Monkey Business

Dear Bloggers,

It has been a while since we last posted, so thank you for your patience.

Last month, we were visited by our good friend Ben Cooper (aka Uncle Ben). I know he had quite an adventure and coped with everything Nigeria had to throw at him. The highlight of his stay, and one of the highlights of the entire year for us, was a visit to the "Drill Ranch" in Cross River National Park (near the Cameroon border). This is a project set up to protect drill monkeys, an endangered species in this part of the world. The drills are kept in large enclosures in proper communities until they are ready to be released into the wild. There was also one family of chimpanzees.

We stayed at this place for two nights in log cabins surrounded by nothing but rainforest and primates - a real oasis. We could have stayed there forever. However, we thought we would never arrive when our vehicle got stuck in the mud and had to be towed out.

The problem is that we are just at the end of the rainy season so some rural roads are in an awful state. There is one place on the Amaudo road that always causes problems and we seem to have spent many hours there recently pushing (or watching other people push usually) vehicles. The great thing about Nigerians is that they never give up! You can't just phone the police or the AA to come and rescue you. Everybody just mucks in and helps out until the problem is solved, although they often expect payment.

So we will be touching down in England on 20th December, which gives us just over five weeks. Therefore, there's probably not much point posting anything to us now. But thank you all for the letters and parcels we have received. They have really cheered us up.

Until next time!