Off the Record: Chapter 3 – M’bolo Gabon
Welcome to ‘Off the Record’! Here, we explore personal journeys and stories related to places and experiences we love, and which we believe deserve to be shared for the beauty they hold (physical, emotional, intellectual…). In return, we’d love nothing more than to hear your stories of the places & experiences that marked you, and why you’d recommend them – why they’re special! These Chapters differ slightly in format from our Letters, but are always filled with tips, information, suggestions… or maybe just a bit of the wild. They are certainly more personal pieces of writing and hope to inspire a reflection on your own journeys and what they mean to you.
Every week for the next few weeks, we will be sharing stories from our vibrant and fascinating trip to Gabon. They begin at home, as we navigate the pre-departure logistics and the organised chaos of Libreville airport (worth telling – nothing screams adventure like complicated visa policies and admin). But then, after breaking down right outside Libreville, we venture through the humidity into the vast, untamed (very untamed…) remoteness that is Lopé, and across the country to the fantastically eclectic mix of ecosystems that is Loango. Great apes, forest wildlife, vibrant shades of green, ancient and vibrant birds and fascinating crocodiles, intoxicating plants and an eclectic mix of spiritual and tangible… welcome to our colourful, hopefully evocative, written Odyssey across Gabon!
Describing in detail our three-week adventure is, of course, entirely possible, but while I know you lovely readers can take a lengthy piece of work, I’m fairly certain reading 10 chapters worth of pages would set you back quite a while. Instead, I decided to write an in-depth account of certain moments that were incredibly thought-provoking. There were many more as I’m sure you can imagine, from encounters in the thunderous dead of night with ancient leatherback turtles heaving eggs out into the sand, to fleeting encounters with Shining-blue kingfishers flittering around mangroves and intimidating stare-offs with forest elephants… but for once, I will be reasonable and attempt to limit the word count (I say, 6 chapters in). Let’s see how we get on!
Hopefully, you’ll laugh with us along the way and feel the awe of being surrounded by incredible biodiversity. During this journey, we will look and find Beauty in many different forms, be surprised by it as well. We will explore landscapes of incredible beauty and depth, experience wild encounters, and think about what off-the-beaten-track travel means, and what happens when the divine and spiritual collide with the very tangible reality. Critically, we will look at why conservation here is primordial and what’s happening on the ground, to protect some of the planet’s last pristine natural expanses. And perhaps, just perhaps, why taking a chance and leaving comfort zones can be exceptionally rewarding.
We trudge through the dense shades of emerald and green. In some ways, the forest can feel suffocating: a towering canopy that filters only 3% of the sun’s comforting light; an endless crowd of diverse trees, their lianas, roots, leaves, branches reaching out, entrapping us with a persistent grip; the buzzing silence around – some bees, some flies, some tsetses, some cicadas; the jungle is an inhospitable place. Occasionally, a Great blue turaco will cackle above – or is it really above? Hard to tell what is where in this gigantic tangle – and the heavy whoosh of a Black-casqued hornbill will precede its braying wail. Instantly, my eyes travel to the visible patch of sky above and hope to see the dark, gigantic shadow pass over. Few creatures epitomise this ancient ecosystem more than the pre-historical-looking birds we’ve encountered here, incredibly unique species that seem to belong to other worlds. And indeed they do – entering the forests of Central Africa feels like traversing one of Philip Pullman’s portals carved by the Subtle Knife.
To some people, the idea of entering a thick, dark, dizzying jungle filled with biting, stinging insects, poisonous plants and venomous creatures, is about as close to Dante’s Inferno as one can think. Minus the she-wolf and the lion – the leopards are plenty. These endless tree-covered landscapes are intimidating, and their seeming inhospitality is enough to discourage most people. Their fear is understandable.
Perhaps it is because we have no choice but to feel small and entirely inconsequential here. ‘When you see this place, you will understand why I say this land is not made for humans. It is for animals’ writes V.S. Naipaul in his wonderful book, The Masque of Africa. Perhaps it is that, here, the trees are sovereign. The forest is alive, our Gabonese guides tell us. Understand: the trees and minerals have souls, everything pulsates with spirit and energy. ‘Alive’ is equivocal; the consumption of iboga peels back layers of ancestry, energy and memory. The powerful hallucinogenic plant is a pillar of Gabonese culture, transcending tribes and, in fact, transcending reality as we see it. ‘When we take it, we see the energy that belongs to the minerals, the trees, the forest’, they explain. Ibogaine consumption is a rite of passage, as much as it is a vessel of existential quests – it allows the tangible and intangible to intertwine. It does not invent new worlds but takes the beholders deeper within their own. Everything is energy.
To others though, the dark, endless green, the untold mysteries and whispering leaves are awe-inspiring and hypnotising. They pull you in, invite you deeper and deeper into their core. To feel the powerful energy that exudes from the forest, there is no need to consume iboga. Upon a closer glance, worlds start to appear. The army ants are maybe the most obvious, cutting across the elephant path we follow, carrying food back from a raid, the soldiers actively patrolling the flanks, ready to defend the colony’s feeders. Admittedly, it is seldom sight that is the first sense to notice them, rather the sensation of their fiery bite under your clothes, your underwear, in your boots that instantly summons you back from your daydreaming.
Under a leaf, a colourful caterpillar is actively chewing – or perhaps it is the remaining trimmed, golden threads that were once a leaf that catch the eye, dried veins and venules still holding the structure together while the juicy blades have been consumed. In two-week-old elephant dung, minute, glittering, silvery fungi dot the dung in a symbiotic alchemy worthy of Baudelarian poetry (‘You gave me mud and turned it to gold’ he wrote in his introduction to The Flowers of Evil). Crystal-clear water channels, tainted with rich tannins from fallen leaves trace a different path of life, where leopards and great apes, elephants and river hogs come to drink, without needing to leave the protection of the deep forest. Old gorilla nests hang around the foliage, a telling sign the apes once chose this exact spot to spend the night. They look exactly like one would imagine a cot made of leaves, and a closer look will even reveal which side of the nest the gorilla prefers to sleep in.
And so while it sometimes (paradoxically) feels as if the landscape is dizzyingly barren of any life other than trees, bees and fungi, it only takes the call of an African emerald cuckoo signalling its territory, fresh gorilla tracks in the mud, or the shuffle of a leaf not three metres away, betraying the presence of a forest elephant, to remind us that is one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet. Perhaps barren is the wrong word – a jungle is the opposite of barren. But certainly, the continuous hum and endless lines of bark and green can merge into one if we don’t allow ourselves to surrender. This ‘closer glance’ is everything in the forest.
But let’s start from the beginning.
It’s all about the journey, they say. Well, sometimes, getting to the destination is nice too.
‘Mesdames et messieurs, dans quelques minutes nous commençons notre notre descente vers Libreville. En vue de notre proche atterrissage, nous vous invitons à regagner vos sièges et à attacher votre ceinture…’ [Ladies and gentlemen, in a few minutes we shall commence our descent into Libreville. Please regain your seats and fasten your seatbelts….].
The trepidation that I had tentatively managed to keep at bay throughout the first seven hours of flying was suddenly back with a bang. Peering through the oval-shaped window, I stared at the glittering city lights, a mix of white, blue and yellow scattered haphazardly across the pitch darkness. Had we been flying by day, an ocean of deep, endless green would have met my eyes, the dips and curves of which dotted out by the treetops of an infinite jungle. 88% of Gabon is covered by forest.
Gabon… what’s in a name? If not a world filled with stories of never-ending jungles, thick canopies and ancient trees, brilliantly colourful birds, unique wildlife behaviour, and fascinating wildlife encounters. Strange-looking crocodiles with long snouts, imposing chimpanzees, majestic gorillas, enigmatic leopards (‘la panthère’), gigantic hornbills, curious red-river hogs, butterflies of all sorts and shapes, insects blended so perfectly with the vegetation or forest debris, reptiles with ornate patterns and glinting scales… Some dreams are filled with forest elephants venturing onto the turquoise Gabonese beaches, of thousands of wild western lowland gorillas living undisturbed in dense rainforests, of the river channels that snaked through the jungle and their fish-filled waters.
It was finally happening. Years of planning, months of lengthy, tricky admin, and here we were, ready to go on one crazy adventure.
Discovering new worlds of admin: the travel agent who hates travel admin
Obtaining a visa to visit Gabon, should you need one, is neither an easy nor straightforward process. It requires a lot of back and forth, of planning months in advance… to still only really get the Authorisation of Entry at the very last minute. And even then, things remain a little murky. Luckily, us travel agents and tour operators bear the heavy weight of this crippling anxiety while our wonderful guests sleep like babies at night. I must make a confession though, few things give me as much stress as unclear visa policies. In fact, few things give me as much stress as border crossings, even with clear visa policies. You just never know what’s going to happen and which immigration officer might just pick on you for a few extra dollars.
The ultimate moment of unnecessary panic hit me when Air France asked me for a proof of visa during my online check-in, the day before the flight. As the Gabonese e-visa site had been down for months, and I’d been assured there was no need to get one from a local Gabonese embassy, we’d chosen to trust this little piece of paper, signed by a Gabonese border police officer, authorising our entry into her country. So naturally, my heart raced as I tentatively entered the number of my application in the tab – I could not check-in until this visa step was complete. Hit finish, a slight refresh and ping, my boarding pass landed in my inbox. Deep breath. It appeared, however, that I had been the only one who needed to declare a visa, as neither Nora nor Ailie, our guests were flying with me from Paris to Libreville, had had to do so during their online checkin. Another unpleasant sensation of panic slowly started to ripple across my body. I was the only one on a French passport.
At dawn the next morning, after a night of what ifs at every toss and turn, I decided to abandon any further attempt at sleeping, get up and finish packing. Mum’s apartment floor in Paris was covered with the final bits of prep – silica gel sachets, spare dry bags, little bits of things that I wasn’t sure I needed but that I probably would, and that just would not fit in my faithful little blue duffle bag, already starting to rip at the seams. To beat the frantic Parisian rush hour, I’d decided to leave at 7:30 am and arrive uncharacteristically early at the airport (I’m definitely a wait-as-little-as-possible-at-the-airport type person). Ailie, freshly landed from Dubai, had been waiting for me at check-in, and we walked in together, excitedly chatting about this adventure that was finally within reach.
My passport was barely checked and my bags were sent off before I could blink, but it was now Ailie’s turn to be under the visa grill. The time had to come to test the real power of these letters of Authorisation. The clerk glanced at the paper, read it, frowned, looked at her screen, looked at the letter again, frowned some more, apparently confused. ‘Ceci n’est pas un visa [This isn’t a visa]’, she told me, abandoning her earlier brave attempt at English. I pointed to the application number that I had used for my online check-in; ’C’est le numéro de dossier pour le visa. Et pour la date de validité, c’est un mois à partir du jour d’entrée sur le territoire gabonais, donc un mois à compter d’aujourd’hui [This is the application number for the visa. And for the validity date, it’s one month counting from the date of entry, ie today]’. Another pause, another frown, the panic epicentre slowly began rippling again, tectonic plates of anxiety starting to collide against one another. After what felt like an eternity, she looked up, typed something on her screen, and out of the printer came Ailie’s golden ticket to Libreville. Her bag disappeared. We could go through.
I’ll save the description of the absurd Parisian airport organisation that meant I had to queue for 55 minutes waiting for my passport to be checked as opposed to Ailie who, with her British passport sailed through security and was at the gate within a matter of minutes. This would only entail a detail of the profanities that swirled through my mind as I was confronted with the painfully bureaucratic French system.
Fast forward an hour, and I finally joined Ailie, already deep in conversation with Nora, who had transited air-side to the gate. All was well. It turned out no one had bothered to check Nora’s letter, much to her mock annoyance, as she knew exactly what it had cost in terms of stress, sleep and back and forth to obtain this letter.
So, at 1900 hours, as the captain announced our descent into Libreville, we thought the hardest part was done.
M’bolo Gabon
As we left the cool air-conditioned plane, the hot, humid air hit us squarely in the face. It was like entering a steam room, minus the lovely eucalyptus perfume that always seems to relax the senses. Rather, this place smelled of sweat, fatigue and irritation, and other things best left unobserved. We followed the sticky corridor that led to the immigration room, confused as to which queue to join. ‘Pas de visa? Par ici [No visa? This way]’, a security officer ushered us towards a small glass hut -within the very same room- with a cramped waiting area and three desks.
No one spoke a word of English. Passengers were sat or standing by the desks – there was no queue, it seemed, just a waiting area. I waded through the crowd to one of the desks with our three passports and our letters. The officer barely looked up from behind her desk. ‘Lettre?’. I showed her the copies. She shook her head, irritated:
-‘Il vous faut la vraie lettre. [You need the real letter].
– Mais nous n’avons pas les originales madame, puisque les originales sont dans un bureau au Gabon et que nous venons de Paris. [But we don’t have them Madam, the originals are in an office in Gabon, and we come from Paris].
– Eh bien débrouillez-vous, appelez quelqu’un pour vous les apporter, je ne peux rien faire avec cette copie. Suivant! [Well figure it out, call someone so they can bring them, I can’t do anything with this copy. Next!]’ .
I stood there, stunned. Ailie and Nora were looking at me quizzically. Making my way back to them through the sea of people, I removed the three layers of winter clothes I’d been wearing from Paris, hair frizzing, small pearls of sweat beading on my forehead. The air was suffocating. I had to call our Gabonese contact, it was almost 9 p.m. and I wasn’t exactly sure she’d reply. Opened WhatsApp, mobile data on (wincing slightly at the ‘WELCOME TO GABON’ text notifying me of the price of a single megabyte), praying Ludwine would reply. Within an instant, her gentle voice sounded through the phone – ‘Ok, I’m on my way. See you soon’. This was clearly how things worked, and part of me wished I’d been warned. We very quickly learned throughout the trip that this was how a lot of things worked.
I went back to the officer, passports and money in hand, so she could begin the visa process. 45 000 CFA, or 70 euros, later – cash only, of course – I returned to my seat. And then the wait began.
It was an interesting system. It quickly became obvious that this seemingly disorganised chaos was meticulously mastered. There was a method to the madness. A ‘fixer’ arrives at the airport with the original letter of invitation, hands it over to someone who has air-side access, who then hands it over to a man with a clipboard and a booming voice, ready to call out the names from the letters of authorisation now in his possession. The resulting process is loud, hot and manic, with people rushing back and forth, some not hearing their names, others at the extreme end of the room having to swim through a mass of sweaty bodies around them to reach their prize. It’s like playing the lottery. All of this in French, of course.
After your name is called, and the letter handed to you, you pass it on to the officer holding your passport. And return to your seat. And wait some more. Eventually, they call out your name from behind the window. It’s quite a thick window, and the words are muffled – swallowed, in fact, by the continuous brouhaha. Naturally, when the officer called my name, I didn’t hear her the first time, which resulted in her being even more irritated with me than she already was (actually, this happened every time she called a name, as it was impossible to hear anyone other than Mr Boom, whose voice seemed to surf the sound wave). Visas in hand, we then joined the visa queue, elated to finally exit this little greenhouse of a hut. The new queue didn’t seem so long in comparison, and 20 minutes or so later, we grabbed our bags that had been patiently waiting for us, and, as the clock struck ten, we stepped out into the night.
Andrew’s beaming (and sweaty) face immediately greeted us. Our adventure could finally begin.
I hope you enjoyed this Chapter, and that you look forward to the next episode, where we head into Lopé. To me, it remains one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen; to Andrew it’s reminiscent of a bit too much travel trauma. Many of you have enquired about travelling there, and rest assured we’re working tirelessly on an itinerary. However, as you’ll see after reading about our recce, recces exist for a reason: many lessons were learnt, which is, in a sense, exactly what we wanted. Not to mention the average response time at the moment is 3-6 months, which is also something we’ve realised is pretty normal. Thankfully, this isn’t my first rodeo as we say in French, and things will happen, eventually.
See you next week for mandrill trekking, repeated break-downs, fending off swarms of bees, encountering our first forest elephants and experiencing what words like ‘wild’ and ‘pristine’ truly imply.
Take care and don’t forget to seek the beauty around you.
Alice
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