Into the Heart of Madness - This is Gabon!

[Treepol]

@michael-ibk lovely photos of the Rosy Bee-eater, GreatBlue Turaco and the breaching whales. What a great variety of birds and mammals Gabon has to offer.

[SafariChick]

So now we are coming to the close of the main part of the Gabon trip. However, there was one more segment for some of us - an optional add-on that was quite unique. Of those of us on this trip, three of us chose to take part in it (me, @michael-ibk and @AndMic) and we had to say farewell to @Kitsafari and Josep, who were heading home, and to @gatoratlarge who was heading on to some other adventures. First, we had one more night back in Libreville (having been driven to Port Gentil and then taking a short flight back to LBV) at the Residence Oceane where we'd started the trip. There, we met up with @Sangeeta and @optig as well as some other participants of Gabon Group 2 that we did not know from Safaritalk - including @GEORGE PALLADINO who commented earlier in this report. We all sat at a big table outside by the pool and enjoyed a good meal and chatted, and then the next morning we had to say farewell to our three travelling companions. But we had the last segment to complete with some of our new comrades.

 

This adventure was to be quite the unusual one. We were going to attend a Bwiti ceremony. What is that, you well may ask? Well, we were told by Guillermo, who was going to come with us on this part of our journey to interpret for us, that Bwiti is a religion and that the participants in the ceremony would consume the iboga plant which produces hallucinations. The ceremonies are performed for different reasons but the one we were to see was going to be to initiate some new members into the next level of the religion. They had been studying and preparing for this ceremony for some time. Initially, we were supposed to camp in the village that was hosting the ceremony. However, Guillermo thought we would be more comfortable staying at a hotel he had found that was nearby and was right on the ocean. At first some of us were unsure but as it turned out, that was a much better plan!

 

We were driven to the village in several cars. It was about 40 minutes away from Libreville as I recall. The plan was to stop by the village and be introduced to the chief and some of the other participants, look around a bit, and then go to the hotel to check in, and then come back to the village for dinner. We left around midday as I recall. The village was on a bumpy road and seemed quite small - just a few houses and a temple, which was where much of the Bwiti ceremony would take place.  By the way, we did ask if it was ok to post photos of the village and ceremony and were told yes, though Guillermo thought we should not mention the name of the village, so I will refrain from doing that. 

 

I was impressed with all the interesting art around the village, seemingly made from found objects.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We were greeted with smiles and welcoming faces by the village members we met:

 

 

 

These ladies were already beginning to prepare dinner:

 

 

The dishwashing station:

 

 

The area where we would eat later:

 

 

 

And the temple:

 

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It was a cozy and intimate place and promised to be an interesting experience when we returned later that night. But I was glad we would not be sleeping there. There were fires going at all times and the smoke from them bothered me. And we were told the ceremony could go on all night - it would have been hard to sleep there I am sure.

 

We next went to see our hotel, about a five or ten minute drive away, and it was a very relaxing place run by a genial Italian fellow. He'd been involved in conservation and wildlife and the environment when he first came to Gabon but he got married and children came along so he and his wife felt they needed to settle in one place so the kids could go to school. Hence, he is running this place. Its a hotel and restaurant. The rooms were basic but adequate. The restaurant was pretty good.  And it was right on the ocean, which could not be beat, and even had a pool. After lunch, most of us just relaxed (some - you can guess who - went to look for birds).

 

Photos at the hotel, which was called Akouango Village (note - NOT the name of the actual village having the Bwiti ceremony!)

 

 

 

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And then we went back to the village for the ceremony and dinner. But that will have to wait til the morning, as it is after 11 p.m. here. Stay tuned!

[SafariChick]

We returned to the village when it was still daylight. I cannot recall the exact time and my photos are all mixed up due to having lost some of them when my SD card was damaged, but it might have been about 4:30 or 5 p.m.  There were five people who were going to be initiated at the ceremony, two women and three men. But one of the 'men' really seemed to be a boy of perhaps 15 years of age? It's hard to say.  I was surprised he was so young though and was going to be taking the iboga.  We were told we could enter the temple, but we had to take our shoes off whenever we were in there. The whole village was dirt floors, including the temple, so this meant we were walking barefoot in the dirt a lot.  You had to enter the temple through the right-hand door and exit through the left-hand door.  There were benches around the sides of the temple.  There was a man who played a stringed instrument, another man who was a sort of shaman/healer who sometimes blew into horns that reminded me of the shofar (ram's horn) that is blown on the High Holy Days in Jewish services. There was a bowl passed around of I think dried iboga? The initiates took some and ate it and we were invited to also. Some of our group did and some did not. I will not say who did or did not  

 

Then we were led outside. The initiates walked in a line to an area near the river behind the temple, and we followed.  Then the chief brought out an animal skin (Guillermo said it was a civet) and put out about 3-4 handfuls of iboga. Then each initiate knelt down and ate the iboga without their hands, just using their mouths. It LOOKED like a lot! 

 

Next, the initiates were taken one by one into the river, after each putting on a special garment. They were washed by the shaman very thoroughly. This appeared to be a cleansing ritual perhaps similar to a baptism. Guillermo would translate for us when we had questions. 

 

 

After being cleansed, each initiate had a kind of clay applied to their face, and then there were some head ornamentations made out of reeds that each initiate received. Also, all those in attendance received one, including us.  There was music being played during this part from the man with the stringed instrument and the shaman with the horn.

 

 

 

 

 

After that, I think the initiates went back into the temple. 

 

 

There were more ceremonies and at some point we were served dinner. I couldn't eat that much of it as many of the dishes weren't vegetarian but there was good rice (and the next night they did make more vegetarian things - I think Guillermo might have spoken to them because there was another vegetarian in our group also). I was having a lot of discomfort from itchy bites I had developed in Loango mainly I think, and really felt I needed to take a shower as that seemed to help, so I decided to go back to the hotel after dinner and a few people went with me (I think it was @michael-ibk and @AndMic and I think @Sangeeta stayed longer so maybe she can talk about what happened later.  Since we had three cars and it was so close, this was easy to do. I was really glad at this point I could go take a shower! I think the intiates were sitting on the floor of the temple and looking kind of out of it by the time I left if I recall correctly! More on the next day in the next post.

[SafariChick]

The following day, some of us just spent the day relaxing around the hotel, at the beach or the pool, reading, or birding. Some people went in the afternoon to a visit with the king of a tribe from the area - apparently the same tribe that Samuel L. Jackson had learned he was from. We heard that Mr. Jackson had met with this king when he was in the Libreville area as well. I did not go to the visit but perhaps @Sangeeta can explain what it was like.

 

We were invited to go back to the village in the evening for dinner and to see the rituals that were supposed to be the closing of the ceremony. The dinner was around 8 p.m. as I recall and there were more things I could eat and it was very good. They really put together a nice meal for us. 

 

 

The remaining ceremonies were not supposed to begin until about 11 p.m. and I was hoping I could stay up long enough to see what would happen! The initiates were again sitting in temple. 

 

 

At some point in this evening they were taken outside and asked some questions to determine if they had learned the things on their 'journey' with the iboga that they were supposed to have learned. They were asked some questions and I guess if they answered 'correctly' then it was said that they had accomplished what they were meant to. There was one male initiate who I heard told Guillermo that he had been disappointed and hadn't had the kind of visions he expected. And there was one woman who was not handling the iboga well. She had become belligerant and wasn't wanting to do the things she was being told. No one was supposed to cross their legs in the temple for some reason and the initiates were supposed to sit on the ground with theirs straight and I think she was having an issue with that as well. 

 

When the ceremonies started again at around 11 p.m. there was more music and people filing back into the temple. There was fire and dancing and the shaman took two bundles (of sage?) and lit them on fire and went out of the temple into the main village and was waving them around the whole village.  Then there was more dancing and chanting and it was quite a spectacle.  A few times someone came near me with fire and sparks were flying but luckily no one got hurt and nothing caught on fire!

 

 

 

 

This is the chief:

 

 

 

It was late when some of us left, I don't know how late but after midnight and again, some stayed longer than I did. I was concerned about the woman who hadn't come out of the iboga and wasn't doing well and wondered what would happen. The next morning we went back to say goodbye to the chief and the other village members. The chief conveyed to Guillermo that although the ceremony was meant to be done the night before, since the woman hadn't come out of it properly they were going to continue it again that night for her as she apparently needed to continue her 'work' on her journey.  I hope it all ended up ok for her but we never heard as we were on our way back to Libreville.  

We stopped at a bakery in Libreville to pick up some sandwiches for lunch.  The bakery surprised me at how fancy everything was in the middle of a not so fancy part of the city.

 

 

 

This surprised me too - we have these 'slushie' machines in our convenience stores

 

 

we didn't buy any of these but they sure looked good:

 

 

 

We went back to the Residence Oceane again. 

 

 

and we had one more adventure, planned at the last minute, which I will let @michael-ibk explain.

 

 

[Galago]

What an exceptional experience. It seems so far off the tourist trail that it's more like an anthropologist's report. The photos around the fire are fabulous. What a privilege to be a part of this!

[michael-ibk]

Attending the Bwiti ceremony was certainly a very unusual part of an African "safari" trip, but I´m really glad we decided to do this add-on. I liked that this was not a Maasai dressing up for tourists thing. Obviously this was a hugely important affair for the initiates and the community, and it was an honour to be allowed to witness it. I also thought the fact that most of them did not really "dress up for the occasion" (note "Addidas Lady" as we called her) made it very clear this was not a show for us - this was purely for them.

 

 

 

This is actually a Sitatunga horn Guillermo told me.

 

 

Nothing overly dramatic going on here, absolutely fine to enjoy a beer during the first stages of the ceremony - we did as well.

 

 

 

 

Iboga must be pretty powerful stuff. It was quite spooky how "turned" some of the initiates were a while after taking it, and - as Jane mentioned - still were a day after, and not all of them in a good way.

The internet claims Iboga has been found to be highly effective in treating one of the most devastating epidemics in the Western world – opioid addiction. Since this discovery, ibogaine rehab clinics have begun to pop up wherever the drug is legal, from Costa Rica to Canada. But as I understand for a Bwiti practioner Iboga itself is not the main thing. They believe that the root of all illness is spiritual, so in order to completely heal the body, one must first heal the soul. In order to heal the soul, one must prepare to enter the spirit world, seek guidance from your ancestors and discover the answers that lie within yourself. Bwiti is an important part of society in Gabon - it´s an official religion there.

 

 

 

It´s quite interesting that almost every major religion or spiritual movement has some kind of purification ritual similar to this. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual_purification)

 

 

Now the ritual really started for the initiates - they were going to temple to let the Iboga take effect. We watched this for a while but it was basically just observing them sitting on the floor of the temple with subdued music helping them to pass over.

 

 

 

 

So nothing wrong with enjoying the really good food the community had prepared.

 

 

The next evening the ritual really kicked into high gear - all the dancing, singing and fireshow was really quite something, and definitely the highlight from an observer´s point of view. It was very dark in the temple so taking photos did not really work, some "outtakes":

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And four videos showing the different phases of the ritual - the last one is probably the most interesting one because it shows a bit of the firedance.

 

 

 

 

 

[SafariChick]

Thanks for the videos, @michael-ibk - that last one really shows how close the fire and sparks were coming to the observers and participants! I was looking and found I have some videos also. Here are some of the initiates being washed in the river.

 

 

 

 

this one shows the leaf that had fire burning on top of it. At the end of the washing this leaf had to float through the initiate's legs

 

 

The initiates were washed with leaves - iboga leaves I think?

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 13, 2019 by SafariChick

[michael-ibk]

I admit I was a bit skeptical when I heard we would not stay in the village but sleep in a nearby hotel. Wouldn´t this take away from the experience? Maybe, but in the end I think we all were very happy about this - the place by the beach was nice and definitely much more comfortable - and for me, it gave me the opportunity to explore the "neighbourhood" pretty much all the time we were not in the village and thereby could collect quite a few birds.

 

 

Reichenbach´s Sunbird

 

 

Gabon Woodpecker - a species I really had wanted to get, and I admit just because of the name. If you go to Gabon you have to take a photo of a Gabon Woodpecker, no?

 

 

And this was of course also the perfect opportunity to enjoy the Atlantic - the first and ony time of the trip when we took a good swim. Really nice.

 

 

Yellow-Breasted Apalis

 

 

Carmelite Sunbird

 

 

A species I was particularly delighted about. Black-Bellied Seedcracker - looks more like a Cartoon drawing than a real bird.

 

 

 

The omnipresent Village Weaver. I don´t think I have ever not seen this bird in Africa.

 

 

 

Red-Headed Agama

 

 

Woodland Kingfisher - this one is everywhere in Gabon!

 

 

Green-Headed Sunbird

 

 

Shining Blue Kingfisher

 

 

Splendid Starling

 

 

The very rare Gabonese Hunch-back Duiker

 

 

Bronze Mannikin

 

 

Olive-Bellied Sunbird

 

 

And my favourite - the Rosy Bee-Eater

 

[michael-ibk]

And to bring this trip full circle - you might remember that we tried to go to Akanda NP at the very beginning but got our first taste of being Gabooned? We realized we would have ample time to do something after sleeping in a bit after the second Bwiti evening (some of us would stay till about 3 in the morning.) I don´t remember if I brought it up or @Sangeeta but when we were discussing options (Pongara was another one) suddenly "What about Akanda?" floated around as an idea. And to give him credit Guillermo did his very best to make this possible and ultimately managed to pull this off. Of course it turned out to be more problematic than expected, an 1100 am departure became 1300 because one of the drivers would not show up, and when we finally reached the harbour of course the boat was not ready because they first had to go buy gasoline. It was a pretty filthy spot, people selling fish which obviously had long passed the "best before" date. But as always situations like this are way more bearable when you are a birder - always something to look for, always something to find.

 

 

A Cattle Egret in very nice breeding plumage.

 

 

White-Crowned Night Heron

 

 

Striated Heron

 

 

Blue-Bellied Kingfisher. Similar to the Woodland but an even more attractive species due to its more intense colouring.

 

It was already 1500 when we finally got going, and only reached Akanda a bit before 1600 so really did not have much time there. There´s a "bird island" in Akanda which of course had been a huge pull for me but obviously our very short timeframe did not allow to go that far. (Our original plan at the start of the trip had been an all-day outing after all.) But it felt good to at least get a glimpse of this Mangrove ecosystem.

 

 

Not really much to see most of the time since the boat was going full speed in the middle of the river after the mangroves to even get out of Libreville and into the park area. We did stop at the bank once, and one of the crew ran up the hill like all of Hell´s Riders were after him. What was going on, where was he going ? The answer was very mundane - poor guy had the runs!

 

 

 

 

Some of the park staff are living on this tiny island. Which is also home to an animal we wanted to find - the Gabon or Northern Talapoin. One of the smallest Old World Monkeys which only got named in 1997. Talapoins are diurnal and arboreal, preferring rain forest or mangroves near water. They are usually not found in open fields,  can swim well and look in the water for food. Talapoin is a 16th-century French word for a Buddhist monk. It´s quite surprising how well seven monkeys can hide on a miniscule place like this, it took us quite a while to find them with the help of the rangers. And they are shy as hell, taking a photo was quite a challenge - this was my best attempt.

 

 

After that we moved on to another island which - while not Bird Island" - was supposed to have a lot of birds. And right they were, over the next 30 minutes we saw huge flocks of Pelicans, Herons, Egrets and Waders, hundreds of them, it was quite the spectacle and a nice way to end this Akanda outing. The light had already gone by that time though.

 

 

 

 

 

And that´s more or less it, Ladies and Gentlemen, we have reached the end of this report. Next day Jane, Andreas and me flew back home. But for Group 2 the adventure was only beginning. And know what? I was jealous.

 

Edited October 13, 2019 by michael-ibk

[Galago]

Superb photos @michael-ibk and a monkey I've never heard of! The photo of the Gabon Woodpecker is just lovely.  And there ain't many people who've got that one on their life list! 😁

 

And what a treat to see a real ceremony with no tourist facing performance. It looks fascinating and the videos are terrific. It reminds me of the Carlos Casteneda books in the 60s/70s but, so many decades later, you really saw truly authentic activities. What an excellent finale to your trip.

[inyathi]

@michael-ibk Fantastic report,  I've only read about Bwiti and seen it once in a BBC documentary, a few years back the BBC made a series called Tribe with Bruce Parry a former Royal Marine and expedition leader, he would travel to some remote part of the world and live with a local tribe for a while experiencing their way of life, nearly every episode involved him drinking or eating some mind altering substance as part of a ceremony, he would then promptly throw up. it didn't always make for pleasant viewing and it seemed just slightly strange as they would never have a TV presenter taking drugs in other circumstances, there is a clip from the Gabon program on YouTube of him eating iboga, but having just watched it, I thought better of embedding the video, and decided just to post a link Bruce Experiences Mind-Altering Drugs - Tribe With Bruce Parry - BBC

 

I'm glad you got to visit Akanda in the end, it's not somewhere I tried to visit, so I was keen to hear a bit about it, I'm very envious of the talapoin, a nice sighting to finish off the trip, you certainly did pretty well with the diurnal primates as well as so many of the gorgeous birds that Gabon offers.  

Edited October 14, 2019 by inyathi

[Alexander33]

@Kitsafari, @SafariChick, @michael-ibk, @AndMic, @gatoratlarge

 

What an incredible experience. Thanks for taking the time to share it with us. I’m sure none of us will forget it anytime soon!

 

Here’s hoping @Sangeeta will share some of Group 2’s voyage with us. The comparisons and contrasts would be interesting to hear about. 

[Zim Girl]

What a fabulous adventure for you all.  Absolutely fascinating report. Amazing sightings, not least the Gorillas and whales.  Fantastic pictures from everyone and yet another extremely well executed multi person report!!  Enjoyed it all immensely.

[AmyT]

On 9/18/2019 at 10:02 AM, michael-ibk said:

So this is Gabon. Crazy - but exciting. Thrilling. Never boring. Remote. Untouched. Beautiful. A super-cool adventure. And adventures are so much more fun when you can share them with good friends and kindred spirits. In a word, with Safaritalkers.

 

Bravo!  What a great trip report! What a great adventure, albeit more than a bit frightening on the river!  It reminds me a lot of the stories that my husband's family tells of driving from California to Colombia in the 1970s, through two civil wars, dodging more than bullets and vampire bats.

 

Adventures are messy and risky and thrilling ... after all, that's why they're adventures!  I think it's easy to forget that all of our conveniences weren't available  40 or 50 or 100 years ago.  I am so glad that you set the expectation that Gabon isn't your typical country and that more people will seek out that adventure.  I'm with @mtanenbaum, this is more than a bit outside of my comfort zone. So happy to read about yours.

[lmSA84]

What a trip report! And what a brilliant exhibition of everything that is great about Safaritalk! 

 

Thanks for taking the time to share such an incredible experience 

[TonyQ]

A superb trip report - thank you all for contributing to it. The different voices worked very well

I admit that for parts of it, I could not imagine going there as it sounded horrendous - but you seemed to keep your good humour.

After your trapped on a boat in shark infested waters experience it seemed to get much better, enjoyable and with great sightings. We could see why you wanted to go there!

Excellent to see Safaritalkers travelling together on such an adventure. Thank you

 

[Sangeeta]

Thank you @michael-ibk, @AndMic @Kitsafari @SafariChick and @gatoratlarge for taking this big step, and committing your precious time and resources towards a country that is unfamiliar with tourists and whose tourism infrastructure has a long way to go before it catches up to East Africa or Southern Africa. Countries like these are in need of intrepid travelers like you. You guys showed remarkable good humor, fortitude and resilience throughout, which is evident from this fantastic report.  I think all of us have come back from Gabon with some exceptional memories of a true adventure. Gabon made us work hard for our safari, but the rewards were great too.

 

No, this trip is not for everyone, that's for sure, but it is very special and stands apart from almost anything I have ever experienced in my years of safari in Africa. I will be posting a short Group 2 report soon (and hopefully @optig and @GEORGE PALLADINO will pitch in too).  

Thanks again to all of you - loved the report!

[Ritsgaai]

What more can I add to what everybody already commented to show my appreciation and admiration? 

 

This was one of the most captivating reports I have ever read in my life! 

I salute you for your team spirit, patience and endurance.

 

You certainly have great stories to share around campfires on future safaris. 

[Zubbie15]

Wow, what a great adventure. I doubt it it's somewhere I'll get to, especially anyone soon, so really nice to read this report (and looking forward to part 2, which I see just started). 

[inyathi]

Reading some of the entirely reasonable responses from @AmyT and @mtanenbaum, I thought I'd add another post, for the benefit of anyone who feels that maybe Gabon isn't for them.  

 

I think this is a great itinerary, for the adventurous but I can see that this kind of trip is not for everyone. If parts of this trip are a bit too far outside your comfort zone, you needn’t dismiss Gabon entirely. When I visited Gabon, Langoue Bai was really the highlight of the trip and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, but then it gave me my only view of western lowland gorillas, they had only recently started habituating the gorillas in Loango, so the tracking there wasn't available, you could only hope to get a brief view of gorillas there by pure chance. Now that the tracking in Loango is up and running and clearly successful , you don't need to go to Langoue Bai to have any chance of seeing gorillas. You could then drop Langoue Bai and the long boat transfer, just fly to Libreville travel by train to Lope do the Mandrill tracking (if it’s dry season), look for black colobus and other wildlife, return to Libreville on the train, then drive down to Loango for gorilla tracking, whale watching and other wildlife viewing, drive back to Libreville and then perhaps fly over to Sao Tome and spend a relaxing time exploring the Islands of Sao Tome and Principe. This would still make for a great trip and would be entirely comfortable, but for the rather unfriendly train timetable, if the trains are on time, you’d arrive at Lope around 01:00 and then depart again around 01:30 and the trains only have seats, no beds. The Lope Hotel might not be that great, but Loango Lodge is very comfortable and certainly when I stayed back in 08, was I would say pretty much as good as many lodges/camps I’ve stayed in, in East Africa. If you were going in the wet season not the time for mandrills (or whales), you could even drop Lope and just do Loango in combination with STP, then you wouldn’t even have to go by train, you’d just have a not unreasonably long drive to and from Libreville, spend 4-5 days in Loango and then a week or so in STP just a short flight away, there’s very comfortable accommodation there. Thanks to the gorilla tracking, along with the other wildlife, just visiting Loango would make for a great trip in combination with STP, all the more so in future, when chimp tracking is available in Loango,   

 

A few years back I posted about an old plantation house Roça Belo Monte that I visited on Principe, Príncipe – old plantation house transformed into hotel, I’ve just edited it, as a video I’d posted wasn’t available anymore, so I added two replacement videos.  The videos and the links show just how comfortable some of the accommodation is on the islands, if you’ve been roughing it a little bit in Gabon, you can recover in STP.     

Edited October 22, 2019 by inyathi

[SafariChick]

Thanks everyone for all the encouragement and likes and following along with us.  I really do not consider myself to be the most adventurous person out there, but honestly it was really a fun trip when all is said and done, despite sometimes having some uncertainty and discomfort. But I will say I would suggest being in good physical shape and fitness if going to the mandrill trek or to the Bai because for both of those, I was not as fit as I wish I'd been.  Of course a good part of the fun was traveling with such amazing Safaritalkers who could (almost) always laugh at (almost) any situation and make me do the same! I did have some doubts at some points during the trip but by the end, I was saying I would certainly go back again! 

[Kitsafari]

I'm sitting here at a time when the sun turns golden and makes the trees look glorious as a humid but relatively cool breeze brushes against the green leaves which now look refreshed after rains finally came, breaking a two-month drought in my country. 

 

each time a car goes by, or the machines thump at the nearby construction site where they are building an MRT line, I think of when I sat at Akaka camp, looking on the elephants crossing the river and the rosy bee eaters resting in the lone tree across the river when the quiet of the day sits gently on my shoulders. then the flashes come - the hot dusty afternoon waiting for the dozing boatman while the village chief drones on his importance to the region; or sitting high on the platform in the bai just waiting for the silverback to come out into the open; or thrashing through the jungles for the glimpse of the amazing mandrills; or gazing through my camera at a young gorilla, sitting comfortably on a trunk by resting his foot against the other trunk; or sitting in the train in the middle of the night, watching how the Gabonese - clearly not belonging to the cabin we were in - play hide and seek with the conductors in the first class. 

 

then other memories come through - the hard nights and long drives, the boat caught in the maelstrom of winds and waves. 

 

Looking back - the really tough parts were the Ivindo park, and the boat ride to Loango National Park for me. At that time, I wasn't sure if I would repeat the trip, and even now, to be brutally honest, I am unsure if I could take another harrowing experience as the boat ride.

 

But it is clear to me now, how can I count myself as an "experienced safari-goer" if I am to choose only the comfortable and predictable trips? How can I pride myself as an adventurer,  ready to explore new places if I am not ready to take on the challenges? How will I become an intrepid traveller if I only focus on the destination and not the journey? 

Surely the trip taught me patience. and understanding , not sympathy, that not all countries are made equal. and acceptance that not all countries want a speedy organised city life that is just full of stresses. that to think otherwise would be patronising that all countries should be like us - "modernised", "civilised", "efficient". these are just words tht mean different things at a different degrees to everyone. 

 

Yes, Gabon is not for everyone. Perhaps it is not even for me, although I think with a French-speaking companion and focussing only on Lope for mandrills and Giant pangolins, and Loango for the gorillas and chimps, Gabon may yet still be for me. after all,  I have not seen the Red River Hogs, Talapoin or the chevrotain yet

 

So on balance, I feel that having gone through the experience, I am the better for it, in that I have learned to be patient and chilled, to go with the flow, to live with the bumps. 

I think I'd lived life a little in Gabon, and lived to say it. 

 

Edited October 15, 2019 by Kitsafari

[Peter Connan]

What an incredible trip and trip report!

 

You certainly saw magnificent and rare sightings, and took incredible photos.

 

I admire you all. I don't think I am "intrepid" enough for a trip like this though.

[gatoratlarge]

Not sure anything more needs to be said or written but I'll go ahead anyhow  I concur with my safaritalk travel mates that the trip was more physically challenging than what I've been used to in other safari locations and we had those tense, scary moments in the lagoon en route to Loango, but with the right inducement, I would hop a flight back to Gabon pronto.

 

This trip (my second to Gabon) checked all the boxes I missed during my first visit: mandrills, elephants and gorillas feeding together in Langooue Bai, incredible interactions with forest elephants (snorkeling) along the Akaka, slender snouted AND dwarf crocodiles, the "surfing" hippos, and then those leaping whales(!)---Oh, and I nearly forgot the close up views of western lowland gorillas in Loango!  The clouds of African grey parrots and pairs of blue turacos against the ever grey skies, jungle birds of all kinds...thinking back, this was one rich trip!!!

 

As @Kitsafari mentioned, if they somehow start tracking giant pangolins I'll have no choice but to go back!

And the Potamochoerus porcus!  I really need to see a herd rooting their way across the savanna --

Maybe a night or two at Mikongo Camp in Lope searching for chevrotains?  I'd go back in a flash!

 

And Loango is worth visiting simply on it's own.  A gentleman from New York was being taken to a beach camp when we had just returned to the lodge from Akaka.  In a different season the whales are gone but giant leatherback turtles crawl ashore to lay their eggs...I think there's much more to this amazing park to explore.  If you like to fish, it's incredible as well...

 

Looking back I think we were quite ambitious.  Three parks in logistically-challenged Gabon was a lot to bite off in one two week trip.  With an adjustment or two, I think it can be done by adding a night.  In fact, I think Chalo has already adjusted the trip for future adventurers.  We pushed it. It was certainly an "if you only go once to Gabon" kind of trip----we were the guinea pigs  But I treasure the trip already knocking off the rusty parts in my memory and holding fast to the incredible adventures and misadventures, sights and sounds, the laughter and fun of sharing it with great friends...

 

Until next time....

Edited October 16, 2019 by gatoratlarge

[Atravelynn]

Comments on post #147

 

That map really drives home the fact that mountain gorillas have such a minute, isolated habitat.

Maybe another habituated gorilla group will form on its own as the males and females head out on their own, as part of their natural maturing process.

 

I'm so glad everyone got to see the gorillas and no shoes were lost in the process.  From both groups experiences it seems that the gorillas often cut short the full hour of viewing. 

 

That black bee eater is fetching bird!

Edited October 17, 2019 by Atravelynn