Geography and Physical Features
The town of Mayumba is about as far as it is possible to get from the Gabonese capital of Libreville. Nestled in the south-western corner of Nyanga province, in the Department of Basse Banio, we're a two and a half hour drive from the region's capitol, Tchibanga, and four hours from the oil town of Gamba to the north. Mayumba has a small airport, and is served by a twice weekly flight from Libreville by the La Nationale line. Flight time is about one and a half hours. Flights to Gamba are twice daily through the week, and to Tchibanga two to three times a week. Reasonable local transport can be easily found to bring you to Mayumba from these points.
Coming to Mayumba from Tchibanga, the road crosses open savanna before climbing steeply into densely forested hills. This is the ‘Mayombe' chain that stretches well into Gabon from northern Congo and separates Mayumba from the rest of the country. Your first view of Mayumba is across the Banio Lagoon, a 70km ribbon-like lagoon that acts as another natural barrier between the town and the interior. A free car-ferry service finally delivers you to the town, which sits on the tip of the peninsula formed by the lagoon, overlooking the broad sweep of Panga Bay. Mayumba town is the gateway to the southern coastline and the Mayumba National Park, which begins about 19km to the south of the airport. To the north of the park, the land is characterized by wild surf-pounded beach, pioneer vegetation on the dunes, and then a series of bands of shrubs, narrow coastal savanna, seasonally flooded forest and swamp, before meeting the lagoon. The lagoon itself boasts important mangrove forest at its lower reaches, while further up, extensive raffia swamps take over the fringes, stretching for miles into the interior – a land of freshwater turtles, crocodiles, birds, otters, and the West African Manatee. To the south, the thin peninsula of land broadens out. No longer bound by the Banio Lagoon, the forest here becomes drier, and is home to a full compliment of rainforest animals: monkeys, gorillas and chimps, elephant, pangolin, forest antelope and so forth. The coastline here is punctuated with small seasonally tidal lagoons, mangrove stands, island savannas and forest. Hippo and leopard tracks are found equally on the beach, bird life is abundant, and the density of nesting leatherbacks and olive ridley turtles at its highest. It is a remote land without roads, and further cut off by lagoon mouths. A place to come to go back in time, and see coastal Gabon at its wildest.
