Loango National Park

6/24/13

My first venture into the Gabonese wilderness was this last Sunday, 6/23 to Loango National Park. All together there were ten of us: three Dutch, six Gabonese, and myself. Our Gabonese guide was named Zico. He spoke English but was sort of the silent type so when he wasn’t pointing out wildlife or explaining flora and fauna he was mostly just chilling with his machete. His friend Rych came a long as well. Rych is trying to promote ecotourisme here, via walks like these and so on. There was Valentine, who works for Shell Gabon, and his wife Martine. Then there was a Nigerian couple named Ferni and Fola. Lastly there was Thom, Thomas, and Els who are all from Holland. Thom and Thomas are father and son and have hair so incredibly blonde that it looks white. The younger one, Thom, is my age, so that was refreshing to talk with someone who speaks English and is my age. Apparently he’s just visiting Thomas, who works with Shell, and is helping Lisa and the Smithsonian out with their IT stuff. I hung out with Els the most. She is a schoolteacher with Shell, and she teaches at the Yenzi Camp here. She said she’s been teaching abroad for something like 20 years and has been all over the place.

The lagoon in the morning.

We took two boats out onto the Ndougou Lagoon for about an hour and a half. Apparently the captains had a map of the lagoon, but it seemed impossible to navigate to me. There were so many little islands; Zico said there are 65 or something like that overall. Most of the lagoon can be described the same way: thick forest lining the banks with no beach, or mangroves with their roots reaching into the water, sometimes with mud banks.

The other boat.

We saw tons of birds (African grey parrots, hornbills and more) an elephant’s butt, and four hippos! Els said that hippos always make her think of Shrek, which I get now because of their little ears sticking out of the water. They were in the water when we saw them and they would occasionally submerge and than resurface just up to their mouth to watch us and make little noises. 

After that our captains dropped us off in this little mucky area in a small passage of water surrounded by mangrove trees. While we were waiting Valentine pointed out “walking fish,” which are these little fish about as long as my hand or smaller that were on the muddy banks, using their fins to “walk.” Els said that it was like seeing evolution right before our eyes.

Then Zico gave us a safety talk, about how not to yell if you see something scary and how to deal with gorillas and elephants. For gorillas, you have to curb all instincts to run and instead hunker down, not making eye contact. That’s pretty much all you can do, and he will smite you if he so feels like it. For elephants, it’s important to stay far away (remember this later) and be quiet. They hate flashlights and flashes on cameras, and they’ll probably charge if that happens, which probably means that you are dead.

Fôret

The forest overall was incredibly beautiful. It actually wasn’t very hot at all until about 1:00 or 2:00, and then it was mostly the humidity. I expected it to be much denser than it was. The forest canopy effectively blocked out the majority of the sun, which meant that only vines or bushes could grow. The vines were amazing. They would defy gravity, draping themselves across branches and twisting around trees or mangling themselves into a big heap. The strange thing to me specifically was how thick the vines were. Most of them were the size of small tree trunks, running all over the forest.

And oh my lawdy THE TREES! So beautiful! Some so huge! Some so old! Some so textured! There is the Oupaca staudtii, which has huge, magnificent roots that shoot out of the trunk’s side and into the ground. Zico told us that humans and animals take cover in those trees when an elephant is charging or if you have to stay in the forest over night.

Ouapaca

Then there is the fromager tree, Ceiba pentandra, which is called as such because the wood is soft, which is why it isn’t targeted for lumber. If you hit it one of the fins (or buttresses) with your fist it makes a loud hollow noise, and Els said that chimpanzees use this for communication.

We had to tuck our pants into our socks so bugs etc. didn't get in. Little Anna, big tree!

There was also the Blinding tree, because if you get its white sap in your eye then it will blind you. However it can also be used as a remedy for stomach problems.

Zico and the blinding tree.

Into the first hour of walking, Zico stopped and turned around, making a funny motion with his arm against his face. Eventually I realized that he was imitating an elephant, and we crept closer. It was hard to see its brown skin against the brown/green color scheme of the forest, but indeed there was a big African forest elephant, flapping its ears and tails. I don’t know exactly the distance between us, but no matter because only three yards away or so out from behind the bushes came a BABY ELEPHANT! Luckily they were moving away from us, otherwise things could have gone badly. Mother elephants are very protective over their children, and its quite possible that she would have charged us. We saw a lot of evidence of elephants during our time in the forest. Since it is the dry season here, most of the swamps have dried up but are still soft, so giant footprints the size of dinner plates were very visible. Their dung was also scattered around and looked like compressed hay because they are herbivores.

Speaking of elephant dung, there is a tree that Zico showed us that bears a fruit that elephants can smell from miles and miles away. If the fruit falls, it won’t germinate. But if an elephant eats it and digests the hard outer later, the seedlings will be able to germinate in the elephants dung. So, Zico said, each tree like that is only there because of the elephants. I don’t remember what he called it but Lisa said she thinks its Sacoglottis gabonensis.

According to this New York Times article I read last winter before coming here, about half of the African forest elephants left live in Gabon. That’s why it’s so important that the government here shows zero tolerance towards poaching. Another problem that the article mentions is the issue of high poverty level versus high biodiversity levels. The other day when I was in Moungangara, I got into a long conversation with one of the Shell men about the issues with telling people not to hunt or fish or clear land. The problem, as he put it, is that if we take away those things, what do they have? They don’t have supermarkets; they are living on whatever they bring in for the day and it can be hard to imagine that if they don’t use sustainable practices, the fish or the trees might be gone someday. Of course it’s more complicated than that, and I’m sure I’ll talk about it later as well but that’s one of the big problems with trying to conserve the flora and fauna here.

Back to the forest: Zico would stop every now and then to explain a plant, or to point out signs of wildlife. It was clear that he knew his way around because although he said we were on a trail, it didn’t look like anything to me. I asked how long he’d been coming here and he simply said “a long time.” However as you can see in the picture of the Blinding tree, he has definitely taken people here before.

Overall in the forest we saw two elephants and two antelopes, and heard monkeys and tons of birdcalls. We also had a beehive scare, where Zico made us walk one at a time past a beehive. I have no idea how he saw it because I never would have noticed it. But I’m glad that he did because African bees are nasty creatures and Els is really allergic.

After 7 kilometers, we made it to the beach!

Then we began the long trek back after taking a short rest. The beach was beautiful, especially because it wasn’t like beaches on the West coast. It was virtually inaccessible by anybody unless they had taken the trek we had, so there were no people. Unfortunately there was plenty of evidence of people: mounds of plastic washed up from the ocean. It was so sad to see a place that hadn’t been directly impacted by humans (such as roads, agriculture or buildings) be so impacted indirectly (plastic from other places coming here). It seemed inherently unfair, even if that sounds childish.

CRABZ

After the forest came clumpy bushes, grassy savanna, sand with tall palm trees, and then the ocean. The best part were the little crabs that varied from the size of a butter dish to the size of pinkie. They would scuttle so frantically that they often would run into things and have to quickly right themselves, or if we were too close they would simply fling themselves over the side, legs askew.

Here we saw another elephant, one of which was standing in our way, pictured here:

L'elephant

It was really beautiful, just standing on the beach. For the longest time it was just showing us its butt. Els said that at least half of her wildlife photos are just of their butts because they’re too fast for her to get out her camera in time. We were running short on time, which is really important to pay attention to because the sun sets here at 6, and so Zico decided it would be a good idea if he scared it off, which is what you’re NOT supposed to do. Anyways it seemed to have worked this time, but I was waiting for it to charge the whole time.

Zico being way cool.

At the very end I was looking at what I thought was a fallen log behind a bunch of bushes and I pointed it out and then it turned around and it was an elephant! Really frightening because it raised its trunk at us and we weren’t too far from it, so we scurried on by. We also saw two buffalos on separate occasions on the beach, both of which were scared away by us.

Finally we made it back to the boats and went on our way back to the docks. It started to get fairly cold and the day was incredibly haze so the lagoon and its forest just turned into different shades of blue. The sun was an incredible neon pink color, and it stood out fiercely against the dark blue sky.