Detour To Libreville On Monday I left Iguela in a truck with 8 others from Iguela, and we bumped along the sandy track across the savannah for the hour and a half drive to the airport at Ombooue. We then took a short flight to Port Gentil, where Tim and I had a really nice lunch with Francois, his good friend who has driven the […]

Sunday Tomorrow morning I leave Iguela. I’ll go to Port Gentil for one night and then fly to Gamba, which is a town on the next lagoon south, the N’Dogo. This lagoon is much bigger and I’ll only have a week there, so I doubt I’ll see all of it. But the idea is to get a sense of the place and meet some of

The beach Friday afternoon I had a chance to go out to the beach at Iguela for the first time since I’ve been here. It was so nice to get out and walk, after riding around in a boat so much! It’s a beautiful wide beach with lots of pretty shells, big ghost crabs but no animal tracks (too close to humans- there’s a village

Akaka is African heaven! Tim and I and our 2 Ecoguides spent 3 nights at Akaka, which is a camp at the junction of 2 rivers south of the lagoon. Akaka is one of the most pristine and stunningly gorgeous places I have ever seen. As we traveled down the river from the lagoon we passed through different habitats- first dominated by palm and papyrus,

Lagoon map To give an idea of some of the places I’ve been talking about, I thought it would be helpful to post a map of Iguela and the lagoon. This area is located on the central coast of Gabon. The red stars are my manatee sightings (some overlap in the northeast at Manatee Corner), the pink stars are former sightings made by staff here,

All is not well in the forest… or the lagoonI find the forests here absolutely mesmerizing. As we motor along the lagoons and rivers I am amazed at the size of the trees, with trunks that can easily reach 10 feet thick. In Evaro (inland) the roots of the trees are gnarled and look like something out of a Tolkien story; the forest seems enchanted.

Animal IDs Brian from Nat Geo looked at the snake pictures I previously posted, and thinks the first one is a forest cobra. The second one I saw last Wednesday is a Rhinoceros Viper (not Gabon viper). Tim says the monkey is a red-capped mangabey. I saw quite a few more in the past few days, as well as more forest buffalo and elephants. Here’s

Great animal sightings Wednesday! Yesterday morning we went out to a different part of the lagoon in the drizzle and didn’t find any manatees, but I did see my first forest elephant! Infact, my first wild elephant ever! It was wonderful, he didn’t seem too disturbed by our presence. After he came out of the bushes I realized he was wearing a radio collar. The

A night on the lagoonAs we boated out to our campsite Tuesday afternoon, we surprised a group of at least 3 manatees in an open channel. The water literally erupted around the boat, and even though I had a camera in my hand, I was so stunned (and was also trying to count any noses or tails) that I didn’t get a picture. Unfortunately there