How to get there: Visa buraucracy:
In order to travel to Cameroon, from most countries you need a Visa.
They do not provide Visa on entry, there is no way you can do it in advance
using the Internet (2023). For me (living in Norway) the nearest place that
could issue a Visa was in Stockholm. I briefly looked into getting the Visa
by regular mail, but this seemed risky with only a couple of weeks before
departure. Also, there was no easy way to pay, the payment had to be exact
in Swedish currency, you needed to arrange for return (prepaid) mailing back
etc. Thus, I quickly decided that the safest way would be to travel there
on a one-dsy trip burning some frequent flier milse.
Much better! I received a response within 10 minutes of sending my 3rd. message.
Heidi suggested that she could join me and we converted the planned single day
Visa trip into a 2-day Stockholm city visit.
After arrival in the Stockholm airport (Arlanda), we just took a taxi to the
consulate address as we had no idea where it was located. When the taxi stopped,
I was mildly concerned, nothing like Stockholm here,
a small dirt road in the
countryside with an old barn. We next located an
old Swedish farm house that
indeed was the consulate. A Swedish woman received us, went upstairs and returned
within 2 minutes with the visa now
stamped into my passport. She told us that she
had never been to Cameroon.
With this task taken care of, we enjoyed the rest of the day and most of
the next visiting Stockholm, the consulate was located about 30 kilometer north
in some small farming community.
In the airport in Cameroon, they now advertise that a better? system with
electronic visa is
about to be implemented. Perhaps travel will be easier
in the near future.
Travel to Cameroon:
I left Bergen around 1600, travelled to Oslo and boarded Ethiopian to
Addis Abeba (with a stop in Stockholm). I had put in a very low bid for upgrade to
business that was granted. In fact, the business class cabin was virtually
empty. The flight landed 20 minutes ahead of shedule. In Addis Abeba I met
Deividas for the first time, he had been on Ethiopian from Frankfurt.
The flight to Douala made a stop in Malabo, we were less than 20 kilometer from
Pico Basile, a world top 100 by prominence. Too bad that the government of
Equitorial Africa makes it extremely expensive and complicated to visit. The summit
has a road to the top, so really no mountaineering aspects at all. I have decided
to NOT visit this place for these reasons.
After about an hour we took off for the 20 minute flight to Douala. I breezed through
all the immigration formalities and soon met David (also for the first time). He had
come in from Alaska one day earlier, but lost his bag due to a tight connect
in Istanbul. The bag had now arrived and he was here to collect it.
Pretty humid and at least 30 Centigrade, quite a change from my Sunday ski trip
with 12 particpants (to Ingebjørgfjllet) 3 days ago.
We transferred to hotel Capitol (N04.15144, E009.24234), dinner and early to bed.
Everybody had arrived and we were all set for starting the trip next morning. Our 4 person
group was Deividas, John, Dave and Petter (me).
Route:
The trail starts near the upper end of town in Buea, location
N04.15864, E009.22990, at an elevation close to 1000 meter.
The trail heads uphill to the upper end of the road, this road makes
several bends, while there is a short-cut trail going more directly
uphill. Shortly after leaving the road, the trail that initially runs
directly uphill, makes a sharp bend to the right and runs parallel to
the farming fields below. Next, the trail enters the forest and from
here on, it is hard to get lost. There is essentially only one main
trail from here and all the way to the summit.
Comments:
The next day, we met for breakfast around 0800. A short drive uphill to the
trailhead to meet the our local support. We had 3 porters, a cook and a guide.
This is quite a common arrangemet in Africa and support the local employment / economy.
