One Step Beyond in Gabon

West Africa’s giant umbrella of forest canopy shade runs out to a rim on the Atlantic Ocean, where the restless body of water exhausts itself along hundreds of empty pointbreaks.

But the first forest you have to encounter is the tangle of bureaucracy you have to hack through before obtaining visas. The fire in your belly for travel can be reduced in an instant to cold embers through such bureaucracy. After months of carefully planning a trip to Gabon, John Callahan, Emi Cataldi, Erwan Simon, Randy Rarick and I eventually find a clearing where our applications see light and reason.

At long last the paperwork descends upon us like a blessing and paves our way to cement city — Libreville.

LIBREVILLE

Gabon’s capital is an unashamedly ugly and outrageously expensive show of steel and concrete, where oil barons bargain in ostentatious glass-fronted offices. We feel something is out of kilter the moment we arrive, and, predictably, we hear the disheartening news that our contact and planned guide for the gruelling 500 miles long trip south to Mayumba has written off his four-by-four. He has also broken his arm.