Whilst driving up from the beach in Myumba this weekend, I was so excited to spot 3 baobabs! If you had been following my blog whilst in Moz, you would have known about my addiction to these trees! It just made me feel "more at home" in a very alien country.... I googled to find out more about baobabs in Gabon, and there is hardly any information. Gabon is really not the ideal climate for baobabs, and there are not many recorded. Some say seeds were brought from Senegal to plant in gardens, others that they were carried by different tribes. I think the sea or rivers carried the fruit and with the ideal temperatures, they sprouted. The 3 trees we found are close to the beach. We have driven past these trees twice before and never noticed them as they were covered in leaves, now as their leaves are falling, we noticed them. Here is one of the many traditional stories about the famous Baobab. The Creator is said to have initially planted the Baobab in the rainforests of the Congo Basin (Gabon isn't too far away) , but the tree complained that the dampness made his trunk swell. So the Creator moves it to the higher slopes of the Ruwenzori Range, the "mountains of the moon", but the Baobab continued to grumble about the humidity. Angered by the incessant wailing, the Creator took the swollen trunk and tossed it into the dryer parts of Africa (Tete!) and the tree landed upside down with its roots in the air......

Check the little birds, only noticed these once I had downloaded the pics onto the computer...

A little far away, but it was in an army camp, so was denied permission...