This year's trip is to Gabon and São Tomé & Príncipe. I can't say I could have pointed out Gabon on a map prior to researching this trip, although I knew roughly the whereabouts of São Tomé and Príncipe. We picked the destinations based on the least touristed countries in the world, with things of interest to us. In 2011, São Tomé & Príncipe received 12,000 visitors, which is an average of about 30 tourists per day. Gabon is a relative hotspot with 269,000 annual tourists, which still puts them in the lowest 25% of countries. (For comparison, France, the most-touristed country, has over 80 million visitors per year). Well enough with the statistics.
The two countries provide good variety for a three week trip. São Tomé & Príncipe has great beaches and snorkeling, coffee and chocolate plantations, hiking, and Claudio Corallo chocolate. Gabon highlights include national parks, with surfing hippos, lowland gorillas and elephants on the beach.
There wasn't much choice for guide books, just a skinny Bradt guide for each country. The two put together are the same thickness as the South Africa Lonely Planet from our previous trip.
We had booked most of the trip back in June, and had to rearrange everything in November when the regional flight schedules changed from what we were expecting. Luckily we were able to change our dates for most of our hotels & lodges.
We were a bit concerned with getting visas, as there's a lot of comments all over the web about other travellers having their visa applications rejected. We had no issues, although we did have to submit a lot of documentation. The visa application for São Tomé & Príncipe is online. Gabon also has an e-visa, but we needed a double-entry so mailed our passports to the embassy in Ottawa. The Gabon visa is a nice looking full-page sticker which includes our picture! I've not seen that before.
We learnt from previous trips and did most of our shopping for gear in early summer, when stores still have hot weather inventory. We're mostly ready to go, another week and we'll be on our way!
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