Trip Report – Gabon Wildlife Adventure & Ivindo Pre-tour Extension – Royle Safaris – June/July 2023 (2 trips combined)
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In the summer of 2023 Royle Safaris returned to one of our favourite African wildlife watching destinations as we ran two back to back trips to Gabon. Guided by Zarek Cockar and with the help of local guides and rangers we visited the wonderful national parks of Ivindo, Lope and Loango as well as enjoying further wildlfie watching along the Oogue River around Lamberene.
The trip report here is a combination of both of the trips and their respective optional pre-tour extensions to Ivindo National Park, where the highlight it usually the interactions between the resident groups of Western Gorillas which visit the bai and African Forest Elephants. However on this trip the highlight for a couple of clients and our guide (Jorge) was an African Golden Cat which was seen near the platform and a very friendly African Civet.
Whilst in Lope and Loango the sightings were more in line with what we usually see on our Gabon Wildlife Adventure and included the wonderful Mandrills, Western Gorillas, Black Colobus, Chimpanzees, Red River Hogs and many others including 10 species of primates). The trips were also successful in duikers, with 4 species seen and also a good number of bats (7 or 8 species) and rodents (5 species)
We had a total of 36 species of mammals recorded, 158 species of birds, 13 species of reptiles and 3 species of fish.
We will be running a repeat of these in July 2024, the first tour only has room for 1 solo female traveller who willing to share with another female (the dates are 13-17 for Ivindo and 17-26 July 2024), the second departure has good availability; these trips are to be guided by Alexander Meyer. If anyone is interested please get in touch (info@royle-safaris.co.uk) for more info. We will be also running the trip in 2025 and so if anyone cannot make it in 2024 but would like to know more about the following year we can add you to our mailing list.
Picture courtesy of Carole & David Clarke.
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