometer route in the heat in those costumes and high heels! Should I find myself in Calabar next Christmas then I might be tempted to join one of the bands and be part of the carnival! We rounded up the evening with a lovely Lebanese meal at Freddys before retiring exhausted to bed! 

My favourite outfit of the day!

Calabar's attractive women!

Masta Blasta - the Carnival winners!

 

 

Around Calabar

With lots of VSO volunteers here for the festivities we’ve been enjoying the many activities here in Calabar. During the day we’ve been hanging out to relax and cool off at the lovely pool at Axari! 

In the evenings we’ve been taking advantage of the Christmas village and the food and market stalls there! Many of the group enjoyed great chicken suya - BBQ chicken with a spicy sauce containing ground nuts so no good for me :-( 

 We also found “The Hair Doctor” who looked at our scalps and told us what products we should be using! After a great experience with the doctor and seeing how dry my scalp was, I of course invested in the products and had the pleasure of having them put on my hair in the middle of the Christmas village using buckets of water! So random and so funny! The guys running the stall kept snapping our photos – I’m sure I’ll pop up in their publicity campaign somewhere! It has worked though, my hair and scalp are less dry but it does give a strange wet kind of feeling to your hair – think I’ll not be using too frequently!