West Africa Odyssey 2012 - Cameroon

Cameroon: Kribi, Limbé and At Sea in the Doldrums

April 8 - 10, 2012

Aboard National Geographic Explorer

Sunday, April 8 we arrived in Kribi, Cameroon in the afternoon as it took us a day and a half from Principé. It was another zodiac landing onto a pier, and we took our life jackets with us to use later on a river trip.

Our group first visited a bilingual primary school where the students are taught in English. There is high demand for English in Cameroon and the school can only accept so many students as they have limited classrooms available – each holding 30. They will build more rooms as money becomes available. The students pay about $100 annual tuition. The ship donated some school supplies to this privately run project.

Grace with local artist

We went to see a waterfall on the Lobé River. The walkway was badly washed out due to recent high tides. I scrambled far enough along to see the falls, however.

Our last activity was to take a “pirogue” or dugout canoe ride up the Lobé River to visit a group of “Bagyeli” people. Translated that means “little people” and the term “pygmy” is not used any more. There were about eight boats that were paddled and poled along up river for about 40 minutes. The tribal chief greeted us and the men and women performed some interesting dances.

Grace meets the Bagyeli Chief

By then we were running late and it was almost dark by the time we returned to the boarding site and climbed onto the buses for the drive to the dock. The 1 ½ mile zodiac ride back out to the ship was in total darkness, except for the spot light from the ship. The wind had picked up so it was also a fairly wet ride. Fortunately, the water was warm and the air was still warm so we weren’t cold.

Monday, April 9 was another landing by zodiac in Limbé. From here on we will dock at a pier so no more zodiac landings.

Banana production and marketing has many stages

The Limbé visit included a banana growing and packaging plant. As with many things in Africa, we had discovered that well planned events don’t always go as scheduled. We had to wait for someone in authority to come to explain the operation. It was interesting to learn how the bananas are grown, how long it takes before they can be picked, about 8 – 10 weeks, and then they are sorted and packaged for shipment – mostly to Europe – where they will ripen along the way. We left with four big boxes of bananas for the ship, which made us all happy.

We next visited a Tea Plantation and watched how they dry and process the tea for packaging; done at another location. We got to taste the tea and it was good.

After lunch at a hotel, we made a stop at the Limbé Wildlife Center jointly run by the Ministry of the Environment and Pandrillus, a primate charity. They take in rescued gorillas, chimpanzees, mandrille and twelve other primate species. All animals are housed by family groups in spacious environment appropriate enclosures. The goal is to be able to reintroduce family groups back into the wild. There were many species we had never seen before, even in zoos.

Some went back to the ship, including Paul, but I went on to see the Laval Flow from the 1999 eruption of Mt. Cameroon. The walk/climb wasn’t too difficult and there was a nice view. There were more recent eruptions, which flowed in a different direction.

National Geographic Explorer, our home for five weeks

Again, it was dusk when we boarded the zodiacs for the ride back to the ship. I had sent my backpack with Paul, but a nice lady had a plastic bag to protect my camera. It was a good thing because the ocean was rough and the transfer from zodiac to ship was precarious and very wet; all fun stuff for us adventurers. ;-)

Tuesday, April 10 we were all ready for a day at sea. It was filled with lectures, but the big push for me was to get my slide show ready for the 3:30 presentation. It was my first showing using the new software, Adobe Lightroom, which I bought a few weeks before leaving Portland. I like the program and did not have any difficulties other than having to decide which pictures to show in the three minutes allowed. There were about 15 who presented including at least five or more using their iPads. Passengers just walk around the lounge and view each show, then move on to the next. It took about an hour to see all of them. I received lots of nice compliments on my pictures.

For those of you who may have wondered about the safety of traveling in the waters off West Africa, I can assure you that Lindblad has planned for anything that may happen. We had aboard a security team, which was on watch 24/7, and were heavily armed. There has never been any pirate attack on a passenger vessel in West Africa, but we appreciated the security, none-the-less.

During this Day at Sea, now heading west, we sailed past the first of only four countries where we did not stop along the whole west coast. This one was Nigeria. The others we will skip will be Ivory Coast, Guinea and Mauritania. The reasons are mostly because of safety concerns and political unrest. Before dinner we had the “We’re Halfway!” Cocktail Party with Captain Oliver Kruess.

The next day we arrived in Benin followed by Togo and Ghana filling four days of shore excursions before any more days at sea.

That's it for now. Grace and Paul