Things to Do in Gabon in October

Lopé is Gabon's most accessible national park and a UNESCO World Heritage site, and October's low visitor numbers mean you get the forest almost entirely to yourself. The western lowland gorillas and forest elephants that inhabit the savanna-forest mosaic are harder to spot than in the dry months because the undergrowth is thick and wet. But the tracking itself becomes more atmospheric. You walk through curtains of mist at dawn, the forest floor spongy underfoot, with the metallic trill of grey parrots overhead and the occasional crack of a branch that might be a 4,000 kg (8,800 lb) elephant moving through mahogany thirty metres (100 ft) away. The rain tends to hold off until midday, which gives a solid five-hour tracking window most mornings. Guides based at the park's research station know the gorilla family groups' ranging patterns intimately, and in October they're often willing to extend walks because there's no next group waiting behind you. The mosaic of open savanna and dense equatorial forest here is unlike anything else in Central Africa.

Pointe Denis sits across the Gabon Estuary from Libreville, a twenty-minute speedboat ride from the capital's waterfront, and in October the beach is yours. The sand is pale, warm, and wide, backed by coconut palms whose fronds rattle in the pre-storm breeze that builds most afternoons. The water temperature hovers around 26°C (79°F), warm enough to wade in comfortably, and the Atlantic swell is moderate, not the flat calm of dry season but not dangerous either. The catch is timing. Mornings are typically clear and gorgeous, with that soft equatorial light bouncing off the estuary. But by 1 or 2 PM the sky darkens and the rain arrives with theatrical force. The smart move is to take the first boat over around 8 AM, spend four or five hours swimming and eating grilled fish and plantains at the beachside shelters, and be back in Libreville before the afternoon downpour turns the estuary choppy. The beach shelters, simple palm-thatch structures with wooden tables, serve some of the best grilled barracuda in Gabon, charred over coconut-husk coals, the flesh flaking apart under a squeeze of lime.

Marché Mont-Bouët is Libreville's central market and the loudest, most pungent, most overwhelming square kilometre in Gabon. In October the rain drives the market's energy under its corrugated iron roof, amplifying everything: the clang of machetes on frozen fish, the shouts of vendors selling towers of smoked fish stacked like dark, oily bricks, the heady funk of atanga, the purplish-black African pear fruit that peaks around this time of year and tastes like nothing else, somewhere between an avocado and a chestnut with a faintly resinous finish. The market sprawls into surrounding streets where women sell manioc in every form, fermented, pounded into sticks, fried into crunchy beignets, and the air carries that sour-sweet lactic tang of cassava in process. From the market you can walk toward the older colonial quartier near the waterfront, past the Cathédrale Sainte-Marie with its carved wooden panels depicting biblical scenes in distinctly Gabonese style, and along the Boulevard de l'Indépendance where the Musée National des Arts et Traditions houses Fang and Myènè masks in a building that is itself a relic of French colonial architecture, the walls stained with decades of equatorial humidity.

If you are willing to commit to the journey, Ivindo in October is among the most powerful natural spectacles in equatorial Africa. Kongou Falls, fed by the Ivindo River at near-peak flow, stretches roughly 3.2 km (2 miles) wide across a series of cascading drops surrounded by unbroken primary forest. The spray cloud rises high enough to see above the canopy from a distance, and standing at the viewing area the noise obliterates conversation, the mist soaking your clothes within minutes and carrying the mineral, iron-rich smell of laterite sediment churned up from the riverbed. Mingouli Falls, smaller but arguably more photogenic, drops into a pool of tea-coloured water stained by forest tannins. The park is remote, reached by a combination of internal flight and rough road or river travel, and October's rain makes the access roads difficult. But the rivers themselves are navigable, and pirogue travel through flooded forest, where the trees stand in a metre (3 ft) of amber water and the reflections double the green canopy overhead, is an experience that simply does not exist in the dry season.

Akanda, just north of Libreville along the estuary, protects one of Central Africa's most important mangrove and mudflat systems, and October's rising waters bring migratory shorebirds that use the West African flyway. The park is best experienced by motorized pirogue, gliding through mangrove channels where the roots arch overhead and the water reflects the dark green canopy in near-perfect symmetry. The air in the mangroves smells briny and organic, a tidal mud scent cut with the sharper vegetal note of the mangrove leaves themselves. Herons, egrets, and kingfishers are resident year-round, but October adds Palearctic migrants, sandpipers and plovers that have come from as far as Scandinavia, picking through the mudflats at low tide. The boat rides are sheltered from rain by the mangrove canopy, which makes this one of the few October activities in Gabon that weather barely disrupts. Early morning departures catch the best bird activity and the calmest water on the estuary.