Lope National Park

I totally expected to see elephants. We drove around the park for 4 hours and saw none.  Other than the beautiful scenery, the park was basically a waste of time, not only driving around it, but also the day drive on dusty, bumpy roads to get there and return.  West African park are clearly inferior to East and South African game parks. 

Exciting town...

Game drive...

We did see this bird however. 

Beautiful scenery...

Oh yeah, we also saw this water buffalo.

And a few more water buffalo from a distance....

Kids outside the park walking home from school. 

Lope Hotel near National Park

We travel a 100k at 12k per hour or a total of 8 hours to get to Lope National Park.  The dirt road was extremely bumpy and dusty. Then it took another 8  hours to return to the main road. Basically we wasted two days driving.  The hotel near the park was very nice, but empty, mostly because the park wasn't that exciting.  Why drive all that distance for nothing? I don't know.  At least the scenery was nice though. 

Made it to Gabon

We made it to Gabon and this country is very lush and beautiful, except there isn't much to do...

It rains a lot in Gabon.

My third time crossing the equator.  Pervious countries where I have crossed it are Kenya in 1985 and Ecuador in 2008. 

Beautiful Sunset

Another "bush" camp...