The crossing into the Extreme North of Cameroon (Banki) was problem free, in fact possibly the easiest so far. The car from Nigeria dropped me off on the Nigerian side, a bike then swept me through the backstreets to the Cameroon side avoiding all the formalities.
I then had to walk back to the Nigerian side and complete the formalities, but no money changed hands, and the guy in the Nigerian office even filled the form in for me, apparently my English was so bad he didn’t hold much hope for my handwriting.
I wasnt going to admit it here, but I fell for a stupid trick carried out by one of the money changers. I planned fairly well and only had a thousand Naira (4 quid) left when crossing, meaning I shouldnt lose much to these people and their bad rates. This ingenious chap had switched the divide and multiply buttons on his calculator, with some clever tricks and me missing out on some extra zeros, he fleeced a whole one pound fifty out of me. I didnt lose any sleep over it but lucky I wasnt changing more! (Come on Andy keep it tight, that was slack).
The bus on the Cameroon side was a welcome change, full of nice cheery people, happy to greet me to their country. The bus took me to the nice leafy town of Maroua which is to be my base while I explore the rather hot Northern part of Cameroon.
