Cameroon Next Month (March 2020)! (1 Viewer)

Hi All,

A bit 'last minute' but I suddenly have extra holiday time to fill...

I'm planning to go to Cameroon for the first two weeks of March, with 15/03 being my cut-off date for leaving the country. Jose Ramon found a few companions on BF when he went to Cameroon a couple of years ago (see previous thread), and having corresponded with him (thanks Jose!) I've always been keen to try to emulate that successful trip!

Benji, the main man in Cameroon, is available to lead and is currently working out an itinerary plus costs.

I'm proposing to essentially stay in the south and cover key forest areas for obvious key species, with plenty of stops along the way to break up the travel. Key sites currently are: Sanaga River, Campo, Mount Cameroon, Mount Kupe, and Bamenda. I have some flexibility regarding sites, key species, dates, trip duration, level of comfort etc.

See https://www.cloudbirders.com/be/download?filename=HENDRIKS_Cameroon0405_2016.pdf, for example, for details (thanks Henk!)

Would be great to hear from anyone who is up (at short notice) for what sounds like a fairy basic and challenging, but extremely rewarding trip!

Cheers,

Tim

Hi Tim,

I am potentially interested, depending on the cost. I too have been looking for a birding trip for late winter after prior plans fell through. It would be my first time in Africa but I have traveled a lot in South and Central America and some in Asia and Australia. I would be pretty open to whatever you decide with regards to the itinerary and don't mind basic accom.

Let me know when you hear back from Benji,

Avery

I was on Benji and Jose’s trip. Is Mount Kupe certainly open, as it wasn’t when we went? What is the current advice regarding Cameroon? PM me if you have any questions.

The British advise against all travel to the English-speaking areas (Mt Kupé and Bamenda, maybe Mt Cameroon is still just about "necessary travel only"). See: https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/cameroon

The Dutch travel advisory is a bit less restrictive: "don't travel" to the North-Ouest province (everything around Bamenda, which is "necessary travel only"), but they also strongly advise not to travel to Sud-Ouest (e.g. Mt Kupé).

Things are really only getting worse in western Cameroon it seems. Birdquest couldn't get to some of the western sites last year either.
I think you run a good chance of not getting past a checkpoint (there were plenty of those four years ago, when only the north was a no-go area).

I was actually on Henk's trip. If you still decide to go: for Ngaoundaba/Benoué (which are still "safe"): ditch the train and go by plane! It takes really long and we were exhausted by the time we got to Campo Ma'an...

Thanks for this input Xenospiza! And same to WP above, who I've PM'ed. Poor Cameroon...

From what I've read, I'm half-expecting Bamenda to be off limits, but hoping we'll be lucky with Mt Kupe being in a 'border-line' zone. I've asked Benji what the current score is regarding access. Hopefully the NL assessment is more correct than the UK one!

Great tip regarding that flight to Benoué. It's not on my proposed itinerary, but may become so if other sites get scrapped!

I'll keep posting 'progress reports' here as it clearly of interest to a few folks...

Tim.

This may be of interest to me as well- would be interested to see what the final cost and dates are, as I may be able to carve out some time from work for this.

PM sent ForestJ