Loving Gabon

I love Gabon.  I love the friendly people, the lush scenery, the wildlife, the warm weather, the French cuisine.  I just wish I had the time and money to get into the interior and explore a bit.  I'm quite sad that we are finished here rather soon.  People always ask me, what was your favourite posting?  It's a difficult question to answer as you can find something appealing about most anywhere, and the shortcomings are dealt with and soon forgotten.  Mtwara, Tanzania was too unrefined for most, and being constantly stared at and forever hit up for money wore on you, but I loved snorkelling the intoxicating reefs and mountain biking the jungle single track coursing through the remote hills.  Mombasa was a dirty crowded city severely handicapped by atrocious traffic, with trash everywhere, but you had only to take a car an hour or so out of town and you could watch elephants and giraffes in the wild, and the plush beachside resorts and intoxicating nightclubs were out of this world!  I could say pretty much the same thing holds true for Dar es Salaam.  Morocco had it's cultural sites and stunning scenery scattered along the coast and buried deep in the Atlas mountains, Romania had high culture and a European flare, Turkey had deep old world culture, hospitality and the nicest people I have ever met, Norway has it's fiords and Stavanger nightlife, Italy obviously had incredible must-see sights and incredible food, Suriname had their own unique cuisine and culture, with hikes and four wheeled adventures deep into the jungle, but Gabon seems to pull it all together in a rather appealing package.  I could live here.

Maps arrived last Thursday for our ferry trip all along Africa's West Coast to Poland.  Afternoons on SAR standby are spent inputting routings into our iPad JeppView programs and reviewing airspace restrictions and FIR crossover waypoints.  Where to overnight is also a huge consideration, and we've already picked a few hotels enroute.  I've got friends in a few spots to stop and see; in Nigeria, Benin, Senegal, Morocco.  It's going to be a fun trip.

And that interesting proposition is firming up.....