Calabar

Calabar sits on a river estuary in the far south east and is the cleanest and most orderly of Nigeria's larger cities, a former slaving and palm oil port with colonial buildings along the waterfront. The Slave History Museum occupies a former barracoon. Every December the city gives itself over to the Calabar Carnival, the largest street carnival in Africa, with bands parading for weeks. The Drill Ranch keeps rescued drill monkeys and chimpanzees, and the Cross River rainforest with its gorillas and its canopy begins immediately to the north.