Although I love traveling, I've not had the pleasure or should I say time (anyways both of them 🙃) to travel for a vacation. So the Obudu Mountain Resort was my first experience of a vacation.
The Obudu Mountain Resort is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Nigeria, formerly known as Obudu cattle ranch. So, it was obviously an easy pick for me.
My journey
I had initially planned to take a flight so as to get there fast and have ample time to enjoy my stay but no thanks to the hike in price of plane tickets I had to settle for a road trip.
Considering that I work in a village in Delta state (Oghara). The journey to Calabar took us over 30hours and an additional 2hours to arrive Obudu.
We took the Enugu route and left Oghara to Asaba around 1pm, this was supposed to be a 2hr journey but we got to Asaba around 7pm. Due to the insecurity and scary stories of armed robbers and ritual killers we decided to lodge in a hotel in Asaba and continue our journey the following day.
The following after taking a quick English breakfast, we left Asaba to Onitsha because we couldn't get a direct vehicle to Enugu. The journey was quite smooth and was just interrupted a few times by road safety. We arrived Onitsha just before noon and boarded a Sienna going to Enugu. When we arrived Enugu around 3pm we were told that the last bus going to Obudu just left. We were devastated, but some drivers adviced us to go to Ogoja and from Ogoja we would see a bus going to Obudu.
The trip from Enugu to Ogoja was another experience, a bit off. The road was punctuated with a litany of uniformed men: from NDLEA to Nigeria Policemen to Federal Road Safety Agents even immigration and customs.
At almost every mile there were checkpoints and this was really tiring as they would ask all of us to come down, search the car and view all the passengers means of identification. Although this made the journey quite slow, the driver was a funny and very jovial guy. He would present himself to each of them, even before he was asked to stop and hail them hilariously. At other times, he would just step down to go 'pay dues'. He was also very careful, because once some military men (army I think) were busy with other vehicles and the passengers were urging him to move as no one stopped him, he made jest of us and stopped till they told him to park well. He then went to pay another set of "dues" and came back. We finally got to Ogoja around 6pm
We immediately boarded a cab to Obudu town. This journey was quite scary because about 30mins after driving the driver realized his brake was no longer responding so he couldn't drive as fast as he could. This frightened the passengers and some began to pray and speak in tongues. We finally arrived Obudu town around 12 midnight and had to lodge in a nearby cheap hotel. We were not only hungry but exhausted.
We checked out from the hotel around 8am the next day. A bike took us to the mountain resort. The trip to the resort lasted over 1hr. It was quite expensive as we spent 5k for that trip.
Arrival/ Lodging
To enter the ranch, we paid just 250 naira per person. A tour guide was immediately assigned to us. The first welcome was a change in temperature and atmospheric pressure. Being a moutain, the climate of the mountain resort is semi-temperate mountain climate.
Fun Fact: in addition to the cold weather, Obudu cattle ranch is the only place in Nigeria where snow falls.
We took a bike with our tour guide to the reception. The ride was about 45 minutes long and as our bike went up the hill to the resort reception my heart was in my mouth but the scenery all the way up was tremendously beautiful!!! The road up the mountain was narrow and the cloud was low as we kept up getting closer to the mountain.
By the time we got to the summit, we were speechless. It was very beautiful! We were immediately ushered into the reception area where we received a very warm welcome.
We immediately settled into a villa (by the way rooms at the ranch are quite expensive and start at 25,000 naira, approximately $35).
The resort has various forms of villa and lodges to choose from depending on your pocket. There is the African Hut, Standard Double Room, Superior Double Room, Club Chalet, Executive Suite, Royal Suite, Presidential Lodge, Governor’s Place, Presidential Villa among others; all ranging between 25,000 to 75,000 naira. Thereafter we helped ourselves to a sumptuous meal before commencing the tour
In my next post, i'll be talking about the many fun activities we did at the resort.