Cameroon part two – Limbe and Kumba

Woke up on my first day to beautiful sunshine so decided to hit the beach! After a breakfast of tea and donuts (French colonization resulted in great bakeries) I caught a shared taxi to Seme Beach, where I spent the day strolling, swimming and sunbathing on the beach! Was nice to hear the ocean and swim!

Seme Beach

Day two wasn’t quite so sunny so I walked to Down Beach to see the fishermen, then visited the botanical gardens. Had a great burger and chocolate smoothie for lunch and visited the Limbe Wildlife Centre which is connected to the Drill Ranch in Calabar. There I saw drill monkeys, chimps but best of all the cross river gorilla! 

Limbe Town:

Down Beach:

Botanical Gardens:

 

 

Limbe wildlife centre: 

 

Day three I got up early and headed to the bus station to catch a bus to Kumba to see a volcanic lake! After waiting for about 1.5 hours the bus finally filled up and with 4 people squished into 3 seats throughout the minibus off we went! It was only a few hours journey so it wasn’t too bad. When I arrived at Kumba I was fortunate enough to meet a lovely taxi driver called Eugene. Originally another taxi driver took my bag and was supposed to take me to the market and had joked about how he was going to rip me off in his own language. Eugene heard him and loudly told me to pay 200CFA to get to the market – this original taxi man was so disgusted he took my bag out of his boot and threw it on the ground!! But Eugene was lovely, when we discovered there was no bus to Bamenda the next morning he helped me buy a ticket for that evening and agreed to let me keep my bags at his house and be my tour guide for the afternoon!

So Eugene took me to see Barombi Mbo Lake (a volcanic crater lake) – after serious negotiations and experiencing some interesting corruption we eventually ended up at the lake. The marines were not happy about letting me swim there because several people had drowned there as they could not swim. Once the lead marine had established I was in fact going to wear a bikini to swim in he allowed me to swim but only if he watched, I mean supervised!! So I had to prove to him I could swim and he just stared at me in my bikini a lot! I also had to pose for several photos with him too! I’m sure those photos will end up on facebook somewhere and I would have become his girlfriend…… 

Eugene (right) and my Marines!

But the lake was beautiful and I had an enjoyable afternoon there! I also had a lovely time with my new friend Eugene, I heard about all his life, saw every single photograph he had and it was nice to meet someone genuine that I could trust. Travelling and living away from home inevitably means you end up putting your life in someone else’s hands and thankfully as Eugene put it - “God put us together that day and kept me away from the other evil man!”

Sadly I had to say goodbye to Eugene to board the night bus to Bamenda, travelling by night is not something I’d do in Nigeria but was pretty convenient to cover longer distances and safe in Cameroon. And in Bamenda was where I would meet up with lovely Leanne!