Foreign Dignitaries

OOh the hooplah! Oh the grandeur! Well, not really, but at least people were sweeping the streets to pick up some of the garbage. Why you ask? The Chinese President is here for a visit. Last night there were roadblocks to get him from the airport, so we left right after school. Today he and the wife will be all over the city so the office decided to have a short day in the hopes to avoid roadblocks and being trapped here with the entire student body, well into the night. On the way to school this morning we saw the street sweepers and people painting the curbs (where there are curbs) red and white. There were also flags on the street lights and pictures of the Chinese President were up to. Also out and about were dozens of police officers in their neatly pressed blue uniforms and white hats and gloves. We are really hoping that all the kids get picked up on time so we can get home. Last year, when someone was visiting, they locked all the people up in Mahima (the main grocery store) and there was a riot inside, while the big-wig drove by, unaware.

Waterfall

These are just some shots from when we went to Bamenda bcak in November. I will try to take some pictures this weekend so I will have something to write about. No news is good news I guess.

Mid-January Already

Nothing new to report here. Pete is home with what I think is malaria. He didn't go to the clinic, but all the signs are there. He started taking the medicine for it and is much better, but a ways to go still. We have been without water for about three days now. Let me tell you people, it sucks! Our reserve garbage can is now empty, so I came into school to fill up water bottles, to then lug them back up three flights of stairs. Yes, I know I am whining. We did choose this, blah, blah, blah. Go watch some English speaking television and eat some normal food for me!

Footloose

You all remember that little ditty from the early 90's don't ya? Well that is not me right now. After Peter and I hike Mount Cameroon I had many blisters. My left foot was the worse of the pair. When we went to the beach the black sand got in them. Pete was so mad at me for not cleaning my foot out at night, but I didn't have it in me to dig out my already sore foot. As a result I limped around for a week or so, not thinking much of it. This weekend the pain got to be unbearable so I finally went to the French clinic. However, before I left I got everyone's two-cent's worth of opinions. It ran the gammut of a hairline fracture, deep tissue bruising, and sprained heel to the extreme of a worm or a jigger. I was faint as I waited, think this doctor is going to carve me up and then smoehting disgusting is goign to be expelled from my body. Luckily, it is just a deep bacterial infection. I know, I am relieved to hear that too. I am antibiotics and a pain killer, foot elevated as much as I can. Lesson learned, I will now always clean out my poor open wounds after Pete makes me climb a mountain! Oh, that's right he promised me I don't have to do that anymore, YES!

Back to the Grind

Hi all. We are back to work and it's going so much better. As far as this blog goes, it takes a long time to get it to upload the pictures. So I don't know how frequently I can update it. Also, the pictures are a lot smaller as that is the only way I can get it to work. I am wondering if you can double click on the photos or right click on them to get them bigger? Anyways, I am trying my best to keep ya'll updated and would love to hear from you!

Moooove on Over

We were in the middle of a big port city and there was a herd of cattle, just like that! The other shot is of a store. The woven mat could be used as a fence, the side of a shack or a prayer mat.

Duala

These are shots of Duala. I gut them in order to give you and idea of what it looks like here. I usually don’t take pictures out in the city for several reasons: you can get into trouble if you take a picture of anything considered governmental or military, so I pretty much can’t take any in our neighborhood as we are surrounded by embassies or ambassador housing; people will expect you to give them a cadeaux if you take a picture of them and it can get awkward. As you can see, no sidewalk or pavement, red dirt and a lot of trash. There are little shops and the umbrella is where you get phone cards.

DelMonte

On the road we passed a rubber plantation where the trees had little buckets hanging from them. These shots though, are of the Delmonte Plantation. The bananas grow with the plastic bags on them. Now those bags are probably only significant to those of us who worked at Niagara County Produce and had to put out bananas—you know who you are.

Beer Good

Hot Spot Hottie enjoying a well-deserved cold one. We also went to see a Wild Life Sanctuary in Limbe. No photos as they charge for cameras and we were down to our last few cfas. We decided the beer was more worth while than pictures of monkeys in cages that moved too quickly to get a good shot. Although this one was better than the one in Yaounde and we even got to see them try to apprehend a chimp that had escaped.

The Hot Spot

These are shots from the balcony of the restaurant we ate at each day. The resort’s one restaurant was too expensive so we drove back into town and ate at the HOT SPOT. It was on the edge of a cliff and had a spectacular view of neighboring islands. It was also our first experience of having delicious food that wasn’t exorbitantly priced. It’s attached to the botanical gardens. We walked through them but I was still barely able to walk from soreness and blisters that we just took a short promenade.

Lazy Daze

The large smooth stones have been worked on by the waves, but were from a previous lava flow. Two views down the stretch of beach. The resort we stayed in also had a volcanic spring. It is called Semme and is actually bottled as drinking water here. It was cold, but crystal clear, no slime or smell. It felt great to hop back and forth between the ocean and the spring.

Ahhhh, the beach!

These shots of Pete are on the beach at the Semme New Beach Hotel, where we stayed for 4 days. The sand is black from the volcanic rock. The beaches here are so nice because the sand is all smooth, no ouchies on the way out to the water. Despite all the trash elsewhere, there is little on the beach itself. There is also the fact that there are no seagulls dive-bombing you for food (no rats without wings). Over Pete’s shoulder and in the other shot you can see a pirogue of fisherman with their nets. The sky was always a grey haze and there was very little visibility- the dry season sky.

Bonne Annee 2007

Happy New Year everyone! I have so many entries ready to go. Unfortunately, the site is not processing the pictures to go with them, which renders the entries useless. I will try again over the weekend, but am not sure when I can update. Just know that we did indeed climb Mount Cameroon over the break. It was harder than the Sprint Triathlon in Estes Park, first time hiking in Zion with Heather, and all the Race for the Cures and Turkey Trots all put together. We did make it to the summit and then went off to the black sand beaches of Limbe. Yes, we are all tan and relaxed from the beach(nah-nah-nah-nah). My left foot is recovered enough I can now put shoes on again and we got the remainder of the sand out of my cracked blisters, it was an ugly situation. Just a few more days until school resumes and back to the grind. On the bright side, two weeks to go and the school year will be half over! It was hard being away from friends and family over the holidays, however there's nothing like hiking straight up for 11 hours for a day and a half and then going down again to keep your mind off of things! We hope you had a great holiday season and look forward to hearing from you in 2007.

We're Done!

By the end we were exhausted. This one shaky shot in the rainforest was all the strength I had left. I actually was faster than Peter at this time because I couldn’t wait to take a shower and have a beer on the beach. This part of the rainforest was (I’ve already used, rough and difficult, what’s left?) challenging because the roots of the trees were covered in moss and there were mossy rocks under the slimy leaves that were decomposing. In addition we were just plain old beat, so there was a lot more falling (by me), and resting (by Peter).
We made it back a little after 1:00 on Saturday. We took a taxi back to the town. This time it just had our packs and the guide- our first taxi ride up had us, all the packs, the driver, two porters in the front seat and the guide and another porter in the back with Peter and I—Africa style. So, in total, we hiked 9 hours the first day, 11 hours the second, and 7 the third.

Lava Flow

Right:

Lava flow going down to the ocean (not that we could see that far). Left:Lava flow (view going up) from the volcano. This eruption was in 1999.

Day 3 Outward Bound

This is my favorite shot of the whole trip. I hope your screen shows the brilliant light, sweeping grasses, and Peter’s profile. This was around 7:00 on our last day, with the sun just coming up and 7 hours of hiking ahead of us. Even though this was the worst terrain (for me) and my feet were a mess, as a hobbled down I thought it was breathtaking.

Grassland Horror

This is pretty huh? Pretty treacherous that is. I was glad to be off of the gravel, for a little while. This portion of the hike was the absolute worst! The grass was sometimes over waist high and you could not see the path. The path was worn into the ground 6-8 inches and was only wide enough for one foot. So we had to walk funny, not being able to see where our feet were going, eyes constantly down. If you mis-stepped you would teeter over and flop down in the grass. By this time I had blisters all over my left foot and a few on my right, so each time I stepped wrong I was in agony. I kept falling down/over (weebles wobble, but they don’t fall down). Just about 2 minutes and 100 yards before the camp I started to cry silently, so the guide wouldn’t hear me, as he was one step behind me. Pete looked back at me, turned around, and just kept going because he knew I was doing my best to not a have a break down. We got to camp and I think we were asleep before 8:00.

Dangerous and Dusty

This is after the craters. It was hard going as we couldn’t walk too closely or we would kick up too much dust. I have lived, “Eat my Dust”, it’s not pretty. We saw a poacher who had just shot an antelope. He had it all folded up on a board and was carrying it on his back. Our guide talked to him in dialect to congratulate him and then in the next breath told us how they are not supposed to do that any more. We heard from some other hikers that they saw a poacher with and antelope and a monkey. That was the only wildlife that we saw the whole hike.

Volcanic Craters

Off to the volcanic craters we went. This is when the landscape looked like something fictional. It made me think the creators of the original Star Trek series just shot it in Cameroon, sometimes nature is more than our imaginations can conjure up. Of course the photos don’t so it justice, especially since you can’t tell the scale of the surroundings. The smoke you see here is coming from the volcano. It smelled of sulfur and you could feel a slight increase in temperature. This also happened to be a pretty steep area and the path was what I considered narrow. It was similar to the time Heather, Cecily, and John to me to Angel’s Peak (or is it landing?) in Zion for my first true hiking experience. Needless to say, I was not thrilled or awe-inspired enough to not be shaking in my boots.

And down we go...

We didn’t tarry too long as we had another 5-6 hours of hiking to get to our last camp and a water source, Mann Springs. You may think going down is better, ahhhh, not really. We were still on a severe incline and now the ground changed to volcanic gravel. For a while it was kind of fun to slip down it, like it was sharp, dusty, dangerous snow. There was no way to go slowly so it was like we were all sprinting, but not of our own volition. We were still in the Savannah so it got hot when the sun made and appearance.

34/35

The guides and porters gathered round for a photo shoot. They held up two license plates and we realized they were from people from our school. One said ASOY 06 and the other was the name of the teacher I replaced this year.

We did it!

All views from 14,000 feet!

The Summit

Success! We got to the summit around noon. We had hiked from 7:15, with a few short breaks. You can see a bit of the landscape behind. Pete was disappointed at the limited views from the Harmattan(dust layer in sky during dry season). It was very windy, but not too cold.

Almost There...

We had to stop several times. You can see the soil is really volcanic rock- hard incline but pretty good terrain compared to other areas.

Day 2: Still Ascending

Up, up, up we go. It was difficult, but we just kept going up to get to the summit on Day 2. We still had poor views and were not able to see the ocean. It was hard because there are many false summits and it seems like the real one should be a sharp pointy rock. It’s actually a pretty big spine, as you will see.

Day One Done

This is Hut 2. It consists of 2 outhouses (cement covered holes in the ground, didn’t smell) and a large tin-roofed shack. Inside it is broken up into 3 rooms, with a large raised platform to sleep on. Pete and I slept in the tent because there were 3 other groups there, as well as their guides and porters. I quickly got out of my wet clothes and we enjoyed a nice hot meal on the little gas propane stove. Martin kept urging us to get dinner going—we ate about an hour ahead of them because they made everything from scratch and cooked it over an open fire. Our guide was amazed that the rice we brought cooked in 5 minutes. Rice is a main staple of the diet here, but it is cooked the old-fashioned way. He also checked out our package of tuna that was a plastic pouch, not in a can. We were chilly at night, but have camped out in much worse weather-ask Amy or Jon to verify.

On Top of Ol' Smokey

These shots of Pete are between Hut 1 and Hut 2. You can see the incline he is standing on and the trees show it too. This is when I was having a hard time. Between Hut 1 & 2 there is a small shelter. Right when we got there it started to rain and I was so exhausted I wasn’t sure if I could do it. The rain just added to my concern as it was already slippery due to the incline. Pete promised me that if I did this trip it would be the last time he would make me do a mountain summit. That rallied my spirits, knowing he won’t guilt me into another Nazi death march, straight up. So we just kept saying “Merry Christmas” to each other, I took my time and we finally we made it to our first camp site, Hut 2.