Sarah's adventure: 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!