Gabon 2

Gabon Part 2

Angolan Visas 
We also began to plan our route through the rest of Gabon and Ralf decided to join up with Johan for some fun and male bonding on the coast, whilst Susanne and Philippe’s plans for Gabon and the Congos dovetailed nicely into ours, so we would carry on together. A major and growing concern was the situation regarding our Angolan visas; a Catch 22 situation had developed: (Now pay attention!) it seemed that immigration in Kinshasa would now only allow off the ferry from Brazzaville, overlanders heading for Angola who had an Angolan visa in their passport. The Angolan Embassy in Brazzaville wouldn’t issue a visa, insisting that overlanders continued to get their visa as before from the Angolan Consulate in Matadi on the DRC side of the Angola/DRC border. It seemed that all other Angolan Embassies would not issue a visa, telling overlanders to get one from that closest to the DRC, the Embassy in Brazzaville, or the Consulate in Matadi! (Got it?!)

Philippe was born in Angola and for him visiting the place in Angola where he was born was a major factor in choosing the Western route. He hoped that, having got nowhere with the Angolan Embassy in Abuja, he (what a good man) might have more success pleading his, Susanne’s, our and Ralf’s case in person and with proof of birth at the Libreville embassy. We all piled into a taxi to make our way to the Embassy only to be stopped by the whistle and raised hand of a small, smartly dressed policeman who said there were five of us in a ‘four person’ taxi; this was said as taxis sped past stuffed with up to six or seven passengers! Further, a fine would have to be paid for this ‘infraction’.

Peter got out remonstrating with the policeman on behalf of the driver; this was a big mistake! The policeman fronted up to Peter and, jabbing his finger accusingly, said that Peter was the fifth person and he would have to pay the fine! A firm refusal to pay, accompanied by a (calculated!) request to be arrested and taken to police headquarters, resulted in all five of us being bundled into a passing taxi, whilst the poor driver of our original taxi was left to come to an ‘arrangement’ with the policeman. Sad, but not a disaster; all taxi drivers factor a payment to the police into their fares and the Government knows this and pays the police accordingly. It’s just a fact of African life.

Regrettably the trip turned out to be fruitless. The visa situation was causing us increasing concern, so Peter and Philippe spent time on the internet looking at ways of circumventing the problem and involving family and friends in the hope they could help.

On 3 July we celebrated Ralf’s birthday; an afternoon tea with cake and candles, was followed by a dinner at a highly recommended Vietnamese restaurant. The Vietnamese owner was an absolute hoot, introducing us to his speciality: various varieties of seriously scrumptious Vietnamese spring rolls, and regaled us with stories of his family’s escape from communist Vietnam and his time learning to cook in restaurants in Paris and London.
The Schweitzer Hospital LambareneNot without some regret and the visa issue still unresolved, we left Libreville on 5July and headed inland to Lambarene and the Albert Schweitzer Hospital. En route we crossed the equator; keeping an eye on the GPS as we drew closer to 00.000’ north, we began to look for a roadside sign marking the spot. There was a commendable lack of commercialism compared to the Kenyan equivalent; there was, well, absolutely nothing! We were in the middle of nowhere with no sign to say we were on the Equator, only our GPS told of our arrival at THE spot in the middle of a dangerous bend in the road! Even that was less than clear; Susanne and Philippe’s GPS indicated a slightly different spot from ours, so we agreed on a point somewhere in between and took lots of fun photos, with a total disregard for the normal tenets of road sense and safety! So another landmark on our trip south; we were over the Equator and in the southern hemisphere.

   

After a five hour journey it was almost dark when we came to the outskirts of Lambarene and a sign directing us towards the Schweitzer Hospital. Philippe and Susanne thought we might be able to stay there; this proved to be the case, but the French head nurse and acting hospital director told us that the guest accommodation was full of visiting doctors, so camping was our only option. A gate was opened and we drove into the heart of the area of the old hospital and camped on some gravel between two wooden one storey buildings, one of which was now the staff canteen and where we had supper. Any thoughts of a relaxing evening talking under the stars were cut short by the infamous ferocity of the local malarial mosquitoes, seemingly impervious to the lashing of Deet we had slapped on and able to drill through clothing to feed on our bodies. 

  

 

The next morning we discovered that the second building was where Albert Schweitzer had lived and was now a museum in honour of the great man and his work here at the hospital. Albert Schweitzer, an iconic figure of the 20 century, was born in what was then German Alsace in 1875; by his late twenties he had become a pastor, as well as a renowned theologian and philosopher and concert organist of international repute. A radical freethinking Christian, he became increasingly aware of, as he put it, ‘the wrongs that the Christian (the white man) had done to the underdeveloped people (the black man)’, and from the age of 30 devoted his life to the service of Africans through health care. He began to raise funds and seven years later the hospital at Lambarene, designed by him and built under his direction, was opened

 

 

It was on a lovely spot overlooking the River Ogooue and where Schweitzer developed his philosophy, Reverence of Life. Based upon the interdependence and unity of all life, it has been seen as a forerunner of contemporary environmental and animal welfare movements; so much so that Rachel Carson dedicated Silent Spring, her seminal work of 1962 that launched today’s environmental movements, to Schweitzer. Albert Schweitzer was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952 and continued to oversee the running of the hospital right up to his death here thirteen years later, aged 90, and was buried in the hospital grounds beside his wife Helene. Without any hyperbole, Schweitzer was an outstanding and remarkable man.

  

Staying at the hospital was Hans Peter-Muller, a charming retired Swiss surgeon who had worked there and was now the director of the trust that continued to fund the hospital; not only was he Swiss, but he came from the same area of Switzerland as Susanne and Philippe and so went out of his way to ensure we made the most of our stay. He arranged for us to tour the old hospital, now a museum, in the morning and then, after lunch, he took us out in the hospital motor boat on a fascinating afternoon tour of the nearby lagoons. As if that wasn’t enough, he rounded off the day with a guided tour of the working hospital. What a kind man. 

  

 

The Road to the CoastWe left the Schweitzer Hospital early on the 7 July and headed towards the southern Gabon coast, some two to three days away along a rough dusty red piste through a mix of rain forest and savannah. A lunch time detour took us to a spectacular abandoned mission, Notre Dame de l’Equateur; approached via a magnificent avenue of huge mature mango trees, the main buildings, built of brick and wood, had arched colonnades and were in surprisingly good condition. It was such a peaceful place and, along with a local dog, we had a relaxing lunch in the shade of an arch overlooking a dear little white washed chapel.

  

That night we bush camped in a lovely spot where a small area of savannah ended and rain forest began; free of no-seeums and with a cool evening, we enjoyed a meal and some wine sitting around a roaring camp fire prepared by Philippe, our resident Swiss pyromaniac. Rather alarmingly we were woken just after dawn by the deafening sound of buzzing bees; it seemed as if they were trying to get in through meshed windows of the tent, and we could only think that they thought it would make a good bee hive. Panicking slightly, Liz stayed inside and sent Peter out to investigate! The bees, and there were hundreds of them, were being attracted by the drops of dew on the tent and flying in from everywhere to drink it. Luckily the water soon evaporated and the bees disappeared.

Later that morning we came to Mouila, a small regional capital surrounded by distant mountains and astride a wide fast flowing river; as we had hoped there was a Lebanese run store calling itself a supermarket. The Lebanese seemed to have a stranglehold on high street commerce throughout Francophone Africa and Gabon was certainly no exception. Whilst in the supermarket Philippe got talking to a French expat; Michel was the regional manager of a French subsidiary company producing local beer and soft drinks and insisted that we accompanied him to his house to meet his wife and have a drink. Their pleasant riverside house contained a surprise, their pride and joy: a pet parrot called Saxo. He was a grey parrot, the Gabonese national symbol, and was given the freedom of the house; he walked over us and the furniture, pooped over us and the furniture and squawked ‘Papa’ constantly. 

 

Escaping the attentions of Saxo, we followed Michel to a nearby beauty spot where there was a lake, Lac Bleu, famous for its deep blue colour. As a beauty spot it had seen better days; we sat in the shade of the top floor of an open, skeletal concrete structure, the remains of an incomplete restaurant and ate our picnic lunch gazing at the opaque, and very un-bleu, waters of a small lake that was gradually lost to view behind a pall of smoke from the surrounding burning grassland. The flames and smoke moved towards us and we increasingly became covered in black ash; curtailing the picnic, we headed back to the main road.

We soon became fed up with the unending, jarring, corrugated surface and so decided to leave the dusty main road and follow a cross country piste that would rejoin the main road to the coast some 100 miles later. What a great choice it proved to be, we were alone again in an area of spectacular rolling savannah; a sea of waving bleached yellow grass stretched out before us and, here and there, the route of a dried up river or stream was marked by snake like strands of the green of trees and scrub. On the distant horizon, illuminated by the late afternoon sun, spread a range of dark green mountains and a barrier we would have to cross to rejoin the main road to the coast. We found a lovely mountain camp site that evening; Philippe (who else!) prepared the fire for the barbecue and after supper we sat around until light rain forced us to retire to bed, the pitter-patter of the rain drops making us feel comfortable and sleepy in our boudoir.

  

 

The next morning sun and blue sky accompanied us as we drove out of the mountain range on a narrow twisting track, passing villages deserted and left for the rain forest to reclaim and crossing the network of streams and rivers running west towards the Atlantic. The bridges were often in a dangerous state and crossing them ‘exciting’, however we all sat in glorious sunshine on one wonderful long, safe, wooden bridge having our lunch and looking down on the wide Moukalaba river flowing quickly 20 feet beneath us.

 

We rejoined the main route to the coast in Tchibanga, or Chitty Chitty Banga as Liz called it, the rather upmarket capital of the maritime Nyanga province and, after a fruitless search for mangos – Oh dear, the season that had been with us all the south from Mali seemed most definitely over - we headed towards the coast and the town of Mayumba on a dirt main road that had recently been widened and the corrugations removed.
MayumbaBy the end of the afternoon it had become obvious we were not going to make the ferry across the bay to Mayumba before the service ended for the day; after an increasingly frantic search we found a spot on high ground beside a communications mast from where we could clearly hear the sea and feel the sea breeze; so near yet so far. Leaving early the next day, 10 July, we took the ferry across to the isthmus that was Mayumba. 

 

Michel, of Saxo fame, had said that a friend had stayed at a great campement in the middle of a reserve on the coast to the south of Mayumba. Asking the way in Mayumba and after some hesitation, we were directed to the local airport; at the airport, after even more hesitation, we were told to drive onto the runway at the far end of which we would find a track. Glancing skyward as we went, we made it to the end of the runway and found a track leading in the right direction. The track soon became so overgrown with thorn bushes that as we moved it sounded like hundreds of finger nails scratching on a blackboard; then we sank into the finest powder sand we had seen since the Sahara. This was the track from Hell!
 

We drove on through a mix of sand, thorn bushes and pockets of open savannah, at one point we ended up going along a beach, stopping to admire some bottle nosed dolphins swimming and feeding very close by. After over two hours we realised we were getting nowhere fast. A ‘conference’ resulted in the decision to retrace our route and, not wanting to spend the night in Mayumba, we bush camped in one of the ‘islands’ of savannah. A combination of good food, a glass of wine, a lack of no-seeums, a spectacular fire orange sunset and the sound of the ocean waves breaking on the nearby beach soon restored our good humour!

Back in Mayumba on 10 July we went to the local office of the WCS (World Conservation Society) to see if they could give us some genuine information about the possibility of a coastal route to Sette Cama some 100 kms to the north and their views on the reserves in the area. Rich Parnell, the English Director of the WCS Mayumba National Park project was a complete star. He had been in Gabon for several years and what he didn’t know about the wildlife and reserves in this part of Gabon was not worth knowing. Peter was in his element with him and would have happily taken on a job right there and then, leaving Liz to find her own way to Cape Town!... What do you mean, she could do it perfectly well on her own!!

After discussing leatherback turtles, humpback whales, forest elephants, the viability of the route to Sette Cama, etc, etc, Liz managed to prise Peter away and we all went to have a picnic lunch on a beautiful stretch of beach at the back of Rich’s bungalow, with our vehicles parked in his driveway. The return ferry ride proved a little more eventful, the captain was having an extended lunch break and we left nearly an hour late and not before one of his more enterprising crew members took it upon himself to demand extra money to ensure we got on board; he didn’t get it, we got on board!
Pointe de Panga
We took Rich’s advice and made our bush camp right on the tip of Pointe de Panga, on the edge of a 20 foot cliff overlooking the sea and with the waves crashing onto the sandy beach below. The tiny little open area on the cliff edge was only just big enough for our vehicles. Liz called it the ledge, and it really was. After a feast of a supper, we sat and watched the sun set over the Atlantic; how good life was! Rich had said that there was an unusually large plankton bloom taking place and that night looking down at the sea from our dining table we saw the most wonderful sight: whole sections of the sea being turned a flashing, luminescent green by the phosphorescent plankton, particularly just where the line of waves was about to crash onto the shore. It was quite magical.
To Sette Cama

  

 

On Saturday 12 July we drove north until we came to our first ferry crossing and one Rich had warned us about. We had never come across one like it before; it was a small, flat bottomed, one car at a time unmanned ferry and would only move if those on board pulled in a rope secured to the opposite bank, thus propelling the ferry to the far side of the river. Once our vehicles were across we continued through lovely open marshy savannah. Judging the right track to follow was testing and, although it was now well into the dry season, the ground was still boggy in places and we had to wade through some quite deep, boggy water holes at times; Liz exhibiting a complete lack of confidence in Peter’s mud plugging ability!

We came to another river, the Nyanga, and a second ferry crossing; this time it came with a ferryman and twin outboard motors. It was big enough to take both vehicles and we spent the most fabulous twenty minutes chugging up a wide, muddy, fast flowing river with rain forest jungle running down to river banks lined with beds of tall papyrus. We disembarked at a village where we picked up the tarred road to Gamba, the only large settlement before Sette Cama. Gamba was quite different from anywhere else we had seen in Gabon. It was an oil town full of Shell expats; the small immaculate airport had a car park stuffed with brand new Mercs and BMW’s and their owners lived in a large village style compound where they had everything they needed from shops to sports facilities and even a golf course.

 

After Gamba, the oil money ran out and it was a difficult deep sandy track all the way to Sette Cama. We were travelling through a desolate, depressing landscape; for some reason, in this vast under populated area with virtually no livestock at all to feed on the new green shoots created, the locals felt it was necessary to torch the savannah. We had passed scenes like this before in Gabon and sometimes a darkened horizon bore witness to yet more senseless destruction in the far distance, but we had never before seen it on this scale or with such a destructive impact on the landscape; trees and bushes killed or stunted by the heat and the bare, grassless earth exposed to the wind and sun.
Sette Cama 
Vegetation returned as we began to pass beside rain forest; we were excited to see our first forest elephant with its calf on the edge of the forest a short distance from Sette Cama and surprised at how protective it was, with a lot of flapping of ears, ushering, almost pushing, the calf back into the forest. Once in the small, sandy, seaside settlement of Sette Cama and rather than look for a place to rest our weary bones, we thought we would bush camp on the beach instead. We found a suitable spot beside a long jumble of huge rain forest logs and Philippe (who else!) made a camp fire on the sand. We baked some potatoes and onions in the embers whilst succulent pieces of chicken breast, bought from a Lebanese store in Mayumba, roasted on the grill above. Everything was fine, if a little sandy, apart from the ‘succulent pieces of chicken breast’; they were none other than chicken’s bottom, the parson’s nose! Liz protested that they were frozen when she bought them and labelled in French ... and anyway the cook (Peter) should have noticed it wasn’t quite right!

 

The following day, 13 July, under leaden skies we went in search for someone who could help us organise our next three days in this wonderful part of Gabon, a country on the cusp of becoming a major wildlife tourism destination. We had chosen this area, Sette Cama and the Loango National Park, because it was remote and on the coast, normally only accessed by river, and offered the possibility of seeing rain forest hippos, gorillas, elephants and buffaloes. We were lucky enough to find a lovely local man called Ghislain; he was in his twenties and worked for Ibonga, a Gabonese environmental NGO based in Sette Cama responsible for managing the reserve. He quickly sorted out some basic accommodation for us and a pirogue to take us out into the lagoon that afternoon.