27 months

Last Saturday instead of making a beeline to Batoke, I went a bit farther—to the end of the road in the southwest, as it were. Past Bakingili and the black lava flows of Mt. Cameroon is the small fishing village of Idenao. The place was intriguing to me for no other reason than its place on the map. Idenao is as farthest one can travel by car in this part of the country. Past the ancient, but still quite serviceable, German-built bridge travel by 4-wheeled transport is impossible.

A series of remote villages in the river delta that separates Cameroon from Nigeria are all that exist of human habitation beyond Idenao. From the village it’s possible to book travel on a small boat to the port town of Calabar in Nigeria. The next nearest border crossing into Nigeria by road is some 160km due north at the tiny outpost of Otu, outside of Mamfé. But, as the saying goes, you can’t get to there from here. In the intervening space is one of the oldest and largely intact tropical rainforests left on the planet. It’s also one of the most biodiverse regions in all of Africa. Some 1200 km² of the area is protected as Korup National Park, established in 1986. In many ways, Korup typifies what many think of when they imagine tropical African jungle. So much so that filmmakers chose the area for shooting Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes in 1984.

This nondescript corner of Cameroon boasts another notable landmark: Debundscha. It holds the title of wettest place on the African continent and is the second wettest place on earth. The average annual rainfall in Debundscha is 9 meters and can top 15 meters(!) in particularly wet years. It’s easy to see why; located on the coast at the southwestern corner of Mt. Cameroon, Debundscha lies directly in the path of incoming moist ocean air as it encounters the 4095m high peak. Sure enough, it was raining the day I visited while the rest of the southwest had sun.