Limbe and Kribi

Aicha and I travelled south so that she could have treatment for her eye in Douala and because I had a week of meetings in Bamenda in the North West. The trip to the North West was the longest, taking four days from Maga to Bamenda. To get value from travelling we combined the trips with visits to seaside resorts in the South.

Limbe is a resort between Douala and the Bekassi Peninsula. The latter was ceded to Cameroon by Nigeria following a long dispute and is still the subject of armed resistance and also banditry and piratry. Limbe has a scenic coastline with beaches of brown volcanic sand. Our hotel was right on a beach which was almost deserted but the view from the hotel was spoilt by an oil refinery. Limbe has very interesting botanic gardens.

When travelling to Bamenda we stopped off in Yaounde for a couple of days so that I could visit some embassies and orgnisations like UNICEF. While there we visited an art and craft fair where a high proportion of artifacts and of the pople selling them were from Aicha’s native Foumban. One of the more unusual items at the fair was a collection of cakes, one of which depicted Paul Biya, Cameroon’s president for the past 25 years and probably until his death (he is 85), which ba mhaith liom ithe.

After working in Bamenda, which has lovely mountains and a relatively mild climate, we went to Kribi for a few days. Kribi has beautiful beaches which are almost deserted. Fishing is still done from pirogues, boats rather like currachs in the west of Ireland which in this region are constructed from hollowed out tree trunks. We took a trip in a pirogue on a river through the rain forest and visited a pigmy village (at which I felt intrusive and ill at ease) but the vegetation and wildlife along the way were interesting. This river ends in a waterfall which goes directly into the sea. Our hotel in Kribi was again in an idyllic setting on the beach and although we could see an oil or gas rig far out at sea, the view was not spoilt. In both Limbe and Kribi the sea was reasonably clean for swimming.