Lope National Park

Lope is Gabon's flagship strangeness: ancient savanna fingers - relics of drier ages - reach into the rainforest along the Ogooue's middle valley, and the mosaic multiplies life. Forest elephants graze the grass edges at dusk, buffalo herd the open ground, and the park's superstar spectacle is the mandrill horde: aggregations that can run to several hundred of the technicolour primates crashing through the forest in one of the mammal world's great gatherings, tracked in season with researchers' help. Rock engravings by the river record humanity's own long tenure - the reason UNESCO inscribed Lope as a mixed natural-and-cultural site in 2007 - and the Trans-Gabon railway delivers visitors almost to the lodge door.

History

The park and its surroundings show almost continuous human occupation over the last 400,000 years, perhaps because the open Ogooué valley served as a corridor from the coast into the interior, and the oldest Stone Age tools known in the area were found at Elarmékora. Between 3,500 and 2,000 years ago Bantu peoples built hilltop villages here, iron-working arrived about 2,000 years ago, and more than 1,600 petroglyphs date from around that time; the valley seems to have been abandoned between 600 and 1200 AD and was resettled by the Okanda in the 14th and 15th centuries. The Lopé-Okanda Wildlife Reserve, created in 1946, was Gabon's first protected area, and in 2007 the national park and its landscape were added to the World Heritage List (Wikipedia, Lopé National Park).

The landscape

• The mandrill hordes - hundreds strong in the season's aggregations.
• Forest elephants on savanna - dusk grazing where the grass meets the trees.
• The Ogooue rock art - engravings of the valley's ancient peoples.
• The mosaic itself - savanna fingers inside the green ocean.

When to go

June to September, the long dry season, gives the best track access and savanna viewing; mandrill aggregation tracking peaks in the drier months - lodges know the current pattern. The railway timetable frames arrivals.

Practical notes

Wildlife here is forest-wary - sightings build over days, and the mandrill spectacle depends on tracking arrangements made ahead. Lodging is limited; book, don't improvise. The train runs to its own philosophy of time - pad connections generously.

Nearby

The Ogooue river villages, Mikongo's forest camps and the railway line east and west.

Key facts