The luxury of being able to sit up in bed this evening and write a blog post, and hopefully reorganise and finish adding captions to the photos I added this morning. Tonight we are parked in the guarded carpark of Hotel Mvet Palace in Oyem, Gabon with the use of electricity for air-con plus wifi. The hotel looks out on to one of the towns several small lakes, this one is the most attractive. Most of the others look like more like a bog.
After leaving Ambam we had a lovely relaxed drive to the Gabon border on good surfaced quiet roads through the dense forest. The sound of the insects when we turned off the engine was almost deafening. We saw quite a lot of bushmeat on sale along the roadside, mainly bush rats of varying sizes but also small deer and a chimpanzee. Yesterday evening in Ambam we wanted to eat streetfood in the town and visited a couple of stalls. One had a big pot of stew and we were told it was antelope. Decided on the much more apetizing chunks of pork. We opted for the lesser expensive cuts as the dearer ones included snouts and teeth. The pork had been pre-cooked but was then chopped into small pieces, bones and all and deep fried with sliced banana, onion, peppers and tomato in a curried seasoning and served to us in a black plastic bag. We took it straight 'home' and ate it with French bread from Kribe. It was really delicious if a little chewy.
Exiting Cameroon was quick, and so was the Customs and stamping of our Carnet into Gabon. However, we had one more hurdle and that was what I expected to be a cursory inspection of our passports and visas before driving the 30km into Bitam, where passports would be stamped into the country. We believe the 2 officers were new to the job and we were still there nearly 2 hours later. They had decided they would trace our whole journey through Africa, starting with Morocco and check all entry and exit stamps for each country. What that achieved we could not understand. We came to grief because when we flew home from Togo and then returned we used different passports and so there was part of the trail missing. They also couldn't understand why we didn't have visas for some of the countries we had been through. There were lots of phone calls between their Chief in Bitam and questions. I tried to explain in my best French, which they did understand, why we had not gone direct from Togo into Nigeria and that we had a Benin stamp in our passports. They really didn't understand the logic that there is no border between the two countries, and why did it matter to our entry into Gabon anyway. Finally, the young man was very apologetic for keeping us so long. He said that it was the fault of Le Monsieur (Chris) who did not speak French and had caused complications. It was really quite funny and we are pleased that we have time for these type of delays.
The roads in Gabon so far have been excellent and although the countryside is very similar to Cameroon it appears much more open. Possibly because more of the forest trees have been felled (mainly irroco wood) and a lot of areas have been cleared. Several kilometers before Oyem we came upon an enormous new stadium, recently used for the African Cup football. There are posters all over town welcoming the teams, which played here between 16th January and 5th February. We drove straight through town to the Airport. That also has been recently built and still has work going on. It has a very very long runway. The place appeared deserted so we walked through the terminal building to airside and found the airport manager, Thierry. We explained that we would like to make use of the airport to fly our balloon. He understood immediately and said we were welcome to do so, no charge, on the days when there is no traffic. Today was one of them, tomorrow and Sunday will be busy with flights from Libreville and elsewhere, and Saturday no traffic. We have arranged to meet him again tomorrow afternoon before he leaves so we can assemble the balloon basket and burner and park there overnight to make a flight Saturday morning. What luck! Even if we are only able to make a short flight along the runway that will be great, and then perhaps find somewhere more interesting to fly while we are in the country. There are several National Parks and an area of Savannah and canyons. We don't intend to rush through Gabon. Let's hope we don't get too much rain while we are here as March is one of the wettest months. We have had a very heavy shower this evening here and I can hear the frogs singing in the aftermath.
After leaving Ambam we had a lovely relaxed drive to the Gabon border on good surfaced quiet roads through the dense forest. The sound of the insects when we turned off the engine was almost deafening. We saw quite a lot of bushmeat on sale along the roadside, mainly bush rats of varying sizes but also small deer and a chimpanzee. Yesterday evening in Ambam we wanted to eat streetfood in the town and visited a couple of stalls. One had a big pot of stew and we were told it was antelope. Decided on the much more apetizing chunks of pork. We opted for the lesser expensive cuts as the dearer ones included snouts and teeth. The pork had been pre-cooked but was then chopped into small pieces, bones and all and deep fried with sliced banana, onion, peppers and tomato in a curried seasoning and served to us in a black plastic bag. We took it straight 'home' and ate it with French bread from Kribe. It was really delicious if a little chewy.
Exiting Cameroon was quick, and so was the Customs and stamping of our Carnet into Gabon. However, we had one more hurdle and that was what I expected to be a cursory inspection of our passports and visas before driving the 30km into Bitam, where passports would be stamped into the country. We believe the 2 officers were new to the job and we were still there nearly 2 hours later. They had decided they would trace our whole journey through Africa, starting with Morocco and check all entry and exit stamps for each country. What that achieved we could not understand. We came to grief because when we flew home from Togo and then returned we used different passports and so there was part of the trail missing. They also couldn't understand why we didn't have visas for some of the countries we had been through. There were lots of phone calls between their Chief in Bitam and questions. I tried to explain in my best French, which they did understand, why we had not gone direct from Togo into Nigeria and that we had a Benin stamp in our passports. They really didn't understand the logic that there is no border between the two countries, and why did it matter to our entry into Gabon anyway. Finally, the young man was very apologetic for keeping us so long. He said that it was the fault of Le Monsieur (Chris) who did not speak French and had caused complications. It was really quite funny and we are pleased that we have time for these type of delays.
The roads in Gabon so far have been excellent and although the countryside is very similar to Cameroon it appears much more open. Possibly because more of the forest trees have been felled (mainly irroco wood) and a lot of areas have been cleared. Several kilometers before Oyem we came upon an enormous new stadium, recently used for the African Cup football. There are posters all over town welcoming the teams, which played here between 16th January and 5th February. We drove straight through town to the Airport. That also has been recently built and still has work going on. It has a very very long runway. The place appeared deserted so we walked through the terminal building to airside and found the airport manager, Thierry. We explained that we would like to make use of the airport to fly our balloon. He understood immediately and said we were welcome to do so, no charge, on the days when there is no traffic. Today was one of them, tomorrow and Sunday will be busy with flights from Libreville and elsewhere, and Saturday no traffic. We have arranged to meet him again tomorrow afternoon before he leaves so we can assemble the balloon basket and burner and park there overnight to make a flight Saturday morning. What luck! Even if we are only able to make a short flight along the runway that will be great, and then perhaps find somewhere more interesting to fly while we are in the country. There are several National Parks and an area of Savannah and canyons. We don't intend to rush through Gabon. Let's hope we don't get too much rain while we are here as March is one of the wettest months. We have had a very heavy shower this evening here and I can hear the frogs singing in the aftermath.
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