3 Countries in 2 Days

After leaving Niamey we stopped by the village of Koure, found ourselves a guide (compulsory) and headed off into the girrafe park. It was great, we hadn't gone far at all when the guide spotted one munching away on an acacia tree, then another and a little further away a mother girraffe with its baby. Wonderful. We decided to stay in the park that night and after putting out our sleeping bags settled down to watch the sunset.
A long day followed, too long infact and a lot of it on piste road (pot holes as big as a house and sandy, gravelly corrugation) but we made it to Maradi as planned, completly exhausted, with no energy to even complain about the cockroaches in the bathrooms!
Rested, we set off to Zinder, again alot of piste but less km's, so we made it to Zinder with some of the afternoon left. A guide immediately sprung upon us and announced that today was a special day in town, the opening ceromony of a festival was taking place and the Sultan of the town and his ministers would be in attendance...and the highlight - a blind competition! Whatever that entailed we had no idea but we all hopped on the back off moto-taxis and wizzed off.
A huge crowd was already gathered when we arrived with many offical looking poeple in great outfits sitting down listening to a man giving a speech to the local TV cameras.
Then the main event.....5 blind people, from of a very large group of blind people, were led into the middle of the area, told to kneel down in a large circle and when they were all positioned correctly a live chicken was thrown in to the middle of them, the 5 blind people then frantically tried to catch the chicken, one man caught it almost immediately (the winner being the one who catches it first) The crowd then errupted into loud laughter as the four others were busy scraping around on the ground still trying to catch it.
I thought I had seen a lot of things already on this journey but that, well that just topped it all!!!!
We then had a guided tour of the palace of the Sultan before sunset, then sorted out some necessties - buying fuel, changing money into Nigerian Niara, stocking up on water...
Next morning we set off to the border town of Diffa, where we stayed the night amid cockroach infested bathrooms and lizards to wake us in the morning!
So to the border. An easy exit from Niger and 20 metres further on an extremely friendly welcome into Nigeria. We gave Pierre a break from being translater for a while and enjoyed being able to chat in English. The border was quick and painless and we were not even asked about the Lasse Passe for the vehicles. So with confirmation from them that the road onwards was good all the way to Maidaguri we headed off into Nigeria.
Well the good road turned very quickly into an absolutely terrible road....a sandy bumpy track became thick sand with occasional streams to cross and 3 hours and only 30 km's later we made it to the tarred road.
I have never felt so exhausted trying to ride the bike through sand like that - I could have wrung my t-shirt out with all the sweating! The bikes are too heavy for such conditions...and my legs are too short to push myself out when I get stuck!!
But another challenge overcome and we found our hotel in Maidaguri....a rather hilarious totally un-renovated or un-touched place since the early 70's.
After some money and currency dealings the next morning (its impossible to use Mastercard anywhere in Africa, even with banks displaying MC signs and there are limited Visa ATM's) we sped off to the border at Banki to cross into Cameroon.
We got stamped out of Nigeria with no problems but with no Visa in our passports for Cameroon we were escorted to the police station and told that we would have to stay the night in Banki and then be police escorted to the next large town in the morning as it was getting late and not only would the visa office be closed but they could not guarantee our safety if we continued!
So we holed up in a campement, ate some rather awful chicken and played cards to keep our spirits up and hoped morning arrived sooner rather than later.
Which it did, so we collected our (very serious) police escort and drove with him all the way to Maroua.
Passing through great scenery along the way....mountainous and green.
At the immigration office, after being told we had insulted the Cameroon people by arriving in the country with no visa, we waited a few hours until we paid up and got the stamp.
After all this excitment we thankfully checked into the nicest hotel we have stayed in all trip.....monkeys and Ostriches in the garden, a swimming pool, a great restaurant and bar and a huge en-suite room for 4 for the bargain price of 7 euros per person! Yes!
Not to be too idle though we hooked up with a guide who chatted with us about an itinerary for the next couple of days if we stayed in Maroua.
We all agreed to a visit to a village amongst the Mandara Mountains, Rhumsiki and a days visit to National Park Waza.
We have had a great day today (thurs) at Rhumsiki, a beautiful place, surrounded by huge volcanic rock formations and in the village we met lots of the locals; potters,weavers. The highlight for me was meeting the village fortune teller/witch doctor who told our fortunes using a pot of sand, some carefully placed stones and a live crab thrown in on top. We each asked one question of him, he spat a few times on the crab, asked the crab our question, threw it in the pot and waited....a moment or two later he took the crab out of the pot and listened to the crabs answer....all i can say is that was one hell of a wise crab.
So tommorrow we are off to Waza to see some big game and then Saturday we will continue south through Cameroon. Next stop the town of Garoua, then N'Gouandere.
with love to everybody....xxx