Lake Oku

Today I took a trip to visit Lake Oku with Simon (who works for Belo Council) and Anita (who works for BERUDEP), we took motorbikes up the mountain, an hour long scramble that was a bit hair-raising in places; it would have been far more dignified and environmentally friendly on foot or horse, but I’m not sure we could have bared the searing sun for any longer than an hour.  Lake Oku is a volcanic crater lake and the crater rim is surrounded by dense virgin forest – more a temperate forest then tropical.  Here in the North West of the country we are in an area known as the ‘Cameroon Highlands’ which, because of the altitude, is much cooler (and wetter) than the hot, tropical plains of the south.  Apart from the banana and mango trees, this area can sometimes resemble Wales or Scotland, especially during a downpour!  Once we arrived at the edge of the forest we began an hour long trek to the lake, a really nice walk through the cool forest path, with an amazing background track of birdsong and monkey yells, all of which remained invisible.  Eventually we emerged out of the forest, onto the rim of the crater, the bottle-green lake appeared before us, eerily still and quiet, a perfect circle with the forest edging around and not a single building or person to be seen.  Lake Oku is considered sacred by local people and nobody will fish or swim in the lake, hence the complete absence of life.  It was lovely to finally find some peace and quiet in Cameroon, the country that never sleeps!

~ by petercarr on April 24, 2010.