Gabon…a planning nightmare!

West and Central Africa with my flight path in dotted red line

I just returned from my second home leave for the year. While the first one was in dry and dusty Mali the preference for the second one was a place a little more humid. Going to a place depends a great deal on the season and from what I had heard; July to Sept was the best time to visit the jungles of Central Africa.

International Airport at Lome, Togo

Streets of Lome

As a destination it’s always been a fascinating location and along with the Amazon region, it’s always been right up there at the top of my bucket list. I don’t know why but tropical jungles have always had a special place in my heart me so it was natural that I choose Central Africa for this leave.

The bikes are the best and the cheapest way
to get around in Lome

I exchanged my USD to local currency
with this guy...he was a Nigerian
from the Oyo State and the scars
are tribal markings

Central Africa I think is fairly synonymous with the word Congo so that’s where I initially wanted to go but there are actually two countries with the word Congo in them (Republic of the Congo and Democratic Republic of Congo).It’s quite funny that I actually ended up going to neither of the two countries but instead went to Gabon which is also part of the Congo Basin and has a similar if not more diverse ecosystem.

For those not very familiar with it, Gabon lies south of Cameroon and north of Angola hugging the western Atlantic coast around the Gulf of Guinea with the Equator passing almost through its center.

Grand Market of Lome

Unlike most of my fascinations, Gabon was a recent one. I still remember sitting on the couch in my Nashville residence just a few years back and watching a show on National Geographic where they showed Hippos surfing in the ocean, large mammals such as forest elephants and buffaloes roaming uninhibited on its beaches and the country blanketed in lush tropical jungles. The next day I saw glimpses of a remote and spectacular waterfalls somewhere deep in the jungles as I researched the web for travel options but it seemed a very distant and remote place to visit for the short vacation schedule I had in the US. At that time it just was a pipe dream!

While I was going to be in Gabon I even planned to spend a few days in the tiny island nation of Sao Tome & Principe (STP).

Grand Marche with a colonial church as a backdrop

Gazing at the hustle and bustle of the Market from a 2nd story building

Destination set, the biggest challenge now was to find travel guidebooks to the region. Bradt had a guide book which was published several years ago and was difficult to find and Lonely Planet had a small section in its Africa guidebook which was outdated as well as severely inadequate for a country the size of Gabon. I had to spend almost two months researching the web for postings on forums and discussion boards by a few handful of tourists who had visited these places to put together a personalized guide book which gave some base for my planning.

Market women

The second challenge was getting a visa. Since I am an Indian passport holder almost every country I visit requires me to get a visa and to top it all off Liberia has only a handful of countries having diplomatic missions in Monrovia and unfortunately Gabon or STP were not among them.

I finally settled on the idea to fly to Lome, the capital of Togo, get my visa at the Gabonese Embassy there and then take the next plane to Gabon and get my visa to STP in Gabon before flying to the island of Sao Tome from where I would take a flight to the island of Principe which would be my final destination. That seemed a reasonably if somewhat complex plan.

I had zero luck contacting any of the embassies or regional airlines companies via phone or email as either the contacts details I had from the web were outdated or no one bothered to answer the phone calls I made. So basically I was ready to embark on the trip with the flight from Monrovia to Gabon via Togo as the only confirmed part of the whole travel itinerary. Having lived in Africa for a while now, I have come to know that things almost always never seem to go according to the plan!

The Trans-West African Coastal highway
through Lome at night

This trip as it is, was going to be a challenge due to its lack of infrastructure, contacts difficulties, frequency of flights and remoteness and the last thing I needed was a flight cancellation. But, that’s exactly what happened. The afternoon before I was going to fly out of Monrovia, I got a call from the airlines saying that my flight was cancelled and the next flight would be two days later. That threw a huge wrench in my plans because now I had to reschedule my entire trip. Almost everything I was going to do was predicated on the previous day so losing two days had a domino effect on my travel plans.

Random pic

I did manage to get my flight out of Monrovia two days later but not before the airline switched the airport where the plane landed citing heavy rain and cloud cover as reason for them not being able to land their plane at the smaller and less equipped airport in central Monrovia.

As soon as I landed at the airport in Togo I checked to see if I could reroute my journey by first flying to STP and then going to Gabon but after speaking to the regional airline company I learn that the schedules they had online were outdated. So….it meant that I had to either wait in Lome, for three days for the next flight to STP or just wait two days and continue on my current airline carrier to Gabon. I decided to stick with the latter.

One good part of having to wait in Togo for two days was that it gave me ample time to get my visa to Gabon. I needed it because the first day I went to the Embassy, I was asked to come the next day. The lady at the embassy in charge of issuing the visa was rude, unhelpful and completely ignored me. Not knowing French was a severe handicap too but surely she could have been a little courteous to a benevolent traveler to her country. Fortunately for me, I met the head of cultural affair at the Embassy who happened to be her supervisor and he was extremely helpful as we managed to communicate in basic Spanish. He advised me to come the next day and even told me it would be no problem to get the visa if I did not have confirmed accommodation plan for my entire time in Gabon which to me was an unreasonable requirement in the first place.

Panoramic view of Lome

Lome with the Atlantic Ocean in the background

The next day I duly got my visa and since I had some time I strolled around the Grand Marche of Lome which reminded me a great deal of the Makola Market I had seen in Accra. In fact, Togo seemed very similar to neighboring Ghana except that it was a francophone country but the people where extremely kind and generous.

I finally landed in Libreville 5 days after my initial planned date. I was late but at least I was there!