Scratching the Surface

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		a		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!
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