Libreville, Gabon
In the morning we divided into two groups: the Pongara National Park tour and the City tour. The Pongara tour started out first. Their travel involved a boat trip across the estuary to a peninsula. They landed on the open ocean side of the peninsula, through the surf in a ‘special’ inflatable boat… safe, but wet and slow, three people at a time, definitely exciting. Ashore there was a nice beach for walking and swimming and a forest with new birds and other wildlife. Lunch was ashore and quite remarkable, it was all sorts of food on sticks!
For the City tour we found that in Libreville, as in other recent stops, the roads are too narrow for the traffic. Whereas this had slowed us down before it was no problem here because we had a police escort that moved us around like VIPs! There were nine small busses in our convoy.
The city was very pleasant, lots of green things growing and many of the people we passed waved to us. Some of our stops will be quite memorable, such as the St. Michel de Nkembo church with its carved pillars depicting African legends. We were particularly surprised to find out that the oldest mission in Gabon, Baraka Mission, was established by the American Presbyterians in 1842.
For lunch, we went to the very pretty Residence Maisha, a beachside hotel. First there was something to drink outside overlooking the ocean. Then we moved inside where the U.S. Ambassador to Gabon spoke to us. The U.S. Ambassador to Cameroon was also there and he too shared some information and stories, before we attacked an excellent buffet lunch.
After lunch some of the busses went straight back to the ship, others to the new U.S. embassy for a tour of the not yet finished complex and three buses went to the Mondah Forest for a bit of a walk. One of the interesting demonstrations during the forest walk was a torch made of the flammable resin of the huge okoumé trees, a member of the plant family Burseraceae that includes myrrh.
By late afternoon everyone was back aboard the National Geographic Explorer in time to cross the barrier sandbar during hightide.
