Useful information – Nützliche Information

Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, France/Frankreich

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Black and white – Schwarz und Weiß

Black-and-white Colobus monkeys / Schwarz-weiße Stummel- oder Mantelaffen; Lake Nkuruba, Uganda

Lower Zambezi bull

Lower Zambezi I

Lower Zambezi II

Arboretum Raponda Walker (Foret de Mondah)

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Die letzten Tage unserer Gabun-Reise verbrachten wir in Libreville. Wir hatten uns allerdings noch einen Ausflug vorgenommen, nämlich in den Foret de Mondah, ein Waldgebiet am nördlichen Ende der Halbinsel, auf der auch Libreville liegt. Jenseits dieser Halbinsel beginnt bereits Äquatorialguinea. Teile des Mondah-Waldes waren in der Vergangenheit gerodet und landwirtschaftlich genutzt worden, bevor das Gebiet unter Schutz gestellt und wieder aufgeforstet worden war.

Lopé II – Lost in the jungle – Verloren im Urwald

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On our arrival at La Lopé, we had a warm welcome with the chef at the Hotel Mbeyi as well as the manager of both the Lopé Hotel and Hotel Mbeyi. When we told the latter the story of our journey so far, he smiled and shrugged. “That´s Gabon” he said, and we felt sorry for him, because we could see in his face what it meant to make your money with tourists in this country. Then he mentioned that the train was out of service for several days now because of an accident just before Libreville. We looked at each other and agreed that this time, we´ve been two lucky bastards.

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.

Mayumba – The most beautiful beach in the world – Der schönste Strand der Welt

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From Mouila, we took a shared taxi via Ndendé to Tchibanga in the south. There were three women and a man with us, and the youngest of the women was a shy adolescent without a decent passport. All she had was a permit to go from Mouila to her village. There was a direct way, a bad dirt road without any public transport, so she took the common route which meant to go to Tchibanga and then change transport directly to her village. That should turn out to be one of the problems on that special day. Another one was the colour of our skin that seemed to be shouting “We have money to spare”. The third problem was the fact that our driver was only a part time driver during vacation time, and that meant that he didn´t know all the police and the Gendarmerie officers by name. Naturally, he bribed them, but they sensed that they could get more than the common angel´s share. Already at the first checkpoint, they started arguing with the girl about her not having an ID card, and at the second checkpoint, they wanted to check our yellow fever vaccination certification. After we had passed the junction with the dirt road to the girl’s village, it got worse.

Mouila – A quiet place – Ein ruhiger Ort

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Mouila is indeed a quiet place – not to say sleepy. It is the capital of the Ngounié region, named after the river which is the most important tributary of the Oogué. 30.000 inhabitants are living in Mouila that is linked to Lambaréné and Libreville in the north as well as Ndendé in the south via another Route Nationale. That one is quite good because it got paved by an Italian company in the recent years. Nowadays, more people are using the overland route to go to the south, which means more visitors coming to Mouila. But it is still a rarely visited town in a rarely visited region. In this respect, the lack of any touristic infrastructure and the nearly complete inaccessibility of the beautiful rainforest hinterland might play a role.

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.)

Lopé I – Die Sache mit dem Zug – The train issue

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Wir hatten Glück, denn der Van brachte uns tatsächlich ohne Thrombose, Quetschungen oder sonstige Verletzungen nach Ndjolé, an dessen Marktplatz wir gegen fünf Uhr feststellen mussten, dass unser Ziel auf der Straße an diesem Tag in keinem Fall mehr zu erreichen war. Also fuhren wir zum Bahnhof, der einige Kilometer außerhalb der Stadt liegt. Es hatte zwar keine Fahrkarten mehr von Libreville nach La Lopé gegeben, aber vielleicht war es möglich, für die viel kürzere Strecke zwischen Ndjolé und La Lopé, was nur wenige Stationen waren, eine Mitfahrgelegenheit im Zug zu bekommen. Dessen Ankunft wurde irgendwann nach Mitternacht erwartet.