Things to Do in Cameroon in August

A half-day excursion from Yaoundé, the visit to the Ebogo ecological site and Méfou Park places you first on a narrow pirogue gliding through a tangle of gallery forest along the Nyong River. The water is tea-dark. The only sounds are the dip of the paddle and the abrupt shriek of a great blue turaco overhead. At Méfou, a primate sanctuary set inside dense secondary forest, you walk shaded trails past enclosures sheltering gorillas, chimpanzees, and mandrills rescued from the bushmeat trade. You stand close enough to hear the low, resonant grunts the gorillas use when settling after a feeding. The combination of river and forest packs two of Cameroon's signature ecosystems into a single outing without the logistics of a multiday expedition.

A guided circuit of Yaoundé peels back layers of a city most travellers only pass through on the way to somewhere else. The route typically threads from the Musée National, where carved Bamoun thrones and Bamiléké beaded masks sit in dim, climate-controlled halls that smell faintly of old wood, up to the hilltop Basilique Marie Reine des Apôtres at Mvolyé, whose stained glass throws amber and cobalt light across polished concrete floors. Between stops you move through neighbourhoods like Mokolo, where Cameroon's largest open-air market is a wall of sound. Vendors call prices for smoked fish. The metallic clatter of aluminium pots stacked head-high fills the air. The sweet, slightly fermented scent of ripe plantains heaped on wooden tables follows you through the aisles. Yaoundé in August is comfortably cool. Walking the city's steep hills feels far less punishing than it would under the February sun.

The Dja Biodiversity Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage site wrapped in one of the largest and most intact tracts of rainforest in Central Africa, demands a week-long commitment and rewards it completely. Over six nights you move by vehicle and then on foot through a canopy so dense that the forest floor exists in perpetual green twilight. The air is thick with the smell of decomposing leaves and the high, repetitive call of the African grey parrot somewhere far above. Cameroon's population of western lowland gorillas lives here alongside forest elephants whose presence you detect first by the deep, resonant crack of a branch breaking under immense weight, then by fresh dung piles steaming faintly on the trail. River crossings by dugout canoe punctuate the walking days. The Dja River itself runs wide and slow, its surface broken by rocks that create small rapids you can hear well before you see them. Camp meals cooked over open flame in forest clearings, often built around freshwater fish and cassava, carry a smokiness that becomes the taste memory of the entire trip.