Cameroon

We spend Christmas in Cameroon with Sara’s parents and had a great time. As this was our inaugural trans-African flight it was rather educational. We learned that flying anywhere within Africa is both A) very expensive and B) very indirect. Either airline choice we had required an overnight. We chose to fly Ethiopian Airlines whereupon we also learned that one reason people fly Ethiopian is that they are very lax on their luggage restrictions. Therefore, the vast majority of passengers had way more than their allotted hand luggage. Combine this with only moderately helpful flight attendants and you have quite an interesting scene! We left Lilongwe at 1:30pm, flew southwest to Lusaka, Zambia to pick up more passengers, flew northeast to Addis Ababa, arriving about 9pm. It then took at least 2 hours of hassling to actually get our hotel voucher. The next morning we flew west to Doula, Cameroon. From Doula we had a 3 day drive to Garoua where the Davises actually live. Despite insanely bad roads and not feeling particularly well, we did enjoy seeing some of the countryside (though not enough I would choose to do the drive again… ever!) Once there, however, we had a lovely and relaxing visit and Karis got to spend lots of time with her grandparents and we enjoyed being back in West Africa which has a totally different feel than Malawi and Southern Africa.

Addendum: for this trip we could have flown Ethiopian or Kenyan Airways for only about $50 more. After now having flown both we highly recommend paying the little extra for Kenyan!! At the end of the day getting there is goal and they are both adequate but we were much more comfortable on Kenyan... but then again, they have had two crashes in West Africa in the last 7 years so maybe they aren't the best choice for West Africa...