"45," I thought. "When you need reading glasses to pop a zit."
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Happy birthday to me. For my birthday, I got a 4 a.m. thunderstorm that somehow shut off the water supply to my hotel room. But I had power, so I could see in the bathroom mirror. No fair, I thought. Wrinkles AND zits. No fair at all.
I wore my Tevas in honor of the muddy ground, and made my way to the front gate in the dark. I had to wake up the guard to get out—it was 5:30 a.m.—but only had to stand along the road for a minute until a taxi pulled up.
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"Inland Waterway," I said.
The driver nodded and I got in, trying hard not to think about all the warnings about not taking taxis alone in the dark in Nigeria.
So far, it's all been quite safe, I reminded myself. The panicky warnings have been exaggerated. I think.
"Which boat?" The driver asked when we approached the dark port on the outskirts of town.
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"Foka."
He stopped his Toyota and waved me down an alley. The sun hadn't risen yet, and the whole area looked different in the dark from yesterday afternoon, when I could see clearly.
Oh, great. I stood looking at my ship when I reached the dock.
I'm on Endurance.
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First, I had to hand over my backpack, which was weighed on a hefty scale and then loaded onto the Endurance. Then, I headed over to a long line at Immigration, which was located in a tiny lit office at the back of what looked like a long concrete storage shed. The sun rose as I waited, illuminating a series of steps and holes to be avoided in the shed. No one in line looked too happy. I guess getting up at five in the morning to stand in line so that officials can glare at you isn't the ideal way for anyone to spend the morning.
Eventually, a man in a uniform pointed at me. I took my turn at walking into the tiny office, where I filled out a form, handed over my passport, and was sent outside again to wait.
I took the opportunity to change money and return, waited some more, and finally was handed back my passport. I was stamped out of Nigeria.
Boarding the Endurance also involved a tiring, miserable line of people. The ferry officials took the opportunity to be kind of mean, and harangued everyone to wait in a rigid single-file line. I couldn't squeeze in between the people at my place in line, and I was extra-harangued until one of them made room for me.
The sun peeked through the clouds but the day was overcast as I found my want up the stairs to the first-class cabin. A guy in a uniform took my passport and starting bitching that I had the wrong visa ("If you continue from Cameroon to Gabon, you need transit visa, not tourist visa"), so I argued with him for a while and then just left it. He was certainly wrong.
Almost all the seats were taken, and I fell asleep as yet-another-absurdly-delightful Nigerian movie came on. The ferry motored off into the Gulf of Guinea.
Next stop, Cameroon.