It was raining in the morning and I didn’t get to the agence for the bus to Yaoundé before 10am. At La Kribienne I saw a crowd of people and a long line to the ticket counter. It’s less than 200kms to Ebolowa from Kribi as crow flies to the East but apparently the road is so bad that there is no transport and one must go to Yaoundé first…
And I was not in hurry and when I saw the crowd already in the waiting hall and the long line for the tickets I didn’t need much to change my mind and switch instead to one extra night in Cameroon, in Douala.
Next door the Elegance agency had the small busses, 2000cfa. It took us a while to fill the bus but since I was not in a hurry… I had a sandwich, with two hard boiled eggs and a sardine from can in fresh bread.
The road to Douala was uneventful, though we did sit 5 across in the row and it was a bit tight this way. But it was Sunday and the traffic between Edea and Douala was low so the journey took around 4 hours only.
I stepped out of the bus at the agency site, not very far from the Hotel Relais that had rooms for 12kcfa and with a promise of possible negotiation. Problem was no moto driver knew where it was, those who knew demanded 500cfa and it was barely 1.5km away. So I did walk to the hotel on the empty streets and through the half empty marché Congo area, people staring at a strange white guy carrying all his load on the shoulders.
In the hotel it was easy to bring down the price from 12k to 10k, the receptionist agreed immediately. The room had a fan, smelled a bit of humidity, the usual lack of toilet seat and water from the sink dropped directly on the floor and the water outlet was kinda tight so all that floor soon became one big puddle. Whatever.
I went out to search for food, it seemed a Muslim area, there was even a mosque in the hotel. The hotel was in quartier Ancien 3éme – now I was able to call for motos. Around there were quite a few Senegalese restaurants. I bought a piece of watermelon for 100cfa and then sat in one of the small food joints. It’s not easy to throw away food remains, a man told me just to drop in on the street… In the restaurant I had rice with manioc leaves, very tasty, 800cfa. I also had a large bottle of water which I finished onsite without feeling that I did. My body is a sponge.
Since I was again in Douala I thought it’d be a good idea to exchange most of my remaining euros, who knows what rate they offer in other CFA countries, what if it’s lower? So I took moto to Akwa Palace Hotel around which the moneychangers hang out. The area and the street running in front of the hotel were deserted. Sunday. But there was one guy who immediately told me the rate is 670cfa to a euro so I changed €300. He gave me 201kcfa in 5kcfs bills. Nice for the pas de monnaie problem but now I was on a street where immediately a guy materialised asking for money with a thick wallet full of bills bulging out of my pocket. I even considered going back to hotel and dropping most of the money but in the end I didn’t. Instead I walked along the street.
A few days before while coming to Akwa also to change the money I saw a Coffee House. This time I wanted to check it out. But the signs were faded and the man inside told me it’s been long closed. Cameroon does not appreciate its coffee. So I walked back to a patisserie Zepol, one of the few places open on Sunday. If was actually full of people buying up the baguettes and croissants. And my croissant aux amandes was there but also next door there was La Glacier Moderne, a ice cream shop that from outside looked like Polish communism 1978 and inside looked like Polish communism 1983, old school draperies, chairs although quite a posh service and it was pretty full with families enjoying the ice cream. And they had café express. 1000cfa, not bad. What do you say in French to someone who drinks? Bonne dégustation. So I had my “tasting” and the tasting was so good that I had two coffees.
And when I came out of La Glacier Moderne it was raining and it was getting dark and the motos were scarce. I went to Zepol and bought myself croissant aux amandes, they thankfully gave it to me in thick plastic bag. I’m Cameroon free plastic bags are prohibited, you have to pay if you want one. Even water in sachets, although I saw a few people selling it, isn’t there. And the amount of garbage around is noticeably smaller than in other countries.
I managed to get a moto that didn’t try to take advantage of my white ass in the rain and got back to the hotel.
After dark outside the hotel it was rather dark and quiet and although I saw some buvettes not far from it, after the rain subsided I took a moto to rue de la joie in Bali, where at 9pm it was bustling with people and roasted fish. I had a 4000cfa bar and as usual it was delicious.
The next day I took a moto to Buca Voyages guessing that there would be a bus to Yaoundé at 7:30am. I woke up with a slight stomach sensation and a bit of running stomach. It’s the fourth on this trip, so yeah it does happen.
The bus was there, at 7:30am, 6000cfa again for the VIP. But the VIP services sometimes try too hard. I remember in Peru I had to pay “excess luggage” the one time I took allegedly the best bus company in the country. Here they wouldn’t allow me to take my small bag to the bus, I had to put it into the main baggage hold. And they insisted when I refused and the supervisor came and said I cannot keep it under my legs. Okay. That was also the bus that forced us to fasten our seatbelts.
In Yaoundé the service to Ebolowa, 2hrs to the South, was just across the street, 1500cfa, also by Buca Voyages. We waited maybe for 30mins before the minibus filled up, 5 passengers across the row again, we managed.
The road was through the forests and it was very green, punctuated by small villages located in small clearings. Ebolowa I thought was a good town before the Gabon border to stay, about an hour away and with better amenities than the town further down the road: Ambam. I got quickly spoilt and now all I want is shower with running water. No more buckets.
On Jumia Travel I found Arizona Hotel that supposedly had rooms for 7000cfa. Ha. The moto demanded 300cfa for the short ride. Arizona Hotel is possibly now called Garibaldi Hotel and has a owner who reprimanded me for even trying to ask for a discount: the price was actually 10,000cfa for a room with fan. “Are you even discussing 10000?” As if it’s low and in the country where I see people fighting for 200cfa in price difference.
Anyway the receptionist was very polite and she showed me a few rooms. In none of them there was a fan but she promised she would bring a fan. I picked a room with, guess, toilet seat! The water barely flew from the tap, she said it was “pressure”. I asked for a bucket, if the water was flowing like this perhaps it was a good idea to keep a bucket full at least to flush the toilet. And she did promise she would arrange “everything”.
And 15mins later she knocked at my door and said she’d found a room for me where “everything” works as it should and there was even AC. !!!! Of course, for AC I would even forgo the lack of toilet seat, of course in my new room there wasn’t any but in that room water flew properly. Miracles. The room was a curiosity, there was a TV set freshly installed on the wall but not plugged in because in place of the power socket there were bare wires. The AC worked so poorly that in the evening it was cooler in the corridor without AC than in the room with AC. When I told it to the receptionist, who in the evening became a boy, he just smiled and shrugged, there was no controller for my AC.
I went for a walk. Ebolowa turned out to be quite a spread out town, I only walked in the near neighbourhood. There was a truck carrying huge tree trunks parked on the roadside. Perhaps I shouldn’t have tried to take a photo of it in such an obvious way but I was shouted at from across the road. The best way to defuse the shouting is go and talk to the shouting people so I approached the shouting man and he was still shouting that maybe at my side I can film and shoot whatever I want but here I can’t and is it my lorry that I take a picture of it? Oh. And also I should delete the photo. I asked him which photo and I showed him the gallery. Unfortunately I didn’t manage to take the pic of the lorry, it was so long that it didn’t fit my phone camera and it was when I was backing off to capture the whole carriage that they saw me. But the guy barely saw what’s on my screen, he was so short-sighted so I just left him without word. I walked down the road and coming back I of course snapped the lorry. Not the best of pics but what can a man do? Even on that pic as there was a moto approaching, its driver wagged its finger at me that I was taking a photo of himself. Will this ever change? Also, it’s been long since someone blasted me for taking a photo.
A
fter dark I went out to eat something, I haven’t eaten since the sandwich on my VIP bus to Yaoundé. OK, I took also some bitter kola in Yaoundé, those nuts apparently do well for the stomach and they are rumoured to be good for hangovers. In Yaoundé I also finally found jus gingembre. Oh it’s been long. And so many women were selling the juice that I started thinking that maybe I did miss something in Cameroon, perhaps the juice had been all around?
I picked a big 1500cfa bar. I should have known better, a sea fish in the middle of the forest? The fish was old and I could taste it, I didn’t finish it. Even the baton de manioc was old. I drowned the taste with a small Guinness.
The room in the hotel was still warmer than the outside, which was actually quite cool. Rain and some altitude and the clouds do make a difference.
Coming back to Maman 