The Land Cruiser lurched over the edge and dropped into the muddy soup below. The left rear panel smashed against a solid wall of earth with a crunching shudder, followed by the tinkling of breaking glass.

“Don’t stop!” yelled Tim. “It’s only our rear lights. We need forward momentum!”
With the Detroit Locker diff locks engaged, all four wheels churned powerfully through the deep, viscous mud. The vehicle ploughed on through driving rain.

Despite the BF Goodrich mud-terrain tyres, the Cruiser slid around like a drunken ice-skater as it fought for traction in the slippery sludge.

Although securely strapped in, everyone in the vehicle sat quietly on the edge of their seats, transfixed by what might be lying in wait around the next corner.
We were anxious and tense: nobody wanted to spend another 14 hours bogged down in mud.

I was trying to discern the best route through a never-ending quagmire that faded into the inky blackness beyond the reach of our headlights. Everyone was thinking the same thing: “How could anybody consider calling this Cameroonian mud bath a road?” But in the end, we made it through.

Cameroon has everything from dense rainforest to scorching arid plains.
It boasts Mount Cameroon, an active volcano that has West Africa’s highest peak, along with beautiful crater lakes, stunning national parks and palm-fringed beaches.
However, among all the fluffy words and alluring marketing statements, proponents of Cameroon have neglected one vital word that would encapsulate our Cameroonian experience: mud.
I had never seen, heard of, or even imagined that much mud.

With the rains at their peak, early September was arguably not the ideal time to be exploring Cameroon. However, our young, enthusiastic and, in some aspects, naive crew of four old university friends relished the idea of tackling the challenge.

My wife, Katherine, a chemical engineer who works for an NGO, and I were accompanied by Tim Korving, a civil engineer, and his wife, Ciara, a journalist.
We were travelling in a diesel 1989 HJ 60-series Land Cruiser that we had bought second-hand in the UK for £5 000. We spent another £2 000 kitting it out and fixing it up for the challenges of Africa.

We were five months into our nine-month African odyssey from England to Cape Town, following a seldom-driven route along Africa’s less-visited west coast.

After a month-long exploration of Western Europe we started crossing Africa in Morocco. Then came Western Sahara and Mauritania, after which we crossed through Senegal, Gambia, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana. After Togo and Benin, we slowly conquered the road blocks of Nigeria. Then we hit Cameroon …

Our guidebook didn’t mince words about what lay in store when it described the route we had chosen into Cameroon: “treacherous in the rainy season”. Touché.
When we eventually exited the mud fest a week later, I would reflect on that statement and realise that never before had I read and ignored five more aptly written words of warning.