Gabon Is Africa’s Subsequent Should-visit Safari Vacation spot

With their colossal our bodies and ponderous toes, elephants have by no means struck me as masters of hide-and-seek. However within the salad-bowl jungle of Loango Nationwide Park, in western Gabon, they proved to be maddeningly good at it.

One sticky afternoon final September, I adopted my information, Dimitri Mavoungou, by way of the park’s tropical forest in quest of the elephants that reside there. It was, supposedly, the tail finish of Gabon’s principal dry season, however the sky hung over us like moist cement, and sporadic rain seeped by way of the cover. Indicators that we have been sizzling on the path of the creatures we had come to search out have been in every single place. We skirted logs splintered beneath the load of heavy toes and noticed mud smudges on timber effectively above our heads. Big footprints pockmarked the trail, and a musky tang laced the air. Mavoungou paused to hover his hand over a brown lump of dung: it was nonetheless heat.

We slowed down, tiptoeing by way of an impediment course of fallen timber and corkscrew liana vines. I recalled Mavoungou’s security directions. These forest elephants, he had defined, are far much less accustomed to people than their barely taller cousins, the African bush elephants that roam the savannas throughout the continent. Forest elephants are critically endangered, and many years of poaching has left them skittish—typically dangerously so. “It’s vital to stroll slowly and hear,” he warned. “You must see the animal earlier than it sees you.” 

However on this dense jungle, that was simpler mentioned than executed. Each rock resembled an elephant’s hindquarters, and each noise appeared plausibly pachyderm. The rain pattered like the autumn of heavy toes; the wingbeats of black-casqued hornbills mimicked the sound of twigs snapping. And whereas I did my greatest to be as quiet as I might, African gray parrots and red-capped mangabey monkeys screeched from treetops, broadcasting our intrusion.

Abruptly, Mavoungou froze. Some 30 toes forward, a darkish silhouette materialized between the vines and tangled undergrowth. It was grabbing trunkfuls of leaves and scraping the soil with its lengthy, slender tusks. A pale eye, sunken in mud-caked wrinkles, locked onto us for a second earlier than the creature melted into the thicket, leaving solely a rustle in its wake.

The elephant’s peek-a-boo prowess wasn’t totally shocking, provided that Gabon has a whole lot of jungle to fade into. Almost 90 % of this Colorado-size nation, wedged between Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, and the Republic of the Congo on the continent’s Atlantic coast, is cloaked in rainforest. In 2002, then-president Omar Bongo introduced plans for 13 nationwide parks, with the intention of preserving 10 % of the nation’s land towards unlawful logging and poaching. At this time Gabon’s jungles are a stronghold for forest elephants, together with mandrills, chimpanzees, gorillas, and endangered big pangolins.

However regardless of these wild wonders, vacationers are additionally uncommon. Making an attempt to find out precisely how uncommon is one thing of a puzzle, since no person appears to be maintaining monitor. Probably the most dependable estimate I might get from travel-industry sources was that 377,000 guests arrived in 2019. Distinction that with Kenya, which noticed greater than 2 million that very same yr.

“Gabon’s tourism {industry} continues to be in its embryonic stage,” mentioned Nicola Shepherd, founding father of the Explorations Firm, the tour operator that organized my 10-day journey. Lodgings, even on the highest finish, lean rustic. And whereas Chinese language-funded infrastructure tasks are slowly bettering the notoriously dangerous roads, park-to-park journey nonetheless requires grueling drives (or helicopter charters, one thing Shepherd typically recommends). “Gabon provides a really wild expertise, untouched by mass tourism,” she informed me. “You must have a pioneering spirit and revel within the thrill of visiting a rustic that’s nonetheless on the very starting of its tourism journey.”

That new-frontier really feel was precisely what had drawn me. Gabon promised one thing totally different: unvarnished, unfiltered, unpredictable. And it delivered, although not all the time within the methods I had envisioned. 

The day earlier than that first elephant encounter, I had arrived in Libreville, Gabon’s coastal capital, the place the plush beachfront Hôtel de la Sablière provided a welcome reprieve from a punishing red-eye. Early the subsequent morning, my journey started in earnest: a 30-minute flight to Port-Gentil, the nation’s second-largest metropolis, adopted by a dusty, 3½-hour drive in a clattering 4 x 4. As the town shrank behind us, candy-colored bungalows gave option to roadside stalls peddling bruised plantains and dried fish. We handed fields smoldering from slash-and-burn farming and, later, jungle so dense that it appeared to swallow the street. By the point I arrived at Loango Nationwide Park, Libreville couldn’t have felt farther away.

At 600 sq. miles, Loango is a patchwork of savanna, lagoons, tropical rainforest, and seashores that appear to stretch to eternity. On the way in which to Akaka Forest Camp, about an hour upriver from the park entrance, the panorama unfurled right into a sinewy system of rivers so darkish and placid that they mirrored the encompassing jungle in Rorschach blots. Hippos slid beneath the water’s floor; a lone sitatunga antelope darted throughout the shore. Moustached monkeys danced between branches, and birds perched in every single place: sufficient hammerkops, eagles, and kingfishers to make an ornithologist’s head spin. “Africa’s final Eden,” American conservationist Mike Fay as soon as known as it, and the moniker felt apt.

I used to be there to fulfill a resident way more elusive, although: the western lowland gorilla, of which an estimated 1,500 name Loango dwelling. Which is how the subsequent morning I discovered myself knee-deep in a swamp, my footwear filling with what felt like lukewarm oatmeal. Forward of me, Francois Motendi, a gorilla tracker from the Babongo tribe, hacked by way of the thorny brambles along with his machete. A couple of steps behind, hopscotching over the half-solid floor, was New Jersey–born Martha Robbins, a primatologist from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. She has been finding out apes in Gabon for twenty years, and now advises the Nationwide Park Company on balancing the calls for of science and tourism.

Because the swamp gave option to terra firma, Robbins defined that it had taken her workforce nearly 5 years of each day visits to get a single gorilla group used to the presence of people, by way of a tedious and dear course of known as habituation. Since 2016, a small trickle of tourists—not more than 4 per day—has been allowed to tag alongside, and a piece of their $500-a-head allow price helps hold the analysis heart working. “There’s a lot potential. Tourism may very well be an enormous financial enhance for Gabon,” Robbins mentioned. “However what’s most vital is that it’s executed responsibly. When there’s cash concerned, a complete different realm of points opens up. For me, the gorillas all the time come first.”

An hour into our trek, an apish grunt pierced the silence and a silverback emerged from a thicket. Aloof however unalarmed, it resumed snacking on uapaca fruits earlier than dozing off on a log. Close by, a mom cradled a new child with eerie humanity. Her fingers gently traced her child’s tiny physique, and I noticed the common exhaustion of parenthood in her eyes. She, too, seen us, proving that, in probably the most soul-stirring wildlife encounters, curiosity is mutual.

On the boat journey again to camp, Mavoungou all of the sudden minimize the motor. “Look,” he whispered, pointing at a quivering stand of papyrus a couple of yards away. Behind it, an elephant was busy munching on stalks, however sped off into the jungle when it caught wind of our unusual, human scent. A couple of bends downriver, one other elephant, squashing by way of the swamp, watched us for some time till dashing into the water, its trunk rising like a snorkel.

Again at camp, I devoured a dinner that felt nearly sinfully misplaced on this distant wilderness: loads of wine, tacky brussels sprouts, and wealthy dauphinoise potatoes—a nod to Gabon’s French-colonial legacy. I drifted off to sleep in a jungle symphony of sonorous hippo grunts and singing cicadas.

I might hear the roar of the Atlantic pounding the coast from my veranda at Ndola Luxurious Tented Camp, about an hour downstream from Akaka. Loango’s forests had dissolved into sprawling savanna, and Mavoungou and I got down to discover this a part of the park by jeep. I stored half an eye fixed out to see if I might spot the legendary “browsing” hippos that typically experience the oceanic swell: a sight so completely bewitching that footage of the phenomenon by Nationwide Geographic photographer Michael Nichols impressed President Bongo to create the nationwide parks.

The animals, alas, stayed away, and what I did see was much less inspiring: a confetti of plastic bottles littered the sand in each path. Mavoungou, sensing my shock, defined how funding for seaside cleanups had dried up when Loango’s largest lodge shuttered after a authorities dispute in 2007. Lately, Ndola’s workforce solely manages to comb the sandy stretch the place its company collect for champagne sundowners. 

“Retaining the coast clear requires a giant funding, however no person desires to take accountability,” he admitted. “It wants to alter. If it stays soiled, vacationers will keep away.”

We drove on for hours over bone-rattling sand tracks, previous chittering swarms of rosy bee-eaters and herds of forest buffalo. Once in a while, we noticed elephants enterprise out on the plains to graze on the coco plums that thrive within the savanna’s sandy soil. We stopped for lunch at one in all Ndola’s satellite tv for pc properties, Louri Wilderness Camp, which had a wood jetty out onto a lagoon. A placard warned company of the hazards beneath the floor: hippos, Nile crocodiles, and bull sharks. Proper under it, one other signal provided a cheerful reminder: swim at your personal danger. 

Whereas a part of me had wished for a glimpse of a type of underwater predators, a couple of days later I used to be praying to keep away from them. I used to be in a plastic kayak on a placid lagoon in Pongara Nationwide Park, a forested spit of land a few 20-minute speedboat-hop from Libreville. 

Earlier that morning, my information, Abdoul Koumangoye Moto, had identified hippo tracks within the sand round Pongara Lodge, the place we have been staying in beachfront cabins. If a type of beasts have been to floor now, I figured, it could most likely discover the burly ranger extra appetizing than me. Koumangoye Moto, in the meantime, paddled on with serene indifference, helpfully informing me that pythons and crocodiles have been additionally among the many lagoon’s potential hazards. To my reduction, we didn’t spot any—although a squirrel leaping from a close-by tree did ship my coronary heart price hovering.

With Pongara Lodge’s cozy wood bungalows and lounger-lined seaside as my base, I crammed the subsequent two days with jungle hikes and jeep safaris. Koumangoye Moto informed me concerning the gorillas, elephants, and chimpanzees that inhabit Pongara’s riverine forests and savannas. Between November and March, he mentioned, leatherback turtles crawl ashore to put eggs. Precise sightings of those species, although, are more durable to return by, so Koumangoye Moto crammed the lulls with tales of Gabon’s many Indigenous communities, some members of which reside within the space.

He spoke of their perception in forest spirits and the way iboga, a psychoactive shrub, might join individuals with the religious world. I realized that blood-red sap from niove timber is a pure antiseptic and that sniffing crushed aframomum leaves can ship a pure power enhance. Initially of one in all our hikes, he lit up a stick dipped in resin from an okoume tree and defined that it could hold each mosquitoes and malicious spirits at bay. “Nature offers us all the things we want,” he mentioned, gesturing broadly round us. “Fish, fruit, even medication.” Then his tone sharpened. “We’ve been defending these lands lengthy earlier than the conservationists confirmed up. Now they inform us to protect it, whereas it’s the Western companies slicing our timber to ship as timber to Europe and America.” (Since 2000, Gabon has considerably lowered deforestation, in keeping with the United Nations.)

Again on the lodge, I sat down with Christian Mbina, the Gabon-born CEO of Luxurious Inexperienced Resorts, which runs all of the properties I’d visited. Over espresso, with a soundtrack of birdsong pouring in from the jungle, Mbina laid out a imaginative and prescient for his nation’s ecotourism {industry}, which has over current many years been poised to interrupt out, solely to run right into a sequence of setbacks. The newest, a coup d’état in 2023, put the brakes on progress. Whereas the state of affairs on the bottom has stabilized, guests have largely stayed away since. (The U.S. Division of State recommends that vacationers “train elevated warning” when visiting.) 

“Our financial system continues to be depending on oil and timber,” he mentioned. “We have to use our pure sources in higher methods.” Like Shepherd, who deliberate my journey, Mbina confused the significance of setting the fitting expectations. “We are able to’t be in comparison with East African nations with their savannas and Large Fives, the place you’ll be able to see all of the animals you need in an hour,” he mentioned. “Gabon will not be a zoo. If you see an animal, you’ve gotten time to be alone with it; let it come into your thoughts and soul.”

The subsequent morning, I discovered a parade of elephant tracks circling my bungalow. The prints have been so recent that I might nearly hear the animals’ rustling retreat. It felt like a blessing, but additionally like a trunk-long nose-thumb from Mom Nature. In all her uncooked, intoxicating magnificence, she doesn’t give up her secrets and techniques on demand. And possibly that’s why visiting Gabon is such a thrill. Its landscapes don’t provide ensures, however somewhat the tantalizing tease of chance. 

The place to Keep

Akaka Forest Camp: Given its location deep contained in the jungle of Loango Nationwide Park, this intimate camp feels nearly impossibly opulent: the six safari-style tents include correct king beds and have en suite loos with sizzling showers, whereas its well-stocked bar and glorious meals are simply the ticket after an extended day of mountaineering. Hippos and elephants typically present up close to the communal terrace.

Hôtel de la Sablière: With its palm-tree-lined pool, spacious suites, and beneficiant French-accented breakfasts (the croissants, as massive as your face, are completely flaky), this plush beachfront lodge is an ideal pit cease earlier than heading into the jungle; Libreville’s worldwide airport is only a 15-minute drive away.

Ndola Luxurious Tented Camp; This Loango stalwart has eight wood-and-canvas suites with seashores, lagoons, mangroves, and infinite savanna shut at hand. And due to its proximity to a few of Gabon’s greatest fishing spots, the kitchen’s signature jackfish carpaccio, served within the thatched-roof communal lounge, is as recent because it will get.

Pongara Lodge: Widespread with weekenders from Libreville, which is lower than 90 minutes away by a mixture boat and jeep switch, this property overlooks one of many prettiest seashores on the Gabonese coast. The 11 bungalows are eclectic affairs, constructed from reclaimed wooden and furnished with African artwork.

How you can Ebook

Based by Nicola Shepherd, who has deep expertise in Africa, the Explorations Firm is a tour operator that has been planning bespoke adventures for greater than three many years. Shepherd and her native contacts assist navigate all the things from transportation to entry visas. Doing good is woven into the corporate’s DNA: a part of the proceeds from every reserving flows to affiliated charities, and itineraries are tailor-made to company’ philanthropic and conservation pursuits.

A model of this story first appeared within the April 2025 situation of Journey + Leisure beneath the headline “In Search of Wonders.”