Un Cachito

Cameron's Links

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• CNN
• Fox News
• NY Times Headlines
• Deseret News
• The Economist
• The Funnies (via Dan)
• America First Credit Union WebAccess

I wanted to avoid posting anything negative while I was on my trip-around-the-world. However, now that I'm back I do need to write a brief review of Victor Awasung, the operator of Equatorial Tours in Cameroon, and his bad behavior, in the hopes others don't get cheated. Josh wrote about it here and I'll add a few comments. We went looking for an exotic, off-the-beaten-path destination and we also wanted to see Africa; Cameroon fit the bill. We made it very clear many times that we wanted to help Equatorial Tours (EqT) and would write an honest but favorable review of them and try to help in other ways. Victor, the operator, seemed pleased at this. However, as he started to cheat us, he seemed to no longer care and had no regard for us, nor our finances, assuming we could easily cough up the $1300 he suddenly asked for. At first we thought there was a chance it could be legitimate, even though it was very hard to swallow. As Josh mentioned, we looked at many other options and finally decided to pay the extra money after we talked him down a little. The deliberations included the facts that we wouldn't get a refund for leaving early (thereby abandoning much of the pre-paid fee), that the cost of doing something else would be substantial and that we really wanted unique experiences like seeing gorillas in the wild. Now take the extra $1000 we paid, the hundred or so he borrowed and didn't repay, combined with wire transfer fees (that we shouldn't have had to pay if he had done his job correctly) and add some enormous phone charges (several hundred dollars). In all, Victor likely cost us over $1500 extra. That wasn't cool and his completely unrepentant demeanor implies he'd do it again without qualms. Perhaps he had exceptional circumstances on his end that helped him justify the thievery; I don't know. But we would warn any potential clients of EqT that in our opinion Victor Awasung and Equatorial Tours can't be trusted, which is a shame because they have some great employees as Josh mentioned.