Gabon

If you had to describe Gabon in one colour, it would certainly be green. A true lung of Equatorial Africa, 85% of its territory is covered by forests and 15% by National Parks and unspoilt beaches. A unique environmental richness, a variety of ecosystems and biodiversity, with a very low population density, have made it the last Eden of the African continent.

Gabon is a true natural treasure trove, characterised by imposing rivers that meander through the dense tropical forest, the only means of communication between the paradisiacal coastline, where more than half the population is concentrated in the capital Libreville, and the deepest and wildest inland areas. A land of colourful gorillas and mandrills, a habitat for panthers and dwarf crocodiles that silently glide along the rivers and lagoons, and surreal coastlines that open up onto virgin beaches where herds of elephants and hippos roam undisturbed, to seek refreshment directly in the waves of the Atlantic Ocean, in a spectacle as unusual as it is real, which also welcomes rare lute turtles, a multitude of dolphins and humpback whales. Intricate labyrinths of damp lianas and tunnel-like mangroves, evergreen rainforests, savannahs of mysterious origins and impenetrable jungles, where only the Babong pygmy and Fang bantu populations have been able to adapt, guarding the deepest secrets of a bursting nature. Gabon is indescribable in words, a naturalistic and spiritual universe, made up of naturopathy and traditional medicine, rituals and ancestral “Bwiti” practices, in which men, plants and wild animals have lived in perfect balance and symbiosis since the dawn of time. An anthropic mastery of one of the wildest territories in the world, of its dangers and resources, in which the use of hallucinogenic shamanic plants is contemplated, as a cathartic asceticism of total fusion with the natural and supernatural environment.

Despite the recent development of new economies and the industrial exploitation of raw materials, many Gabonese people have remained strongly identified and traditionalist, and the still current difficulties of access to much of the territory have helped to preserve its primordial aspect.

It is definitely an adventurous and mysterious destination, for true enthusiasts, all waiting to be discovered, if you think that even today exploratory scientific expeditions are organised and financed.