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On 8th April we set off from Cotonou in Benin to Lagos, the capital of Nigeria. We had arranged to rejoin the overland tour in Kano in northern Nigeria. After considering our schedule carefully we decided that we would fly from Lagos up to Kano since the journey sounded boring and time consuming. On arrival at the domestic airport in Lagos we found that there was a flight to Kano leaving in twenty minutes. We frantically rushed around to change money on the black market and buy the tickets. A few minutes before the scheduled departure time Paula and I were running across the tarmac to get to the waiting jet before they pulled away the boarding stairs. Exhausted we rushed up the stairs, the crew closed the main door behind us and before we could find our seats the plane was taxiing to the runway - only in Africa!
1992 Diary - Africa (Part 2)
Gjcmcclurg2005-12-23 14:25:40
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traveled by road down to the next port of Bumba. In Bumba we got together with ten of the others from the trip and arranged to travel by pirogue down to Kisangani, some 400km upstream. The journey was to take around three days so we packed day sacs and some provisions before boarding the pirogue and setting off in the early afternoon. Our pirogue was a fairly large dugout with an outboard to push us up stream. There were no seats or cover from the elements, so it was a tough three days traveling day and night up the mighty Congo. There were very few landmarks on the journey between Bumba and Kisangani so we simply sat back and watch the forest roll by. The nights were pretty uncomfortable as we traveled in the pitch black, trying to sleep on the hard wooden bottom of the pirogue with the occasional shower of rain. A few times we put into the river bank to pick up some fresh fruit etc. and were swamped by young kids swimming around the pirogue in a frenzy of excitement. I guess it is not often they see a pirogue full of western tourists pull up to their little villages.
We landed in Kisangani on 4th May after three days and nights on the river and were pretty relieved to be back on dry land. Kisangani seemed very dilapidated, however, we did manage to find a good restaurant to have a nice thick steak. With the incredible weak Zaire currency running at about 500,000 to the US Dollar the meal set us back several million Zaires! Zaire was another extremely poor country crippled by corruption, the ordinary people seemed to have nothing. After another couple of days drive we arrived at the Epulu Nature Station. A guide took us on a short tour and pointed out some of the unique Okapi, which look like a cross between a Giraffe and a zebra!
From Epulu we took a tour out to one of the forest pygmy villages and spent the night with them. The village was deep in the rain forest and despite the hot sun the forest canopy kept the whole
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See photographs from:
Zambia Gallery
,
Tanzania Gallery
,
Malawi Gallery
,
Kenya Gallery
,
Zimbabwe Gallery
,
Cameroon Gallery
,
Burundi Gallery
,
Botswana Gallery
,
Nigeria Gallery
