Tuesday 15 April 2008

14th April 08

Date: 14th April 08
Location: Abeokuta, Nigeria
Weather: Hazy blue skies, sunshine intermittently, and really humid. 38°c
Status: All motoring along really well, good progress made in a dangerous place.

Early start again before all the rest of the crew, went for sort run to the end of the golf course and back as I was advised by the Major not to go outside the limits of the complex…fair enough all taken on board!

Got back and still no one up so decided to cook myself some soft boiled eggs and prepare the hard boiled eggs for everyone for the drive ahead. Made a superb brew of fresh coffee and finally the first head appeared from the tents around me! Only an hour later than planned. Finally everyone was ready around 7.30am and then I remembered that we had to print out a whole load of passenger manifests ready for the police/military checks ahead, so I headed off into town to find an internet café to print them out successfully returning to the rest of the gang an hour later.

Hit the road and again were surprised by the quality of the roads we had compared with what we’d expected according to the itinerary we had! The landscape changed from fairly flat and grassy to hilly, rocky but lush and very jungle like. The tropics really felt like they we’re all around and we drove for a few hours until we came to the next town and obviously the next police check. Of course now we’d printed out the manifests and so no one asked for them!

Pulled into a small town called Owo and went straight to the police station to ask where the best place to camp would be and were told the First Molac Hotel on the edge of town. Made our way there and they wanted $50 a night for a room!!! So after some comms with the locals I managed to barter free accommodation for the camping on the car park and we decided to treat Maggie and Brandon to a luxury night in the hotel and we’d all split the costs.

Made our way to the internet café to find it closed so went upstairs to the restaurant and left as they had no food available!

End of day location: Owo, Nigeria
Distance covered: 354kms

1 comment:

jazzy said...

I have found the tone of language employed by the Afritrekkers both offensive and patronising.

With use of the words "the dreaded country that is Nigeria" you clearly have no respect for Africa or Africans; you seem to be on one big jolly.

To revel in withholding money from some of the poorest people is terrible and I find the fact that you were laughing at fruit sellers; people who are struggling just to make enough to live quite astonishing.

To use the “charity card” for things you could easily afford is abusing the good nature of Africans and makes mockery of your supposed objectives.

At one point you had the gaul to point to other tourists and laugh, at least they know they are just there on holiday.