Lopé II – Lost Highway

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Wir versuchten noch, von Mayumba aus den Süden des Loango Nationalparks zu besuchen, bekamen aber bei einem Anruf die brüske Antwort, dort sei alles ausgebucht und Camping nicht erlaubt, was bei uns allerdings zu nicht mehr als einem Schulterzucken reichte. Gabun will keine Touristen, das hatten wir inzwischen verstanden.

Bootsfahrt auf dem Oogué – On a boat on Oogué river

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Der Oogué ist der größte, längste und wichtigste Fluss Gabuns. Von seiner Quelle in der Republik Kongo (Kongo-Brazzaville) legt er 1.200 km bis zum Mündungsdelta nördlich und südlich von Port Gentil zurück, gespeist von zahlreichen Zuflüssen, von denen der Ngounié der größte ist. Der Ngounié verläuft parallel zur Küste von Süden nach Norden und mündet nördlich von Lambaréné in den Oogué. Auf ihm wurden früher Sklaven aus dem Urwald über Lambaréné an die Küste gebracht, von wo aus sie weiter in alle Welt verschifft wurden.

Visiting Albert Schweitzer II – Zu Gast bei Albert Schweitzer II

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The present Albert-Schweitzer-hospital is a kind of flagship for Gabon, but at the same time it is a constant struggle getting the money together for keeping the hospital going. It is located on top of a hill only 100 or 200 metres from the historic hospital. The latter has been preserved in the condition of the time of its famous founder and is nowadays a museum. In Albert Schweitzer’s house, photographs and other documents are on display as well as the private rooms of the doctor and his wife – including the piano he had transported to the jungle because he had also been a musicologist publishing on Johann Sebastian Bach.

Lopé I – The transport issue – Die Sache mit dem Transport

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The next morning, we got picked up past eight. We drove to the National Park office next to a park entrance on the other side of La Lopé where we had to inscribe our data into a big book. On the way, we had picked up our guide, a short and stocky guy who was working for the researchers most of the time. He didn´t seem too convinced of the concept of tourism but at the same time, he was a very friendly one. We already knew the entrance books from the parks in eastern Africa, but in Lopé were only two or three visitors recorded per day. That was something completely different compared to eastern Africa, and Lopé is not the remotest park in the country, it is Gabon’s highlight, by far the most famous and most accessible park. (Apart from that, using the words Gabon, Lopé and accessible in one sentence feels sort of unnatural to me.)