Mefou National Park: Gorilla Sanctuary

We went to Mefou today, and it was so much fun! Thankfully it was overcast, cool and slightly rainy. That was good for the visit, NOT for the drive up! THANK GOODNESS we didn't drive ourselves!!!!! We went with some others and had a driver. WOW! The roads were amazingly scary, and if we wouldn't have been in a very large vehicle with 4 wheel drive and an experienced driver, we would not have made it. What fun!!!! So, we saw all kinds of little monkeys, gorillas, chimpanzees...it was fun! Josh was in his element: Outdoors with lots of room to run and get VERY muddy and dirty! :) Claire, on the other hand, hates to get dirty, so she was fairly sad about the whole thing, but survived with lots of friends carrying her around. Andrew enjoyed watching the monkeys from the safety of the baby backpack (our lifesaver that we got from Rosie when Josh was a baby...we could NOT live without it!! Thank you Rosie!!) and we all had a nice time!

Here is a Mom and baby chimp staring at us from their gilded cage:



Here is a cute little monkey in a tree. There was a whole group of them. One of them kept scratching his whole body--but he was being really funny about it. We named him 'Mr. Scratchy'. They were cute little guys!!



Claire looking at the monkeys:



Thinking Gorilla:



Happy Gorilla (doesn't he look like he's smiling?):



There was a whole group of baby gorillas at the front of the park. They were cute and fun! Here is one looking at me:



This is a deformed baboon. He had fangs that hung about 2 inches longer than his mouth. We all thought he should have been the chief of the clan, but apparently, the other baboons thought he was a freak and shunned him! Man, if I was a baboon and saw another one with fangs that size, whether I thought he was normal or not I wouldn't get in his way!! You have to look pretty close to see the fangs, but they're there:



Where do we get chocolate? From right here!! A Cocoa tree:



There was a line for the bathroom (he he hehe):



Gorilla & Josh:



Josh and some friends looking at the baby gorillas:



Everyone looking at the little monkeys:



A muddy road:



More muddy road. These are an example of what we had to drive through to get to the park in the first place...except that the ruts were deeper and we were going up these huge hills!!! Man, I'm SO glad we didn't drive ourselves! We would not have made it! We had a great car and a fantastic driver get us there!:



This is the Really big tree:



Here are our cars that we came in:



Amadou, our French teacher, with a park sign:



Andrew with Amadou:



Group looking at a millipede that someone saw:



Here is the Millipede close-up! Gross, eh??: