Road Trip!

 An offer was put out a month back to any people in Jos over the summer who wanted to accompany a family of five on their summer holiday to Obudu. With a desire to see more of the Nigerian countryside I gladly stuck up my hand to be included. So at 6am last Saturday morning a group of nine of us embarked on a massive 10-hour trip across Nigeria, crossing state boarders, being pulled over numerous times by the Military, and having to stop to relieve ourselves in the bushes along the way (being weary of snakes in the long grass!). We only had one occasion where we were forced to pay for some incomplete paperwork, which at the time made me furious, but in retrospect was very good going…..I think the fact we were a car full of sweetly smiling white women helped our situation at a lot of check points!

Our first night was spent in Obudu town ship. We found hotel with a double bed to sleep 3 of us girls, a toilet with no toilet seat and a fan which we were promised would run all night on generator, but which turned off at 1230am leaving us hot and bothered and unable to sleep!

The second day we headed up the famous Obudu mountain. It was muggy and overcast at the bottom, but as we drove the 11km up the winding road we entered into fog and fine misty rain. We were literally in the clouds! We wanted to stay up top but to our disappointment, the luxury accommodation was WAY out of our price range (we got a tour around the presidential suite just for fun, which also has a helipad!) at the Cattle Ranch Hotel, but a nice tour guide showed us a little village 5 minutes from the Ranch on the other side of the mountain top where we found adequate rooms for a lot cheaper. By this time I was FREEZING! I never imagined Africa could be so cold, and I certainly hadn’t packed for this climate (not that I had many clothes back in Jos that would have suited the weather anyway!), but considering we were 1600m above sea level, I guess it made sense.  We moved our bags into the hostel (which again has a double bed for us 3 girls, a slightly bigger bathroom WITH a toilet with a seat (horray!), but again it was cold bucket showers and intermittent electricity and generator from 6pm-5am. Fiona and I thought we’d make the most of the colder weather and run down the Obudu Mountain. The Obudu Mountain Race (OMR) is a very famous uphill race which people from all over the African continent come to run once a year in November.  I couldn’t even comprehend running all the way up, but would have taken part in a relay race and offered to do that down hill leg! Well that is until the next day, when I could barely walk my muscles were so sore from the 10km downhill. It wasn’t the length of our run that was the culprit; cardiovascularly I was fine - it was the repetitive jarring motion on my joints that was the killer. The next morning I almost fell over trying to get out of bed, my calves and glutes were in agony. Both Fiona and I walked like we’d been seriously injured for 2 days!  We look the gondola back up the mountain, which was lovely; we had beautiful views for about three quarters of the trip until we were enveloped in cloud once more.

Half way down the mountain...a glimpse through the clouds.

We had sensibly packed a lot of our own food with us, so purchased a few fresh veges and made do with spaghetti and sauce, Indian red curry and a bean and rice meal which was a huge saving financially….and probably safer on our sensitive Western stomachs than eating the local cuisine (no offense intended of course).

The next morning, we had hoped to be able to go for a hike, or at least have the fog and rain clear so we could see where we were staying! But alas it persisted, so our back-up plan was to go down the mountain (which literally has a completely different climate) and spend the day at the Obudu Water-park. I won’t even try to compare the park to the kind we’re accustomed to back home because it loses it’s appeal, and you won’t be able to appreciate how novel it was to visit, but the two metal waterslides and diving boards kept us entertained for most of the day.

We had hoped to visit the Drill Monkey Ranch (a reserve you can stay at and see the massive Drill Monkeys - a cross between a gorilla and a baboon in my opinion!) but one of the bridges on the road to get there had been washed out due to all the rain the previous few weeks and even if they had fixed it in time it was only accessible by 4WD and only one of our vehicles had that capability, so sadly we had to think of a plan B.  We decided to stay one more day, get out of the rain and do some exploring of the neiboring towns in Obudu region. Our tour guide had suggested a visit to a waterfall a few hours away so with time on our hands we drove the 2 hours through the rural African countryside to a small village called Ikom. Asking various locals for directions periodically, we finally found the waterfall and it was gorgeous. We all jumped out of the cars and began snapping pictures. Suddenly we were surrounded by a large group of Nigerian youths (about 9 males) who were telling us to stop taking photos and step away from the edge. After some tense dialogue, we concluded that they wanted money, that they were ‘responsible’ for the waterfall and hence we had to pay to take pictures and walk down the bottom for a closer look. They demanded an obscene amount per head for the tour, which after phoning our original tour guide for advice we bartered down to a semi-reasonable price, then preceded down a small path to the base of the falls. The whole experience was sadly negatively tainted by the uncomfortable and confrontational nature of the youths and that fact we discovered they’d been taking footage and photos of us with their camera phones. But the falls were still worth the visit, even little Isabelle (9 years old) was enjoying herself before she saw a snake and had a panic attack!

Our last night was spent at another hotel in Obudu, this one claimed to have air conditioning in every room (which we later found only worked when they had strong supply of electricity-very rarely!) and generator all night (again it cut out leaving us sweltering midway through the night), but I don’t think there are any laws in Nigeria that prevent false advertising, or if there are, they’re not enforced! The one upside was a huge TV in the main lounge area, which had music videos blaring (in true Nigerian style), so we could have a dance party as we cooked dinner over the gas cooker. I’m still perfecting my butt shuffle, but the nice hotel manager gave me a few pointers J

We rose early to get a good start on the road the next day and only met 3 sets of ‘nail boys’ on the way (men who stop cars with big planks of wood with nails hammered into them) who attempt to find some problem with your car paperwork or claim you haven’t paid certain state taxes . But again we thankfully managed to escape without too much drama. I think it helped that we had a huge ‘Missionary’ sign painted on the truck we borrowed for the trip!