The flight to Cameroon (with a quick stop in Libreville) was on time and despite waiting for my backpack for over thirty minutes, it was still just after 9pm when I exited the terminal. My old friend from our previous Cameroon trip, Benji, was waiting for me in the damp heat and escorted me to his car – the same one we used three years ago but with the addition of a few new scrapes and noises. It was a short drive to the Foyer du Marin hotel – also the same one we used three years ago. After a quick chat about the itinerary, Benji left me to have a snooze.
I was up before dawn, had a quick shower and packed up to be ready at 6am. Benji picked me up on the hour and we visited a boulangerie for a breakfast sandwich and some on-the-road snacks. Another friend of Benji’s was going with us to Bamenda – she and Benji were attending a funeral there together. Before getting completely out of Douala we had a quick stop at a marshy bit where a bunch of Common moorhens, Common greenshank, Northern grey-headed sparrow and African jacana were noted. Then it was a long road through Manjo to Dschang where we stopped for lunch. Interesting birds we picked up along the way were African pied hornbill, Brown-throated wattle-eye, African harrier-hawk, Vieillot’s black weaver and Yellow-mantled widowbird. After lunch we continued to Awing where Benji wanted to visit a small lake. Unfortunately, a bridge got washed away and all we could was walk along the dirt road to the bridge and back. Birding here was still good in the early afternoon though with Evergreen forest warbler, Square-tailed saw-wing, Orange-tufted sunbird, Scaly francolin and Mackinnon’s fiscal all making an appearance. The road to Bamenda is in a shocking condition and despite it being only about 300kms from Douala, the actual drive took us about seven hours. Considering Bamenda is a city of over 300,000 people and the capital of the North-west region, it’s really a disgrace that the local government has allowed the only access road to deteriorate to such an extent. Finally in Bamenda, I got checked into the Manjong hotel (or Blue Pearl hotel, depending on which signpost you read). Now at about 1200m a.s.l., there was a major reprieve from the stickiness of Douala and the climate was actually very pleasant. Benji left for his own accommodation while I settled down to a quite pleasant dinner of steak and chips before getting into bed. There are no mosquito nets, fans or air-conditioning in the rooms, but since I didn’t see any mosquitoes enter the room after dusk, I left the balcony door open until after dinner. Even after closing it for the night, it was not stifling and in the early morning hours I pulled the blanket on the bed over me as well – a far cry from the incredible discomfort we experienced three years ago camping out for two nights in the lowland forests of Korup National Park on the Nigerian border.
Benji arranged with the chef to have an early breakfast and despite not having proper milk to go with my coffee, the bread and croissant were fresh, the omelet well-seasoned and the watermelon crisp – a proper start to the day. The main centre of Bamenda lies in a bit of a bowl, surrounded by green hills. We drove back up the road through the suburb Upstation towards the village of Baba II – really just a collection of subsistence farmers and huts strung along a dirt road leading up into the hills. A landslide prevented us from driving all the way to a forest patch and left us with a 3km walk just to get there. Birding along the road was good though: Northern double-collared sunbird, Black-crowned waxbill, Chubb’s cisticola, West African swallow, Little, Yellow-necked and Yellow-throated greenbuls, Western tinkerbird and Green-headed sunbird among others all made it onto the list before we reached the forest. Inside the forest it was initially quiet and we only got Yellow-billed turaco and African emerald cuckoo calling. But a little deeper things got more interesting and we picked up Naked-faced barbet, Western mountain greenbul, fantastic views of Ruwenzori hill babbler, Western black-headed oriole and Elliot’s woodpecker. During a short rest for some sardines, rolls and pawpaw, we also added Grey apalis, Bannerman’s turaco, Yellow-spotted barbet and White-bellied elminia. With heavy thunderclouds threatening we started heading back down but didn’t quite make it out dry. Luckily it was just a brief shower and the sun was out again by the time we reached some corn fields below the forest. A good look at one of the weavers confirmed a Bannerman’s weaver and later, while waiting for the guestbook to arrive, I got a fleeting but decent glimpse of a pair of Red-faced crimsonwings. Benji and his brother Lazarus, who joined us for the day’s walk, shared some raffia palm wine while we waited for the guestbook and this also gave me a good rest before the long walk back to the car. It was around 1pm when we started heading back and with the sun out in force and me not having put on sunscreen earlier that morning (thinking we’d be in the forest all day), I got a bit of a tan. We were back at the car at 2pm and then it was another hour and half back to the hotel. I was back barely half an hour before it started pouring again and then it rained until early evening. Since dinner options were rather limited, I had steak and chips again.
After another early breakfast, we left for a short drive to the Mankon sacred forest on the north-western outskirts of Bamenda. As Benji had to attend the funeral today, his brother Lazarus and a local guide, Richard, also joined us – Benji would guide me until 10am when he had to leave and Lazarus and Richard would stay with me for the rest of the day. The forest patch is rather small and since it’s a sacred area in the local fondom, there is currently no access to the interior of the forest. Instead, a track skirts around the edge for about two kilometres. It’s on a hill side and fairly open so it’s quite easy to spot a lot of forest-edge birds. We had a number of the usual forest species but bloody Common bulbuls dominated the scene and every first, second, fourth and fifth bird you looked at, was a Common bulbul. Even so, we had great views of Pale-fronted, Grey-headed and white-breasted nigritas, White-chinned prinia, Guinea turaco, African blue and Black-and-white flycatchers, Blue-throated brown and Copper sunbirds and Western tinkerbird. We returned to the car just after 10am and Benji dressed up to leave for the funeral. Lazarus, Richard and I had a bit of a rest on the steps of the Mankon museum and ate sardines on rolls. Around 11:30 we walked back on the same track. Unfortunately neither Lazarus nor Richard were birders so it was left to me to do the spotting and identification – not easy in unknown territory. However, a flock of small birds with brilliant red heads was unmistakably Red-headed quelea and this delighted Richard – it was apparently a new bird for their local bird list. We had heard and seen a few other birds by the time we reached the end of the track but nothing new that I was able to ID. We rested for about ten minutes before turning around but barely made it out of the clearing where we sat when it started to rain. Struggling to keep camera, notebook and binoculars dry, we rushed back to the Mankon museum, and just as we got into the car, absolutely soaked, it stopped raining. Richard and Lazarus dropped me off back at the hotel where half an hour later, it started raining again. I spent the afternoon drying clothes and shoes and typing up the bird list. Cameroon had so far produced 19 new species for the year and my Africa count for the year was up to 939.
Today was a bit frustrating. First, Benji and Lazarus was an hour late picking me up as some guy had parked them in at their accommodation and couldn’t be found until almost 7am. By the time we reached the Sabga hills it was already past 8am and the twenty minutes we spent looking for Neumann’s starling was fruitless and did not yield anything new. The road from Bamenda to Ndop was as crap as the other side of Bamenda. Two detours through some thick mud around broken bridges ate up another twenty minutes. Outside of Ndop Benji started to struggle getting the car into gear and this necessitated another half an hour in Ndop to fill up hydraulic fluid. Then a very hilly road up the slopes of Mount Oku forced us to stop twice to keep the engine from over-heating. By the time we reached the top of the climb, it was already past 11am and the most productive part of the morning was gone. But now at least we reached a tarred road that wound down the slopes to Elak and Oku. We were in fantastic Afro-montane forest wreathed in mist, reminding me much of Bwindi and Nyungwe forests, and Benji and I got out to walk and bird along the road. It was reasonably quiet though and the only bird of note we saw was Black-collared apalis. We had a few sugar balls and bananas for lunch before walking down a track to Lake Oku – a beautiful natural lake nestled in the foothills of Mt Oku at about 2200m. The trail down to the lake was quiet but on our way back up I spotted a wattle-eye and this one didn’t have a white wing-bar – it was a Banded wattle-eye – one of my target birds! In the next ten minutes we also saw Black-billed and Preus’s weavers and then also a Mountain robin-chat – another target bird. Back at the top of the trail we rested at a construction site of what might be a guesthouse in future. We got to the car just as it started raining and then drove down towards our accommodation at King David’s guest hotel in Oku. Definitely a step down from the Manjong hotel: the room was bare cement, I could feel the individual slats beneath the mattress on the bed, there was no hot water, electricity was questionable and the bathroom rather miserable. But it was peaceful and quiet and the food that was especially prepared for us rather nice. I went to bed early and slept like a log despite the poor quality mattress.
Mount Oku was in one word, disappointing. We had a thin breakfast and left around 06:30, walked up the road, through some farm fields and then entered the forest on the lower slopes. Right on the forest edge we picked up a forest warbler calling, but calling faster than the Evergreen forest warbler we’ve seen and heard several times now – this was a Bangwa forest warbler. Unfortunately this was also the last new bird we saw until we exited the forest. The weather was heavily overcast with a thin drizzle now and then and at this altitude (2100m) – pretty chilly. The track leading up into the forest was steep in places and very wet and slippery. It was also mostly overgrown so not the nicest of climbs. We saw and heard a number of birds but nothing exciting and nothing we haven’t ticked before. Just before reaching the highest point of our walk, Benji spotted a Grey cuckooshrike that was at least new for the trip. The track down was equally wet, slippery and overgrown and I was grateful to be out of it when we reached farmland again. Above the cornfields we now walked through, a Pectoral-patch cisticola was flying and calling and I was finally able to tick this bird (we've heard it several times but I never got a look at it). We walked another fifteen minutes until we reached a road. Benji called Lazarus to come and fetch us and then we spent the afternoon having lunch and watching the rain from the guest house’s verandah. Benji also commented on how quiet the forest was and how different (much more activity) it was in the dry season. I’ll admit that it’s a pretty forest and it has lots of potential but all in all, this was one of those awful birding days for me. Dinner was a very decent hot-pot of fish and potatoes but soon after dinner I went to my room to endure a last night on the paper-thin mattress.
There was plenty of blue sky about in the morning – it promised to be a nice day. We left immediately after breakfast and drove up into the forest by Lake Oku. We took the same walk down to the lake shore as two days ago and spending more than an hour on this 200m walk proved very fruitful. Apart from the usual common birds like Ruwenzori hill babbler, Cameroon, Northern double-collared and Olive-bellied sunbirds, we also got fleeting glimpses of Black-bellied seedcracker, Afep pigeon and Bamenda apalis. At the edge of the lake a Brown-capped weaver kept flitting between his nest and some foliage higher up and a small family of African black duck was very conspicuous. Back on the road we carried on slowly while Lazarus leapfrogged us with the car. A few other common birds were ticked but the only other bird of note was a Yellow-bellied hyliota. Just after 11am we reached the edge of the forest and looked down Mt Oku to the rice paddies of Ndop. We got back in the car and slowly descended the horrible road. It started raining as well and I was endlessly thankful that we were going downhill and not up. In Ndop it was noticeably warmer as we stopped for a local lunch. Thereafter we got onto an even worse road to Balikumbat – Benji’s home village. To call it a road would be unfair to dongas – it really was just a stretch of ground cleared of trees and grass where mad people occasionally drove. It made the Bamenda road look like a four-lane highway. It took us almost two hours to drive the twenty odd kilometers. We first reached our accommodation for the night – the Plateau Resort. In this case, calling it a resort is unfair to miserable dumps around the world. My room was large enough but the floor and single sheet covering the bed were filthy. There was no light (as in, no light-bulbs), no toilet seat, no toilet paper, towel or soap. We got them to wash the floor, change the bed sheet (but I never got another sheet or blanket) and screw in a light bulb. Then we visited Benji’s parents, brother and daughter. As Benji hasn’t seen them for a few months, we spent some time with them before going on an afternoon birding drive around Balikumbat. This was very interesting and we picked up Yellow-mantled widowbird, Striped kingfisher, Variable sunbird, Southern fiscal and a couple of beautiful Marsh widowbirds. With the sun faltering behind some serious thunderclouds, we stopped at Plateau Resort to have a “shower” before visiting Benji’s sister for a delicious home-cooked dinner. Oddly, since they’re at the same altitude, Balikumbat seemed a lot hotter than Bamenda and I was sweating throughout dinner. I think Benji could see I was getting tired so after taking me back to Plateau Resort, he returned to his family.
I slept reasonably well despite the heat and humidity and got up at 5am to sort out all my stuff. Benji was ready at 6am and we left the dump behind us to have breakfast at Benji’s sister’s. She made us a quick omelet typical West African style. With a couple of bread slices and a cup of Ovaltine, we were ready to go. We drove out on a track that gave us access to the slopes of the isolated outcrop on which the Balikumbat palace stood. Benji’s grandmother had a mud-brick house here and to be safe, we left my bag with her while we birded further uphill. There were a couple of large trees, palms and patches of cornfields, giving way to tall grass higher up. Pretty much everything was sopping wet from overnight dew and within two minutes I was soaked from the hips down. African green pigeons started our day’s list and soon the other expected species like Common bulbul, Red-eyed dove, Pied crow, Tropical boubou etc, were also on. Still within the trees, Benji spotted an Oliveback and I was actually able to get a few crappy photos of this beautiful little bird – it was a Grey-headed oliveback and very high up on my list of birds I was desperate to see in Cameroon! A bush-shrike call got us interested in some palm leaves and Benji first thought it was a Many-coloured bush-shrike when he got a glimpse of it. However, the calls didn’t really match. The bird returned a few minutes later but I never got a good look at it – all I saw was a bill that was way too thin for a bush-shrike. The bird flew off again and after deliberating for a good ten minutes, we gave up and left it unidentified. Higher up the hill we got both Senegal and Blue-headed coucals, lots of Red-collared widowbirds and some Orange-cheeked waxbills. We had a fly-by of something that looked like a Seedcracker but it disappeared in the tall grass. As fog started pouring over the cliffs above us, the red and dark grey bird we thought might be a seedcracker returned and sat on top of a small tree about 50m away. All we could really see through the binocs was dark grey and red so I whipped out the camera hoping it would sit still long enough. It did, and when I zoomed in on my camera, I almost dropped it. On the zoomed image, however distorted, it was impossible to miss the small white spots on the flanks of the bird – it was a Dybowski’s twinspot! I yelled at Benji but the bird flew off. Benji had a look at my photo and was equally surprised and happy. What an absolute top-notch find! It would take some doing to unseat this little twinspot as my top bird for the entire trip! Feeling exhilarated we climbed higher still and heard an owl hooting on the cliffs. I scoured the rock face carefully and although I couldn’t locate the owl, I did find a Common kestrel – the mist had started piling in thickly now and it partially obscured the cliff making things a little difficult. We decided to start back and stopped for a few minutes at Benji’s grandmother who offered us some peanuts as a snack. The rural track then took us further into the countryside and Benji aimed for a road that zig-zagged steeply up a hill. The surface became pretty much un-driveable, (not that the track so far should be considered much better) and we parked about a quarter of the way up to walk the rest. We had left the mist on the opposite side of the valley and the morning was starting to get hot. This side of the valley was distinctly drier and the vegetation also more stunted. Birds perhaps more typical of bushveld were common here: Variable sunbird, Whistling cisticola, Yellow-bellied eremomela, Black-crowned tchagra, Tawny-flanked prinia. The road was impossibly steep in places – smashed windscreens next to the road evidenced some nasty mishaps in the past. By the time we climbed about 300m in altitude, we reached the top in baking heat – we stopped long enough to ID a pair of Black-shouldered puffback and then walked back down. It was now almost noon and bloody hot. We paid a quick visit to Benji’s in-laws and then also stopped briefly again at his parents' place to pick up Lazarus and another lady who were going with us to Ndop. The road back to Ndop was still as bad as yesterday and the blue skies above us did not make things more comfortable. The tar road to Bamenda was also still poor but at least the air cooled down significantly higher up in the hills and heavy cloud over Bamenda made it feel twenty degrees cooler than Balikumbat. We reached Manjong hotel around 14:30 and I spent the afternoon cleaning clothes and gear, taking a proper shower for the first time in four days and relaxing a little in the cooler air. I pigged out for dinner and polished a plate of steak and chips and a whole pawpaw for dessert.
My last birding day in Cameroon dawned with heavy cloud remaining after rain during the night. Benji and Lazarus picked me up at 06:15 and we drove out to Mankon forest again, hoping to find something different. We added a few of the common birds but about half an hour into the walk it started raining again and out came the rain jackets. At the turn-around clearing the rain turned to drizzle and then intermittent dripping before stopping altogether. We sat there for about twenty minutes and got some great views of a pair of Luhder’s bush-shrikes. On the way back a very wet oriole turned out to be a Eurasian golden oriole – my first for the year! This, along with an immature Northern puffback were another two new birds for Mankon forest and our resident guide Richard was ecstatic that we’ve given him three new birds in total for his list. I was dropped off at Manjong hotel for lunch and then picked up again at 13:30 to visit hilly countryside in the Babanki area. We drove for about an hour and turned onto a gravel track leading to a radio tower at the top of a hill. After parking in someone’s front yard, we walked upwards for about 2kms, birding along the way. A couple of sunbirds were around (Orange-tufted, Cameroon, Green-headed) and another Grey-headed oliveback. Other than that there wasn’t much to report and as heavy clouds started threatening again, we turned around. The drive back to Bamenda was uneventful and we arrived just before 6pm, in time for dinner.
My last day in Cameroon severely tested my patience. Yesterday, just as we started up the gravel track towards the radio tower, there was a funny clunk sound from the left front of the car. It didn’t re-occur as we carried on up the track so we continued birding. In hindsight, we should’ve turned around and got it sorted out. When we got back last night, mechanics had already gone home so it had to wait 'till this morning. The hotel staff gave me a message from Benji at 7am that he would be there at 08:30. I had a leisurely breakfast and packed up, waiting for him in the hotel lobby at 08:30. No Benji. At 9am I phoned him and was told they had a “small breakdown” and he’d be there in half an hour. We had to be at the airport at 6pm tonight and with seven hours driving from Bamenda to Douala and then Douala traffic to fight through, this was getting tight now. At 10am I was still waiting and getting anxious. Another call to Benji had Lazarus show up at the hotel to re-assure me (didn’t work) and then finally, around 10:45, Benji showed up. I threw my stuff in the car and we got going. But the moment we started driving, I realized the street mechanics had now completely ruined Benji’s car – the prop shaft was actually knocking against the body of the car! We limped through central Bamenda in first and second gear but after about three kilometres it was quite obvious we would never make it to Douala. I was desperate and implored Benji to find a taxi or other car we could take. Leaving me and the car next to the road, he went looking for a car and driver to hire. Lazarus came to wait with me again and eventually, Benji showed up with a private car and its driver, George. George’s car popped gears at higher speeds, struggled to keep the exhaust attached to the body and virtually nothing but the hooter and the radio on the dashboard worked, except for, ironically, all the warning lights. But it was going forward significantly faster than poor Benji’s car and we were on our way. Just outside Bamenda we had some rain but it didn’t really slow us down. We stopped in Dschang for a 7-minute lunch. For real. It was a buffet setup and I scooped some rice and a sauce of unknown origins onto a plate and shoveled as much as I can into my mouth in three minutes flat. From parking and going again, seven minutes had passed. From Dschang we descended into heavy fog that turned into a persistent rain as we entered the steamy lowlands. Time pushed on as we started getting stuck more often behind large trucks and buses; really hard to overtake on the single-lane curvy roads. We reached the outskirts of Douala at 6pm and twenty minutes later came to a dead standstill. It seemed like some congestion at a roundabout (why Africa persists with this method of intersection control that clearly doesn’t work, boggles my mind), had brought everything to a halt and as the minutes dragged on, we had to switch the car off. I was now getting really anxious because the airport was still half an hour away, and who knew how long this was going to take? Eventually we started moving again but with time now approaching 7pm, we again stopped dead. I couldn’t take it anymore and since motorcycles were still zipping past us, I asked Benji to get us one of these. Benji jumped out and managed to flag an empty one. With Benji carrying my backpack and the day pack on my shoulders, we both hopped onto the motorbike and off we went. We weaved through the motionless cars and suddenly we were on open road. Our bike wasn't going to the airport so while balancing on the back, Benji phoned a driver from the Foyer du Marin hotel to come pick us up where the bike turned off. We arrived at the airport at 7am - still two hours before the flight. We landed at OR Tambo before 5am and I was back home before the work day started.
Compared to my other African trips this year, birding in Cameroon was a bit disappointing as I only got 37 new species for the year. But being the peak of the rainy season was obviously a big factor in this - it rained every single day and especially in Bamenda, for long periods at a time. The new birds I did get were fantastic though. The top standouts were Dybowski's twinspot, Grey-headed oliveback, Black-collared apalis and Banded wattle-eye. Benji went out of his way to arrange a good tour. Especially on the last day when things started going wrong, Benji pulled a magic rabbit out of the hat to get me to the airport on time. If you do ever plan a visit to Cameroon, Benji's your man - although birding's Benji's main ticket, he can arrange everything else as well - mail him at benjijayin@yahoo.com.
