Autodämmerung / Going Home
So two thirds of the team is back in the states. We don't really know where Brandon is, but is should be Limbe, Cameroon. And Beryl was sold for mad cash to charity. More to follow when I haven't been in Air France's hands for the last 24 hours.
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Holy cripes, we made it! Done and drinking!
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Three hours until palm wine. Kribi Kribi Kribi!
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We are here but won't be for long. We've plugged up a fuel leak created by this morning's terrible roads. With luck, it'll hold until Yaounde today and Kribi tomorrow. Kribi Kribi Kribi...@
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After a couple of days of river crossings and douane station camping, our attempt at a car-on-train journey has been thwarted. Tonight, we press on towards Meiganga in the hopes of making it to Kribi by Saturday.@
We made it to Cameroon!
We have been travelling hard in the last week and a half since we updated anything. From Burkina Faso we headed south through Benin, spent a day in Abomey seeing the UNESCO sponsored museum about local history and culture, and then headed into Nigeria. We spent 6 nights total in Nigeria. It was a relief to speak English a bit (everywhere else is Francophone), and the people are extremely friendly. We stayed one night at Yankari game reserve with Wiki Warm Springs which was relaxing. The last 20 km before the border to Cameroon was muddy rocky track where the guys got out of the car to get a bit more clearance and I drove like hell through the muddy bits to keep from getting stuck. A couple times we all (7 total in the convoy of 3 cars) had to work together to get one of the cars out of a bad part. We made good use of the tow strap and kept at least one car on somewhat solid ground at all times. It was a great deal of fun, but it took us several hours to do the last 2 miles to the border. Shortly after entering Cameroon yesterday afternoon, we came to a river that was flowing up over the bridge and had to wait until this morning to pass. 6km later there was another slightly flooded bridge, but we paid the locals about 5 dollars a car to push them across (water was too high for air intakes and electrics in the engines). Now we are in Maraoua Cameroon for the night. We hope to make it to the beach in Kribi for the second party they are holding on Saturday. Everyone is excited about getting to a beach and getting to sleep in the same place for more than one night.
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One of our caravan had mechanical difficulties so we settled down here last night for repairs and goat head/face. We hope to make it to the Yankari Game Reserve and the Wikki Warm Spring tonight to swim with some elephants.
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Between 25 police checkpoints, moon-crater potholes, and tanker truck hospices, we've only done about 200 miles since yesterday morning. We're praying to every god and spirit in Africa that this sound divided highway we're on now continues for a while.@
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In Benin but actually at Abomey. Going to do touristy things today like see a throne mounted on human skulls and hit the Nigerian border early tomorrow morning.
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In Benin, perhaps illegally: the border guards claimed they 'ran out' of visas but for half price they would give us an entry stamp and write the word 'visa' under it. I sense a bribe coming due at the exit shed. Anyway we are here now and relaxing with the Scardy cats and team zebra.@
