Talbot Cultural tours: Korup, Kribi, Douala, and Home

Jan 29th - Feb. 3rd Our journey to Korup was another interesting one. The first leg is a two/three hour bus ride to Kumba, followed by a quick taxi ride from one bus park to another. The tax driver tried to over charge us (of course), but Hev quoted him the correct fare and told him "We've got friends here, you can't cheat us", and they say I'm the mouthy one, one of these days she's going to get me lamped ... From the other bus park, we got a car to do the four hour run up to Mundenba. The road is meant to be really bad, and they put seven passengers in the car, one of whom is basically sitting half under the driver, half on the hand brake. The Talbot's took the back seats in order to avoid such a fate. Once in Mundemba we were met by Genesis' friend Freida. Freida is awesome. She sorted out the Hotel for us, and arranged for motorbikes to take us to the park the next day (and experience she wanted us to have, she said, I thought it was fun but I'm not sure mum appreciated it quite so much...) The park itself is amazing. You enter it via a rope bridge, which was impressive in itself. We didn't get to see much in the way of wildlife, you need to hike further in than our six-hour schedule would allow for, but the range of plant life is extraordinary. The forest in Korup survived the last ice age, it's been a rain forest continuously for millions of years, so there are many plants there that can't be found anywhere else on Earth. After two nights in Mundemba and a day in the park, we headed back to Buea. Special mention has to go to Harry in Mundemba who is the first African we've met who could pronounce "Heather" first time, no probs. He said it was because he'd studied phonetics. Makes sense... We arrived back in Buea in time to go to Figaro's in the evening to meet up with the football club, who presented Mum and Dad with a framed African wood carving, which was very nice of them (thanks guys). The next day we headed down to Kribi, which is a much easier journey (except that the bus company, Central Voyages, pretends to have actual departure times for it's buses, which are of course meaningless. ) Unfortunately, my Mum and Heather were both struck down with 'digestive difficulties', Heather in particular was rather ill, and got to see nothing of Kribi. Dad and I did manage to fit in a trip to see the Lobe falls in between visits to the pharmacy. The falls looked a lot less impressive than when we first came, because it's the dry season now, and the water level is a lot lower. The plus side of this was that we were able to climb right up the falls, and Dad even fitted in a quick dip in a pool amongst the rocks. Mum and Hev both recovered sufficiently to travel back to Douala as planned on Friday (she's well 'ard, my wife). We visited The craft market for another mammoth mask-buying session, then popped into the Pharmacy next door to buy another rabies injection (because we couldn't go a whole dat without a visit to a pharmacy, now could we?). After that there was time for a quick dip the pool and pizza at Saga Africa (the tourist restaurant) before we took Mum and Dad to the airport, and that was it, TCT over. It all went rather smoothly at the end, as well (certainly compared to their arrival...). They staggered exhausted onto the plane, Mum hobbling, her knee having started to give her trouble. So thanks for coming, Mum and Dad, hope you enjoyed your stay, sorry we broke you...