Trip to Limbe

I finally had time this week to sit down and write about my wonderful four day weekend. My friends and I took a great, relaxing trip to the beach town of Limbe. Limbe is located in the Southwest Province of Cameroon and is an English speaking area. I was confused for a second when the waitress at the restaurant asked me in English what I wanted to drink.

Our journey to Limbe was quick. We had to pass through the city of Douala, an extremely busy port city in the Littoral Province. Before passing through Douala, I thought Yaounde was hectic and crowded. However, I think Douala has Yaounde beat in that department. As we entered, we were met with a mass of people walking on the streets, riding motorcycles, and selling various goods. A little passed Douala, we were stopped by a police officer who refused to give my car papers back unless we gave him 1,000cfa. Even further, we stopped on the side of the road to check out a snake being sold to a natural healer (picture). As we kept pushing further towards Limbe we passed many rubber, banana (picture of bananas protected by bags), and palm tree plantations. Most of the plantations are owned by the CDC, Cameroonian Development Corporation, who also provide housing for the plantation workers.

We stayed at the Seme New Beach Hotel in Limbe. It was an excellent choice because they had an awesome beachfront behind the hotel. From the beach you were able to see towering volcanic mountains covered with mist and magnificent vegetation, which included palm trees and various other tropical trees. It was an absolutely beautiful sight. I have plenty of pictures. We arrived Thursday and left Sunday. We went to the beach every single day (well, except Sunday). It was a very relaxing and fun time to be able to swim out past the breaking waves and look back at the scenery. Oh! I also forgot to mention that Limbe has beautiful black sand beaches (it looked more dark brown than black) due to past lava flows of Mount Cameroon.

We visited the Botanical gardens, which had various plant life. We had a delicious grilled fish dinner at night (during a power outage) on the beach. We also took a stroll through the fish market where we saw the daily life of a fishing community. It was quite interesting to see the fishing canoes. They would sail out into the water, catch fish and return with a boatful of fresh fish. I enjoyed watching them roll their canoes back onto the beach by the use of cans (picture). We drove out to the nearby city of Buea. We took a nice drive around and visited the University. We were not able to see Mount Cameroon due to the thick fog. Afterwards, we had lunch at a nearby city, where we ate Eru (a vegetable pronounced arrow) made with palm oil and water fufu made from cassava.

I didn’t want to leave the little town of Limbe. Although, we hardly saw the sun, we had a wonderful time swimming in the beach and enjoying the Southwest Province.