Before you start this post, you should read part 1 here

ADVENTURE DAY II !

The morning after I slept lay all night in this tent.

How was my night? First I must confess I swapped tents. My tent was originally under a tree and closest to the Forest, right in-front of the forest pathway infact. Lord, I was scared to near-death! Things were creeping on my tent, noise from the forest was going right into my ears, I kept seeing a snake crawl to the front of my tent while I slept! The mind battle was so strong and thankfully, a gentleman agreed to swap tents with me. His tent was much smaller and in the middle of the camp, surrounded by many other tents.

I still couldn’t sleep. Got a shut eye for about an hour and had a terrible nightmare. I lay awake and still for the whole night, it was the first time I’ll be praying all-night in a long time! At about 4:30am, I heard footsteps. My heart skipped. Then the footsteps came nearer and I saw a flashlight. I didn’t move, 101% STIFF. Then it passed and went towards my former tent. I summoned courage and called out “Segun, Segun!”. I got a reply and my heart unfroze! Thank God! It was the guy who agreed to swap tents with me; he was going round the camp to see if everyone was okay (how do people not get scared like that???) LoL!

I finally started to sleep around 4:50am. Too bad I didn’t make it past 20 minutes. Got up and started to get ready for the journey ahead. It was really cold and of course, we were late! People didn’t wake until 6/6:30am ish. So I got up, washed up (no we didn’t get to take a proper bath), got dressed and packed up. We packed our bags and tents, had breakfast and finally our Hilux pick-up van arrived #ForTheWin. The journey was a six-hour hike.

It was my first time ever riding at the back of a pick-up van and boy it was an experience I’LL NEVER FORGET. Talk about rugged! There were sixteen of us on that pick-up. The roads were horrible. The truck kept swerving, twisting, bending, manoeuvring and the common-words on board were “Hold something oh!” and “bend your head!!!”. Haha! My butt-cheeks were near-finished that day! But it was sooooo much fun! Along the line, 4 of us got off the truck and took a bike down instead; It was a bit of relief- more space, but same rugged experience. It was so much fun tho!

We finally arrived our destination. (Actually, the truck couldn’t just pass through some extremely terrible roads, so we had to get down and walk the rest of the way).
Destination: The Beetle Hill. It was named Beetle Hill because the Hill is actually in shape of a beetle (and there are actually lots of beetles on the hill). So we were going to hike up. It took us like a little over an hour to-fro. Going up was easy but coming down was hard! It was really steep so we had to slide down sometime and be really careful climbing down at other times.

Mama we made it up there!?

We came back down safely and the next stop was the Erin Camp (Elephant Forest)! The part we had all been looking forward to>> Following the elephant trail and hoping to catch a glimpse of the mighty mammal. We “trucked” down a bit and then walked to the entrance of the forest. Then we rested for a bit and embarked on our “finding the elephants” journey. The Forest tour guide, Immanuel was really friendly. He explained to us that the Forest was a regenerating Primary Rain Forest (well I’m not at all about that agricultural way of life. LoL. But I learnt something! 🙂). He also explained why the elephants always passed through- because they came in search of nutrients for their body/organs. He showed us this thing and said they usually take up the nutrients from the dead tree (still wondering how an elephant is able to eat from that).

Then he took us down the elephant trail. The elephant had created a pathway for themselves (ain’t that amazing?), we just had to follow-through! And here’s the big-deal>>> there were fresh stumps on the path which indicated that an elephant had only just recently passed through! Fam, we missed the elephant by barely an hour. *crying* Some of us were advocating that we follow the trail down to wherever. Deep in my heart I’m like y’all kidding yea? We’d been walking for so long now and I must confess, the only type of hiking I like is the convenient type of hiking; thank you! LoL!

We finally said goodbyes to the forest guides and walked back to our first class truck. hehe! It was another long, butt-breaking ride back to the camp and by the time we arrived at the camp, 2pm had passed by and going to 3pm. We rushed-rushed, got our bodies and luggage in one piece, and jumped on the bus back to Lagos! Again, Once we were about approaching the start-of-civilisation, I slept off! (actually, it was a needed nap) but not before I had some sandwich, drinks-in-bottle and water. We were all super hungry.
I didn’t wake until the bus stopped- our camp guardians were alighting at Epe. Their names were Clifford and Stella, and they were really nice people who amazingly, loved their jobs! You could literally see the passion and enthusiasm in them. Guess that’s a blog-post for another day…

That’s Stella on the cream head-warmer. Too bad I didn’t get to take a photo with Clifford.

I tried dozing off once more but Chi (a fellow camper) wouldn’t let me; so I had my eyes-wide-open henceforth. Gisting, reminiscing, laughing, munching on so yummy popcorn till we all started saying goodbyes at various stops.
Eventually we got to my stop. Luckily, 5 of us were getting off at the same stop- Amarachi, Bids, Simi, LD and myself. We chartered a keke napep home and au-revoir finale!!

POST-ADVENTURE EXPERIENCE.
My first stop was at CASA NOMADS!!! Had to tell how it all went. Then had a long bath, sleeeept, ate, remember that possible fever? slightly felt it. Had lots of bites around my ankles and on my arms too.

Well, thankfully they were non-venom bites. 🙂

Camping at Omo Forest Reserve, will I do it again? Maybe..

Camping at any other Forest, will I do it again? err.. well, YES if there are no bears, mountain lions or snakes around. Not about to be a Nat Geo experiment. LoL!

Life, is either a daring adventure, or nothing at all! -Helen Keller.

Omo Forest Reserve 2017. Yes, I lived! 🙂