Cameroon part three – Bamenda and Belo

The night bus was pretty uneventful except for the annoying man sat next to me who kept leaning over me and waking me just as I was slipping into sleep. The elbow to the head was the last straw, no idea whether he understood the words I chose to use but oddly he never came close to me again after that….

Then I was waking up poor Leanne at 5am – but in her usual fashion despite the early hour she was full of smiles! After a small nap we explored Bamenda and generally drank tea and caught up on each other’s news, a really chilled and relaxed day! We found a great curio shop and café run by the Presbyterian church and brought some things for ourselves, gifts and had tea and cake in the café! I fell in love with a rather large but beautiful mask which I purchased and collected when we got back to Bamenda! I’ve no idea how I will get it home from Nigeria – but then I have no idea where home will be after Nigeria! So I figured I’d deal with that problem when I knew what the problem actually was!

The next day Lea and I headed for Belo, a small town NW Cameroon in the area called the ‘Ring Road.’ This is an area full of mountains, lakes and waterfalls. Historically it was called the grasslands as there was just grass and mountains as far as the eye can see. Now there is some farming and more villages but it is still a very rural area with many people living on small amounts a day. We were met at Belo by the lovely Joshu, who runs an NGO called RUDEC which uses tourism and international volunteers to bring in skills, time and money to run programmes in the local community. One example of their work is to sponsor local children’s school fees. Joshua had been recommended by my fellow VSO volunteers McKinley and Heather. We were staying at the RUDEC volunteer house for 3 nights and Joshua was going to be our tour guide for 3 days taking us to see waterfalls and lakes! Joshua is not only a great tour guide but is really committed to his NGO and community. His tours and accommodation is such good value and I’d highly recommend anyone visiting this area to contact Joshua via the website: www.RUDEC.org

As we arrived early in the morning we were able to start exploring that very day, so Joshua hired us bikes and I found myself with the lovely Samuel who was such a good rider and lovely man! So in our little convoy we headed up the mountains to the Ndawara Tea Estate, where we were shown how to make tea! As two tea addicts Lea and I were very excited by this and the smell of tea was very enticing as we approached! We saw how the tea leaves were first heated to remove moisture before being ‘chopped’ and then oxidised to give the brown colour! We left the tea factory armed with lots of tea and couldn’t wait to get back to the house to sample some! 

Sadly the end of the tea plantation tour ended up in the animal area where we saw some monkeys and 3 gorgeous chimpanzees being held in captivity in horrid small wooden cages – we were horrified and took some photos which will take to the Limbe Wildlife Centre in the hope they can do something to rescue these animals.

Then came the long 5 hour hike down the mountain back to Belo! Of course being rainy season the rain decided to join us for the hike! Thankfully it was mostly drizzle which was almost welcome to keep us cool on the way down – the weather and scenery reminded me a lot of home, I could almost imagine i was in the New Forest especially when I saw the horses!