Attractions & Natural Wonders · Cameroon
Cameroon: Nine Attractions and Natural Wonders
A volcano that sometimes glows, a river that falls straight into the Atlantic, a sultan's palace of a six-century dynasty, and a lunar landscape of stone needles in the north
By Worldlore Editorial · 30 September 2026
"Africa in miniature"
Cameroon is often called "Africa in miniature" because it packs so much of the continent's variety into one country: rainforest and savannah, a volcanic coast and a Sahelian north, some 250 languages, and both a Francophone majority and an Anglophone minority. It gets very few tourists, and travel is slow. It is also, right now, a country with serious security problems — a separatist conflict in the two Anglophone regions (Northwest and Southwest, which includes Mount Cameroon and Bafut), and jihadist violence in the Far North (around Waza and Rhumsiki). Check current advice carefully; several places below are effectively off-limits at present.
The nine run from the coast and the west through to the far north.
1. The Lobé Falls, Kribi
Just south of the beach resort of Kribi, the Lobé river spills over a broad, low rock shelf and pours directly onto the sand and into the Atlantic — a "waterfall into the sea" up to 20 metres high, one of only a handful on the planet. Bagyeli (Pygmy) communities live in the forests inland.
Kribi itself is one of Cameroon's two main beach towns — long strands of pale sand — and is the most straightforward seaside stop in the country.
2. Foumban and the Sultan's Palace
Foumban, in the western highlands, is the capital of the Bamoun kingdom, whose sultans have ruled since the late 14th century. The palace, built in 1917 after the old one burned, houses a museum of beaded royal thrones, masks, gowns, arms and musical instruments. King Njoya, who ruled from the 1880s to 1933, invented his own script and had a history of his people written in it.
The town's Rue des Artisans, home to sculptors, weavers and embroiderers, is one of the best places in Central Africa to buy wood carvings.
3. The Palace of the Fon of Bafut
Bafut, near Bamenda, is one of the traditional kingdoms of the Grassfields, and its royal compound — a walled cluster of houses, courts, and shrines around the tall thatched Achum, the ancestral spirit house — was placed on the World Monuments Fund's 2006 watch list of endangered sites. The naturalist Gerald Durrell stayed here in 1949, wrote about it in The Bafut Beagles, and later returned.
The wider Grassfields — Bamenda, Kumbo, the Ring Road — are green, cool highland country, currently badly affected by the Anglophone conflict.
4. Rhumsiki and the Mandara Mountains
The village of Rhumsiki, in the Mandara range near the Nigerian border, sits among a scatter of dramatic volcanic plugs — sheer black towers rising from a farmed plateau, most spectacular at dawn. It was long one of Cameroon's most popular sights and a base for visiting the Kapsiki people's villages, terraced fields, and the "crab sorcerer" who tells fortunes by watching a crab move sticks in a pot.
The Far North has been unsafe for foreign travel since Boko Haram violence spread here in the 2010s.
5. Waza National Park
Waza, on the plain near Lake Chad, was the best place in Cameroon to see wildlife — elephant, giraffe, lion, and antelope such as kob, with elephants gathering at the waterholes in the dry season. Poaching and, more recently, insecurity have hit it hard, and it is not currently a safe destination, but it remains the country's flagship savannah park.
The nearby Maroua area, with its leatherwork market and the Diamaré plain, was the usual base.
6. The Dja Faunal Reserve
Almost encircled by a loop of the Dja river, this reserve in the southeast protects some 5,000 square kilometres of near-untouched Congo Basin rainforest — forest elephants, lowland gorillas, chimpanzees, and Baka communities who live in the forest. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987 and is also a Biosphere Reserve. Further southeast, Lobéké National Park forms Cameroon's part of the Sangha Trinational, a forest World Heritage Site shared with the Central African Republic and the Republic of the Congo since 2012.
Access is difficult and needs careful arrangement with local guides; it is the country's most serious rainforest experience, for the well-prepared.
7. Limbe
Limbe, on the Southwest coast, has black volcanic-sand beaches, a well-regarded botanic garden founded by the Germans in 1892, and a wildlife centre that cares for gorillas, chimps, and drills rescued from the bushmeat trade. Nearby Buea is the usual starting point for climbing Mount Cameroon — a tough multi-day trek to the summit and back, and the course of the annual "Race of Hope", a 38-kilometre run up and down the mountain held since 1973.
Like the rest of the Southwest Region, Limbe has been affected by the Anglophone crisis.
8. Yaoundé
The capital, Yaoundé, is a spread-out, hilly city — greener and cooler than Douala, the coastal economic hub. Its sights are modest: the Reunification Monument, the national museum in the former presidential palace, the central market, and the Cameroon Art Museum, housed in a former Benedictine monastery.
Douala, the largest city and main port, has the Doual'art gallery, the maritime museum in the old Bonanjo quarter, and the famous "La Nouvelle Liberté" sculpture on a roundabout.
9. The northern circuit
Before the security crisis, the classic Cameroon trip combined the west (Foumban, the Grassfields) with a northern loop: the old Fulani town of Ngaoundéré on its plateau, the Bénoué and Bouba Ndjida national parks (giant eland, hippo), the pottery villages, and the Mandara mountains. Much of this route is currently inadvisable.
For now, the more secure parts of the country are the deep south (Kribi, the Dja) and, conditions permitting, the immediate area around Yaoundé and Douala.
Cameroon is a genuinely rich destination that is, for the moment, largely on hold because of conflict in the north and the Anglophone regions. Weigh everything here against current, specific security advice.