“You’re going where?!” The look on my mom’s face when I told her I was about to board a flight to Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo was one that had, in the lead-up to my trip, become familiar. “Are you sure it’s safe?” Friends would ask. “Isn’t there some kind of war going on?”
Yes, it is. And no, there’s not. But the confusion is somewhat excusable. Only a single word and the Congo River separate this Central African nation from its war-ravaged and headline-grabbing neighbor, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), whose mad-dash capital Kinshasa I could see across the water from my Brazzaville hotel room.
This unfortunate association hasn’t done Congo’s tourism industry any favors, and only a few thousand intrepid travelers visit every year. “Central Africa has always been an empty patch on the map,” says Kristina Plattner, managing director of Congo-based ecotourism operator Kamba African Rainforest Experiences. “There’s this deep fear of it. It’s where you get strange diseases, and the forest will eat you. People know more about Antarctica or the moon than they know about this part of the world.”
With Kamba, she aims to break through the stereotype. A day after my arrival in Brazzaville, I joined her on the company s twin-engine plane to the Odzala-Kokoua National Park in Congo’s north, where Kamba runs a trio of luxurious lodges with thatch-roofed huts deep inside the rainforest. As soon as Brazza’s (the city’s name in the local lingo, which toggles mostly between French and Lingala) urban sprawl thinned out behind us, the landscape faded into an almost unbroken carpet of emerald green. More than 60% of the country is covered in swamps and tropical rainforest, and the greater Congo Basin, which stretches between Gabon in the east and the far western reaches of the DRC, is second only to the Amazon rainforest in size.
Odzala, one of Africa’s oldest national parks, sits at the very heart of it, covering a tangle of savannahs, swamps, and tenebrous jungle about the size of Belgium. This biodiverse salad bowl is home to at least 440 bird species, more than 4500 types of plants, and a mind-boggling amount of mammals. There are rare forest elephants, jungle-dwelling bongo antelopes, and one of Africa’s most diverse primate populations, including putty-nosed monkeys, chimpanzees, and golden-bellied guenons. I had come here to meet their bulkier cousins, though: this corner of Congo is a stronghold for the critically endangered western lowland gorilla.
It was still dark when we trashed through snarls of arrowroot and sticky vines the next morning, but the forest was already wide awake. Gray parrots screeched overhead, cicadas loudly made their presence known. Ahead of us, gorilla tracker Grace Lepale hacked his machete through the jungle thicket, occasionally stopping to pick up scents and sounds. He pointed out gnawed stalks of wild ginger and dung beetles going to town on a gorilla’s number two, but when we arrived at a nearby jungle clearing, we were still alone. “They’ve already left,” Lepale sighed. “Too many elephants around.”
Another hour of bushwhacking followed, down barely-there paths that made the previous trails look like highways. Suddenly, Lepale picked up pace and sped off into the jungle. When he reappeared, he gestured for us to follow and mask up. On a gnarled tree wrapped in strangler figs, we found a family of seven gorillas having breakfast. The leader of the pack, whose furry silver legs dangled from a branch sagging under his weight, threw us a curious glance, but paid us no mind. Fat fingers grabbed fistfuls of fruit, sending leaves raining down the forest floor like confetti. We looked on, hypnotized by their humanness, until they disappeared, one by one, into the undergrowth.
Back in the breezy restaurant of Ngaga Lodge, Kamba’s base camp for gorilla treks, I met Spanish primatologist Magda Bermejo, who has, in part, been responsible for this heart-racing encounter. As a world authority on western lowland gorillas, she has spent years camping around the surrounding jungles to observe the apes’ behavior and habitats. Through endless patience, she habituated three separate groups (including the one we met that morning) to human contact. Not only to gather more accurate research data, but also, somewhat reluctantly, to help Kamba in a low-impact, high-value tourism operation whose proceeds funnel into wildlife conservation and community development.
For Bermejo though, the gorillas are just one part of the jungle’s allure. “Moving around these forests can feel like moving through a cathedral,” she said, gazing at the lace-like canopy overhead. “There are few people, nobody makes a noise. It’s magic that places like these still exist, and it’s our responsibility to preserve them.”
Those words hit home a few days later, when I waded waist-deep through a swamp colored like Coca-Cola. We had moved on to Kamba’s Lango Lodge by kayak down the Lekoli River, and set off on an early-morning bai walk with Portugal-born guide Pedro Lopes leading the way. These bais, marshy, natural clearings dotted all around the Congo Basin, are honeypots for numerous animals—forest elephants gather here to mine the mineral-rich soil, buffaloes come to graze on plants heavy with protein.
.jpg)
We were, quite literally, following in the footsteps of elephants, who have carved out these swampy boulevards through thousands of years of commuting to their feeding grounds. While my feet slipped through the muck, a hippo turd, still fresh, brushed past my elbow. I tried very hard to forget everything I had read about water cobras and blood-sucking creatures that call these jungles home.
It was the nervousness, perhaps, that made our small group giddy, but Lopes told us to keep our volume down. Despite their size, hippos and nimble forest elephants can appear like ghosts from nowhere. Besides, the silence would give us the opportunity to savor a slice of Odzala Lopes has grown most fond of after years of guiding guests around the park. “Take in the smells, listen to the sounds,” he whispered. “There are few other places where you can feel nature so deeply.”
I listened to the wings of a casqued hornbill flapping overhead and spotted a kingfisher shoot from a drooping branch in an electric-blue flash. It wasn’t until we returned to terra firma, though, that we came eye to beady eye with the elusive pachyderms that had, so far, avoided us. On a grassy patch just ahead, a tusker emerged from the jungle fringe. We crouched as Lopes guided us out of the wind s direction, so as not to startle the beast with our strange, human smells. Lopes’ face read with a mix of prudence and excitement. Heavy hunting during Congo’s civil war in the late ’90s has made the elephants skittish of humans, and rehabituation takes time—as a result, such close encounters as these still aren’t without risk.
That night, while feasting on French-tinged food and South African wines at Lango Lodge s bai-facing verandah, a feeling of gratitude overwhelmed me. The previous days, packed with gripping wildlife encounters and otherworldly scenery, were a well-timed reminder that travel is, indeed, a huge privilege. An adventure like this doesn’t come cheap (Africa specialist Natural World Safaris organizes nine-day tours for about US$16,975 per person), nor is it for everyone. Unlike a Kenyan jeep safari or even a Rwandan mountain gorilla trek, Congo makes you work for its treasures. But here, in the heart of an endless jungle so little-visited yet so rich in rewards, that felt like a small price to pay.