The speed boat from Nigeria brought us Idenau, Cameroon, a town founded by German colonialist Ferdinand Scipio in 1897. When the boat came into the harbour, it was quickly entered by three workers who wanted to unload the boat. They also wanted our life vests (tubes of car tires). The vests belonged to the captain of the boat and the two parties nearly got into a fist fight. But after a heated debate things calmed down quickly. Not sure who ended up with the life vests, though.
The unloading that followed proved more difficult than expected because the guys wanted twice as much than what’s usual. After putting Thies’ bike on the shore they left Momme’s bike in the boat and at some stage even pushed it back into the water. But when they realized that neither the captain – who was responsible for paying them – nor us would meet their demands, Momme’s bike was lifted to the shore, too.
We inspected our bikes and they seemed to have survived the trip in good condition. Thies’ bike had leaked some brake fluid onto the brake disc. Apart from that and a few scratches in the side panels, the bikes seemed fine.
In the harbour, we got our Carnet de Passages stamped by the Customs officers but had to wait a long time for immigration. The “Big Boss” was attending a big party that was held 100 meters from the office: Idenau celebrated International Women’s Day enthusiastically.
Once we had our passports stamped we got on our bikes to head to Douala. The region we were traveling through is not the safest: Idenau lies in Ambazonia, a territory claimed by English-speaking separatists who want to break away from the French-speaking parts of Cameroon. We passed several checkpoints and once even had to open all our bags for them to be inspected. A first on this trip, despite the many borders we crossed.
Douala is a big harbour town. Guide books don’t praise it, to put it mildly – but we liked it very much. To be able to just walk through the city center, to stop and speak to people who approach us just felt very good after the tense time in Nigeria.
From Douala, we wanted to go south to Kribi and take a gravel road eastwards, a recommendation of a fellow traveler. But once we got out of Douala’s suburbs, Momme’s bike did what it had already done once in Ghana: The yellow motor warning lamp came on, the bike was not running smoothly anymore. We switched the air filter by the side of the road but the bike didn’t run better. So we changed our plan and didn’t go to Kribi. Instead, we took the road to Yaoundé, hoping to find a capable mechanic there.
The road was beautiful – and compared to West Africa also completely empty. There were almost no cars and no pedestrians on the street that connects the country’s biggest cities.
Yaoundé welcomed us like it welcomes everyone else: with the “I love my country Cameroon roundabout”. Google rating: 4,1 stars. We give it 5.
In Douala, lots of the shops in the city centre were run by Chinese and sold Chinese goods. In Yaoundé, the Chinese community was also very visible.
We jumped at the chance to diversify our diet and had dinner at “Chez Wou”.
The next morning we set out to go to Fred’s Garage.
We had a new hypothesis: The malfunction of the bike could be the result of a clogged fuel filter. The filter is deeply buried below the tank and the bike is not sold in this region of the world. But to our luck, Junior, the mechanic in charge, had already changed the filters on a CRF300 of another traveller.
It did take some time however. Enough time for a downpour to completely flood the streets.
But the sunshine was back soon enough. Thies’ brake disc had been cleaned of the brake fluid. Both our bikes had brand-new fuel filters – the old ones were almost black. We said our goodbyes to the crew of Fred’s Garage. Didier (not pictured) and his wife have created a remarkable place here. You can use their tools to work on the bikes yourself or, like in our case, rely on the expertise of their mechanics. In the end, you pay what you find appropriate. A concept that unfortunately gets exploited too often.
We left Fred’s Garage in good spirit. The bikes felt better and we were having fun riding them – until we got into a traffic jam. Just like the other moto riders, we tried to split lanes to get through. We slowly overtook some taxis on the right side of the road when our way was suddenly blocked by three passers-by. They clearly were not policemen but said something about “documents” and wanted us to get our bikes out of the traffic. We tried to keep moving and stay in the lane, when one of the guys quickly grabbed the key of Momme’s bike and took off with it. After some discussion he was called back by one of his “colleagues”, handed over the key and we were free to go.
The next morning we left Yaoundé eastwards, in direction of the Congolese border.
Unfortunately, the fuel filters didn’t do the trick. Momme’s bike was still not running well. It was lacking torque and speed. The engine did not run smoothly.
Our last stop in Cameroon was Djoum, When we stopped at the local gas station, we were held up by the director of Djoum’s immigration authority – we had to follow him to his office. He took photos of our passports with his smartphone, using the Holy Bible as a weight to hold the pages down – and attempted the most hypocritical scam of the trip so far. He told us that we were safe and this was no place of corruption, before trying to sell us a completely useless, made up document.
From Djoum, we carried on towards the Congolese border town Ntam. And now, Thies’ bike started to run badly too. Time for another round of roadside maintenance. We checked his air filter, switched the pre-filter and poured newly acquired injection cleaner into our tanks – without immediate effect.
The landscape had been beautiful throughout the country. On these final kilometers in Cameroon, it became more rainforest-like. Greener, thicker. We were excited to get to the Republic of Congo – and a bit anxious. Congo’s capital Brazzaville was about 1100 kilometers away. It would be the first city where we could hope to find a good mechanic.