Cameroon - 16 January, 2001

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Travel Distance

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This morning we are in time for breakfast at the mission and we do not keep them waiting.  After breakfast, we pack up our bags and check out as we will be meeting up with the truck once again this morning.  We walk down town, stopping at a few shops on the way - we find one great shop that has lots of excellent traditional artifacts - but they were outside our price league.  We did, however, enjoy looking around as some of the stuff is better then we saw in the museums.

We headed over to the internet cafe.  As it is right next to the Hilton Hotel, where all the people for the summit are staying, we had to give them copies of our passports to get in.  They held them until we we left.  There are police and soldiers everywhere.  We then head up to our usual lunch spot for some ice cream while we wait for the truck.  The town is pretty dead.  Most of the roads are closed and so most of the shops and businesses have closed for the duration of the summit.  We grab an ice cream and watch all that is going on in the streets below.

As we agreed to meet the truck at the Hilton, we head down to the area near the hotel at 1 PM.  The only problem is that all the roads around the Hilton have been closed off.  We are able to walk on most of the streets, but the area right near the Hilton is blocked off, so we cannot wait there.  We head to the shopping center nearby, but only a few minutes after we sit down, we are chased off by a soldier.  We go across the road and hang out under the awning of a bank with a bunch of locals that are standing around trying to gat a sight of what was going on.  We just wanted to make sure that we were in a location where we would be able to see one of the drivers if they walked down to the Hilton to find us (as they could not drive down).  We ate our pack lunch while we waited - we would take turns keeping watch.

At around 2:30 PM, a couple of us go look for a phone booth to try to call Limbe to confirm that they had really left - but what luck, on the way to the phone booth, we run into Rick and he tells us they just arrived and where to go to find the truck.  We wander over there, and hang out while Rick goes and gets our passports from the Gabon embassy.  Around 4:30 PM, we head off to Obala to spend the night.  It is too late to start heading for Gabon.

We get to Obala around 5:30 PM, set up camp and relax for the rest of the evening.  After dinner, we work on our journals and are in bed shortly after 10 PM as we have an early start tomorrow morning.  We have over 25 hours of driving (not including pee and lunch stops) to do in 2-3 days to get to Libreville.