Have you ever seen a hippopotamus surf? If not, you should definitely put Gabon on your list of places to visit.

Tourists flock to Gabon for its amazingly diverse forests and parks. A full 10% of Gabon’s land area was protected and turned into national parkland in 2002 by President El Hadj Omar Bongo. The most famous of Gabon’s national parks is Loango National Park, which encompasses savanna, dense forests and unspoiled white sand beaches.

In the forests, you’ll find elephants and even families of gorillas. The beaches are home to the famous surfing hippos-if you’re lucky, you’ll see them playing in the waves just off the shore.  Further away from the beach, you can spot whales and dolphins.

Visiting Loango National Park helps maintain this amazing ecosystem. The money you spend when you visit helps provide Gabon with an incentive to preserve its forests and wildlife. Plus, you support the park’s conservation programs, such as rehabilitating baby gorillas orphaned by the bushmeat trade.

Travel with a Purpose has an excellent overview of the accommodations available in Gabon and the conservation and education programs undertaken by the staff there.

To get to Gabon, you will need a passport and a tourist visa.

Here’s what you need to get a Gabon tourist visa:

• 2 Gabon visa application forms
• 2 passport photos
• A copy of your plane tickets or itinerary
• Your US passport

Depending on where you stop on your way to Gabon, you may also need additional transit visas for other countries. RushMyTravelVisa can review your travel plans and determine which visas you need. We can also help you apply for any necessary visas, assisting you with the paperwork and forwarding your visa applications to the appropriate embassies for expedited service.

Want to see those surfing hippos? Apply for your Gabon visa today!

Tags: ecotourism, Gabon, Gabon visa

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 12:03 am and is filed under Destinations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.