Thursday 17 April 2008

The road to Mundemba

7th of April 2008.
To get to Korup National park you must first travel to Mundemba via Kumba. We set off for Kumba at 10a.m along a road which straddled round mount Cameroon to the north, it is due for completion in 2011 (it is being funded by the E.U). We sped along in the land cruiser and made it to Kumba in one hour, Mr Orock assures me it used to take four. Kumba seemed like a tranquil little place with dirt roads harbouring the biggest pot-holes i've ever seen in my life. We traversed through them and stopped at a supermarket to get esssential provisions, apples, buscuits, water, sweets, snickers, more buscuits and one heinekin and a cigarettes (jungle food). I was very excited when we headed to the bus station to get a car to go to Mundemba, the mouth of the jungle.

The bus station was a frenzy of mad-faced men shouting place names in my face, people dangerously over-loading the boots of their cars, music pumping from a distorted speaker and little girls selling pineapples perched on their heads. I felt pretty alive. We quickly found an old toyota to take us there for 6000CFA and soon our belongings were being stuffed into the boot of the car with what seemed like a lot of extra luggage. Chris, Sofie, Berit and I tried to alll get in the back but our friendly driver Eric had other ideas. It was Chris and Berit, another man and his boy and shall we say, a large lady in the back. In the front there was Sofie and i, a woman who had the audacity to fall asleep on my already cramped arm and our driver Eric. 9 people!! Shocking, but that's the way it's done here.

We rolled out for the four hour drive and i immediately became claustrophobic, i eased this tension in my by cracking hilarious jokes like "are we there yet?" Now i've been in a car with nine people before but only for five minutes on the short ride up to the Buitingi school. After one hour in the death machine i actually began to fear getting deep vein thrombosis, it was an absolute nightmare. Only three hours to go.

We rolled into a small village amusingly named Ekockdu Titi and stopped for fuel. We fell out of the car feeling like the victims of some heartless people trafficing cartel and i did one of the least dangerous things i did that day; had a cigarette in a garage. We stood around desperately trying to massage a sembelance of life back into our bums. Eric assured us cheerfully that were was just one hour to go. I though to myself, this jungle better be beautiful.

The road to Mundemba is a sorry, pitiful dirt track aspiring to be a road. Cars drive along it but i wouldn't grant it road status. It's a charlatan pretending to be a road. A lorry learnt this all too well when it had become stuck in a massive mud-hole. We jumped at the chance to fall out the death mobile and massage our bums once more. We watched as the poor sap toiled to become liberated from the thick, golden goop. I felt pretty far from home until i seen a guy wearing a soundgarden t-shirt! That snapped me back into reality.

Once again we were off and it started to rain quite heavily so the road became even more treacherous. We finally rolled into Mundemba in just under four hours and went straight to the Korup vistors centre. We were told to wait for the chief who would be with us shortly.

Chief Adolf, yes, that's right, seemed an officious man who'd seen the likes of us before, "these white people are always rubbing there bums" he probably thinks to himself. We went through costs and he gave us his much rehearsed speech about the many endemic bird, simian and tree species in the park. We arranged for one porter and the mandatory guide. I noticed he kept eyeing me suspiciously as we chatted, i realised later that i had sun-burn on half my face and i had bad truck drivers arm, the final indignity of a tortorous drive. We'd stay one night in the boseme cafe in Mundemba, head to the jungle which was 8KM away early in the morning and stay one night there, then return the next day and stay in Mundemba one more night. OK let's do that then. Eric said he'd pick us up in the death mobile when we were ready, he was to make the journey back to Kumba a furher six times before he seen us. A thought i couldn't even entertain, my bum feeling the way it was.

We were dropped off at our hotel which was very clean but the barhroom smelt of nightmares. Our guide Joseph came to meet us and we chatted about what we can aim to see in two days and one night in the jungle. He then took us for some more provisions of pasta and onions and sauce. He said he'd bring the pots. Before bed we were prepared a delicious feast of rice, chips and a hot tomato sauce by our chef Tobias.

Tomorrow i go to the jungle.....

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