Cameroon - 17 January, 2001

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What a day this will turn out to be.  We are up early at 5:30 AM in order to get a good start on our drive to Libreville in Gabon to catch our flight to Nairobi.  We pack up the campsite and are ready to head off around 6:30 AM.  We drive out of the campsite on our way to Gabon and make it 100 meters down the road when there is a loud metallic sound from the front lower part of the truck - we had broken our right front spring.  After so many rough roads and driving, it goes right here on a nice flat road.  But that is the way it goes.

This had to be repaired, so we slowly drove back into the campsite, where we ended up staying the day.  It is not a difficult repair and they have spare springs on the truck (in fact, it was a bit surprising that a spring had not gone earlier on the trip).  It was decided that we would no longer have time to drive to Gabon, so instead we would fly out of Douala.  Mark and Rick went into Yaounde to extend our visas and to change the flight arrangements.  We all hung out at the campsite.

In mid-morning, we (Jacqui, Jon and Lars) wandered into the town itself to do our cook group shopping.  It is a 20 minute walk along dirt roads.  The market is OK, but we did not have a large selection.  After picking up what we needed we wandered back to the campsite.  Once back there, we prepared lunch for the group - tomato soup with leftovers from last night.

In the afternoon, we took it easy, taking naps in the shade and working on our journals.  But that evening, we had to get motivated to cook the group their dinner - our last time cooking on this trip.  We make leek soup, pasta with tomato sauce, garlic bread and, for dessert, blueberry cheese cake (from a mix).  The cheese cake turns out quite well - we took advantage of the refrigerator they had at the campsite.

After cleaning up, we took it easy and went to be early.  Tomorrow we are on our way to Kribi, where we will spend our last few days in Cameroon on the beach.