Moffy is a bad boy

Driving back from Obudu, not looking forward to another 7 hours in “Da Box”, we drove in the rain forest and quite fast we had to abandon our little sweet van we grew fan of. The smell of old sweat and fine red dust, kinda grows on you… We ran into a little bit of a not so very good road, and the Police Pick-up came to the rescue, as we got to play cops and robbers, standing in the back of the pick-up, hair blowing in the wind. Now I really know what a SUV is really for, and capable of, contrary to the ones you see in my Country of Milk and honey.

We were dropped somewhere in the middle of the rainforest, tropical fruits surrounding us, and slowly we were being drawn into the woods. Inside the woods, they have build what they call Canopy Walk, a walk in the trees. It was build by Swedish engineers, and serves no real purpose except the fact you can walk in them :-). After a 30 minutes walk we came at the end, happy we could go back down (it was moist and hot, we were dripping sweat all over the place), and then they told us that there was a problem. We could not descend at the end of the Walk and had to go back all the way. The guy acted genuinely surprised, but when we got back, I heard that it has been like this for the last 3 months, and that everyone knows about it... But than, who's complaining...

A little further inside the woods we met up with our monkeys friends. The drill monkeys and chimpanzees live in a habitat in the rain-forest that is surrounded by electric wiring. They are extremely well taken care off, and are far away from any tourist attraction possible. Now, these drill monkey and chimps can be a little dangerous, so it’s good that we were on a different side of the fence. So then Hugo, our Mexican friend, came to tell us: “Guys… don’t panic, but the electricity is down.” I can tell you… we were slightly outside of our comfort zone…. Moffy, the Alfa Male, on the left, is quite a funny guy. The first time he came out he threw a stick at us, over the fence, making a lot of noise and acting cocky. The second time proved a little less reassuring, as he picked up a rock and launched it with all his power in our direction and missed my head by 25 cm. Life-insurance… always good to have when you need it.

From there we had a walk in the forest, at which time I saw a snake 20 cm next to my hand. So I asked the guards about this snake and the panic in his eyes as well as the statement: Is is a very dangerous snake, mister, as our CDS representative running away, didnt quite help in the feeling safe department. But the trip… oh my God, beautiful, and climaxed at a small waterfall, where obviously some of us had to jump in and fight the power of storming water. Water slightly under body temperature, felt great, and we kinda cleaned up a little. By the time we were back to the van, we were almost dry...
Working on the next work blog as ... we had a meeting with a guy this morning who started his own little hotel, he worked for Total for 17 years, he has 12 rooms in a building he is leasing, and he needs 2 full time filled to pay for the generator fuel only... He is extremely motivated and is focused on the right things ... ;-) Hollis is the name... and vision is his game...