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   Depending
upon the route you take out of Bafoussam and where you spend the night you will
start on two different roads in route to Nkongsamba.
Leaving from Dschang the first three miles roll along nicely through the high
country before you abruptly drop
 off the edge of the lush and precipitous escarpment
(Falaise de Foreke-Dschang). Fortunately there is a beautiful new
paved road to guide you down but you want your brakes to be working
well when you start. Prior to 2005 mountain bikers could have used the
route as a trials course. As you drop you can feel the
 temperature and humidity
rise in tandem. Ten
kilometers (6 miles) later you reach the valley floor. Only then can you can
truly relax and flex you hands,
shake out the tension in your arms and rotate your shoulders. The twenty miles of
the Mbo valley floor is very FLAT but it is not without its points of
interest.
 The
first point of interest is more novelty than profound. It would be a long
list to chronicle every thing that is head-carried in Africa. It wouldn't
be too often that you would have to check for a chainsaw, but put it on the
list.
  Coming
from the coast inland there are a series of agricultural zones or belts;
oil palm, banana, pineapple, rubber, teak, cocoa and coffee. These crops
are grow in other places but the yields tend
not to be as high. Starting inland the commodities come in the opposite
order. In the valley we started see a mix of coffee and cocoa. The
man to the right is drying his cocoa beans, in preparation for selling them.
  In
general the coffee bushes seemed to
be producing more to capacity in this area than the cocoa is.
Interestingly, there were bushes in bloom (though not a lot), bushes with green
ponds (mostly) and bushes with ripe
red pods (a few). It is likely that the main picking season for this area
is around the
 first of the year and then a few months after that it will be time
for any coffee blossom festivals. Though I have never heard of one, coffee
blossoms are as frequent as orange blossoms and there are orange blossom
festivals. Out of the valley and ten miles further down the road the
coffee was riper and redder (right bottom).
As much as it is sport to malign the roads of Cameroon, many are in excellent
condition and we saw a lot of road work being done in some areas, especially
between Malong and Nkongsamba. Of course, there is a lot more left to do.
The construction methods were clearly labor intensive. It is even more
clear now that the road constructions workers have been issued bright yellow
reflective vests. On some sections you could see yellow dots along the
side of the road stretching to the horizon.
Nkongsamba is a pleasant and quiet town, with a nice shopping district.
 It
was developed during the colonial period and used to be a terminus of the
railroad that came from Douala. Now all that is left to be seen of this
transportation system is a few sections of tracks embedded around town.
The government is still here as represented by a street of official buildings.
We didn't dare try to photograph them but some of the architecture deserved to
be shared. On style, with oversized cement columns in front, could be
called Cameroonian Federal.
We found slim pickings on restaurants again, but all you need is one. We
were directed to a sign-less door in need of painting, down an alcove, off a
side street, away from the center of town. The single room had four small
tables and a dozen chairs. Our little group took half of each. We
were dubious at first. We weren't even real sure what we ordered, but the
two older men who were the owned/staff the joint went to work with confidence.
When the finished product was served we had big plates with large portions of
fish, rice and salad, and a plentiful basket of sliced French bread. We
left very satisfied.
 Another
big change when we came out of the highlands and drop off the cliff is we left
the Grassfield languages behind and went to a whole new section of the
linguistic tree: Bantoid>Southern>Narrow Bantu> Northwest. Unlike the
Grassfield languages which are believed to have migrated into their areas from
the north, the Narrow Bantu languages are believed to have migrated back into
the area from the south and southeast. The most northern of this is Mbo of
the Lundu-Balong>Ngoe group. This is the dominant language along the
highway to Nkongsamba.
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