Gabon
Gabon is a beautiful, sparsely populated country covered in rainforest
and with a untouched coastline. President Bongo recently made about
20% of the country into national parks after an environmentalist, Mike
Fay, trekked across the country and campaigned for some protection for
the amazing biodiversity he found. Given time and money it would be
a great country to explore but at the moment many of these parks have
either no infrastructure or only fly-in lodges - not the best for us
cheapskate, self-drive, camping types. We decided that we would keep
our time in Gabon short in order to allow more time for countries where
having a car is a real advantage. Just one thing caught our imagination:
the fact that we were there during turtle nesting season.
And so, after a fun but fairly heavy night drinking on the border, we
said our goodbyes to Mike, Chris and Thomas, who were heading south,
and also to Jessica and Chris, who were keen to keep trucking north
as fast as possible. We planned to head east to the coast and the detour
was too much for the slow German fire-truck to contemplate; after the
intense couple of weeks we had spent together it was strange to be on
our own again, but also very relaxing.
For our first night we checked in to a hotel for a well-deserved rest
(and well-needed scrub up!) and the next day we hit the first real mud
of our trip. It started gently with some surface slipperiness which
gave us a chance to practice our lets-not-end-up-in-a-ditch driving
techniques. Then we turned a corner to be faced with two logging trucks,
one stuck in wheel-deep mud and the other jack-knifed across the road.
As we edged past the second, with poor Connie sliding first towards
the truck and then towards the roadside ditch, the Chinese truck-driver
got out and helped to push us past. Still congratulating himself on
his mastery of the Range Rover, Chris failed to stop in time to avoid
a truck coasting down a muddy hill and we found ourselves perched on
the edge of a very narrow piece of road with 20 tonnes of steel bearing
down on the passenger-side window as the truck-driver struggled to stop
his sideways slide. Fortunately these truck drivers are very skilled
(and have a great comaradarie that they seem to extend to overlanders)
and so, with much gesticulating and grinning, the driver got us to edge
into position and somehow managed to rock his truck past us.
After all this excitement we were glad to reach Mayumba and set up camp
in front of a beachside hotel. Mayumba is perched on the end of a long
sandy peninsular whose ocean-side beaches have some of the highest concentrations
in the world of leatherback turtles coming to nest. Further north in
Gabon there is a research station and some low-key resorts which offer
turtle watching but in Mayumba there is nothing organised so we were
glad to meet Amy on our second day at the hotel. Amy came to Gabon as
a Peace Corps volunteer five years ago and stayed on after the project
finished (and in fact after the Peace Corps left Gabon completely).
When we met her she was about to leave Mayumba and her job co-ordinating
the schools environmental education programme to become the personal
assistant to the presidents daughter! She had no real idea what this
might entail and still seemed to be reeling as it had all happened very
quickly; Mayumba is so sleepy and rural that the idea of suddenly flying
round the globe on a series of diplomatic missions must have been quite
surreal for her. People lead crazy lives in Africa.
On Amy's advice we headed south the next day, driving first along the
airport runway and then along an overgrown track until we hit the beach.
After some debate over where was the best spot, we set up camp with
the aim of getting up in the night to look for turtles. It was beautiful
but we felt like we were back in England as we sat in the car reading
to escape the rain and the crashing waves outside. On the first night
we got up at 1am, expecting to spend a couple of hours pacing the shoreline
but instead stumbling over a goliath specimen struggling up the beach
in the first five minutes. It was a dark night and the poor turtle kept
coming towards our torch, making an already mammoth task even harder,
so we turned the light off and only turned it on again to watch the
very relieved animal slide back into the water.
After four very refreshing days in Mayumba we navigated the mud back
to the main road and headed north, passing first through savannah grassland
and then into the forest. Each forest village had more and more colourful
bushmeat for sale: monkeys, parrots, snakes and small crocodiles hanging
whole from hooks at the side of the road. Although it looked far fresher
than the fly-covered beef haunches we had seen at town butchery stalls,
I drew the line at skinning and gutting a blue-cheeked mangabey at the
end of a long days drive.
Once we had conquered the last of the bad roads we allowed ourselves
a couple of days stopover in Lambarene, a pretty town situated on an
island in the middle of a river and connected to both shores by bridges.
The town is famous as the place where Albert Schweitzer, the Nobel Peace
Prize winner, set up a free hospital, and so we visited a museum dedicated
to him, got some welding done on our Con and cooked fish curry. Fully
refreshed, we left Lamberene on a perfect tar road which twisted through
the forest and along the river until finally it passed into Cameroon
and the beginning of our West African adventure.
Photos
Gabon roads
Once again, we were glad it wasn't raining
That's a big turtle!
