After spending the first few days of our holiday travelling from Lagos to Enugu and visiting the Obudu Mountain Resort, we hired a car to take us to Cross River State’s capital city, Calabar, with a stop at the Agbokim waterfalls in Ikom. It took us about 2.5 hrs to get to Ikom and another 30 minutes to get to the waterfall.
Visiting Agbokim Waterfalls in Cross River State
We took a tour of the fall with a designated guide who was extremely passionate about his job. He took us to the different viewpoints of the fall and told us about the other ‘attractions’ around it. Our driver and guide got impatient at some point ‘cos this man was very detailed! Haha, I and my sister loved it though.
PS: We arrived early in the day, so we missed the rainbow at the bottom of the fall. That would have been so cool to see. We also couldn’t go down to the foot because of the season. But it was all good, we got to see all seven falls come out to dance.
Visiting Cross River State: Agbokim Falls to Calabar
Once the tour was completed, we hit the road again and continued onward to Calabar. The journey was fair and the road was good for the most part. I was awake all through so I didn’t miss this sight! I thought they were dead at first but then the car stopped and they all raised up their heads!
We got to Calabar in another 3 hours and I was extremely excited just to be there. The first thing that struck me about Calabar was the dirt on the streets. And before you start imagining the worst, no, it wasn’t that bad. In fact, the city was cleaner than many parts of Lagos.
But the reason why this surprised me was that I had heard that if someone dropped litter on the street, someone else – especially motorcycle riders would pick it up and give that person a chase! So I was expecting to see a sparkling clean city. But I would soon get to know that many things in Calabar were falling apart.
My friend, Chakie (whom I first ‘met’ on Instagram), arranged for us to be picked up and taken to our hotel, where we spent our first 2 nights before being whisked away by my aunt who lives in the city too.
Visiting Cross River State: Calabar
We spent the next few days with my aunt and her family and with Chakie, her sister and her friends. Between them, we got a tour of the city, visited Marian and Watt markets – to shop for all kinds of fish, University of Calabar, and Marina – where we spent the night playing everything from video to board games (this was so much fun!), suya arcade – as the name implies, Cercopan – a monkey sanctuary which is dying due to lack of funds and Tinapa – which was basically a ghost town.
Throughout our stay, there was always talk about life during Donald Duke’s time as governor, which kinda made me feel like I should have visited then as the city was in its prime. But no matter, our visit to Calabar 2017 AD (after Duke) was splendid.
(Fun fact: Cross River State is my 23rd Nigerian State!)
We enjoyed every minute of our stay. The sites were awesome, the food was delicious and the people were very warm and welcoming. We can hardly wait to visit again!
I hope you enjoyed following our journey. Please share this article and leave a comment if you have any. I always love hearing back from you! Let me know if you have visited Cross River State too or would love to go.
The cost breakdown and a review of the services of this trip are up next!
