Uploaded September 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 hours ago
We drive the final hundred kilometres in Cameroon and bid farewell to the beautiful landscape with a touch of regret. In this sparsely populated area, we pass through small villages where little houses made of mud, stone or a frame of logs covered in mud stand close together. There are small fields around the houses, but beyond them we see nothing but jungle. Lorries laden with thick tree trunks pass by regularly, but many trees that are a size smaller are still standing. After 450 km, we spend the night on the football pitch of a seminary. We listen to the novices singing. We have lunch at the equator monument, for which the designer has undoubtedly won the prize for ugliness. The landscape features more open spaces and there are also more villages – villages with neat little houses, tidily swept yards and no rubbish.
Camp ABIO cares for gorillas that have been rescued from captivity but cannot (yet) be returned to the wild. There are now just three of them left. They live on two islands in the river. We take a boat trip past the feeding spots; each gorilla has its own spot. It’s a wonderful way to see the animals up close in a reasonably natural environment, but of course it also feels very much like a zoo. For €90 per person, you can think of it as an expensive zoo or a cheap safari: in Eastern Congo and Rwanda, €1,000 per person is a standard rate for a few hours’ walk through the jungle to (hopefully) see gorillas.
We’re driving to Brazzaville. Slowly, the Congo River comes into view – one of Africa’s three longest rivers. Across the river, through the mist, we can see the skyline of Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Locals on foot or on mopeds can easily cross by ferry, but we have to travel via the Angolan exclave of Cabinda, a journey of nearly 600 km to the border. We see huge queues of tankers stationary along the road. It must have something to do with the conflict between the US and Iran. We haven’t had any problems refuelling yet, but we later hear from other travellers that they had great difficulty filling up their tanks in Congo-Brazzaville.
As we drive into Pointe-Noire, we see all the familiar characteristics of many African cities we’ve visited before: tarmac that suddenly gives way to unpaved potholes, taxis zipping about, mountains of rubbish, and lots of people and noise.
Congo-Brazzaville (with the exception of Pointe-Noire) has pleasantly surprised us. It is more prosperous than we had expected, with very beautiful and varied scenery, clean and with good roads. The traffic is less ‘Wild West’-style and there is public transport in the form of buses. The few checkpoints where we were stopped were conducted properly and nowhere were we asked for a ‘gift’. We’re driving from Pointe-Noire in Congo-Brazzaville to Cabinda, Angola’s exclave.
Cabinda is just a small patch of land, but it’s very important. A large proportion of Angola’s oil comes from there. After two hours at the border, we manage to do what we failed to do twelve years ago: enter Angola.
We visited Congo Brazzaville on our overland trip by car (a Toyota LandCruiser 4WD campervan) from West-Africa; see our channel youtube.com/user/JanvanBekkum for hundreds of clips. More clips of Congo Brazzaville can be found here: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMYlw_C7EP8KqyTKPnPCZ38MjsZxf_bkB.
Music and/or sound effects:
- 'Lock And Load' by Purple Planet Music (purple-planet.com/);
- 'I'll Remember You' performed by ,distributed by YouTube (studio.youtube.com/channel/UC_rT1jOAACGE5B6IWTBFsPA/music);
- 'Gone Fishin' performed by Purple Planet Music (purple-planet.com/);
- 'Sneaky Snitch' by Kevin MacLeod. Link: www.incompetech.com. License: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/;
- 'Chansons de Bilitis (Debussy)' collected by Samuel Corwin (http://freemusicarchive.org).
- 'Fenster's Explanation' by Kevin MacLeod. Link: www.incompetech.com. License: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/;
- 'Americana' by Kevin MacLeod. Link: www.incompetech.com. License: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/;
- 'Brightly Fancy' by Kevin MacLeod. Link: www.incompetech.com. License: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/;
- 'Homecoming' by Purple Planet Music (purple-planet.com/);
- 'Symphony of the Streets. Hip-Hop Background Music for video 60 second' created by Maksim Dudchyk and uploadexd from Pixbay (pixabay.com/nl/music/orkestraal-symphony-of-the-streets-hip-hop-background-music-for-video-60-second. License pixabay.com/nl/users/maksym_dudchyk-34570439/;
- 'Calm inspiring technology logo short version' created by Alex Zavesa, distributed by Pixabay (pixabay.com/sound-effects/film-special-effects-calm-inspiring-technology-logo-short-version-518993/).
We drive the final hundred kilometres in Cameroon and bid farewell to the beautiful landscape with a touch of regret. In this sparsely populated area, we pass through small villages where little houses made of mud, stone or a frame of logs covered in mud stand close together. There are small fields around the houses, but beyond them we see nothing but jungle. Lorries laden with thick tree trunks pass by regularly, but many trees that are a size smaller are still standing. After 450 km, we spend the night on the football pitch of a seminary. We listen to the novices singing. We have lunch at the equator monument, for which the designer has undoubtedly won the prize for ugliness. The landscape features more open spaces and there are also more villages – villages with neat little houses, tidily swept yards and no rubbish.
Camp ABIO cares for gorillas that have been rescued from captivity but cannot (yet) be returned to the wild. There are now just three of them left. They live on two islands in the river. We take a boat trip past the feeding spots; each gorilla has its own spot. It’s a wonderful way to see the animals up close in a reasonably natural environment, but of course it also feels very much like a zoo. For €90 per person, you can think of it as an expensive zoo or a cheap safari: in Eastern Congo and Rwanda, €1,000 per person is a standard rate for a few hours’ walk through the jungle to (hopefully) see gorillas.
We’re driving to Brazzaville. Slowly, the Congo River comes into view – one of Africa’s three longest rivers. Across the river, through the mist, we can see the skyline of Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Locals on foot or on mopeds can easily cross by ferry, but we have to travel via the Angolan exclave of Cabinda, a journey of nearly 600 km to the border. We see huge queues of tankers stationary along the road. It must have something to do with the conflict between the US and Iran. We haven’t had any problems refuelling yet, but we later hear from other travellers that they had great difficulty filling up their tanks in Congo-Brazzaville.
As we drive into Pointe-Noire, we see all the familiar characteristics of many African cities we’ve visited before: tarmac that suddenly gives way to unpaved potholes, taxis zipping about, mountains of rubbish, and lots of people and noise.
Congo-Brazzaville (with the exception of Pointe-Noire) has pleasantly surprised us. It is more prosperous than we had expected, with very beautiful and varied scenery, clean and with good roads. The traffic is less ‘Wild West’-style and there is public transport in the form of buses. The few checkpoints where we were stopped were conducted properly and nowhere were we asked for a ‘gift’. We’re driving from Pointe-Noire in Congo-Brazzaville to Cabinda, Angola’s exclave.
Cabinda is just a small patch of land, but it’s very important. A large proportion of Angola’s oil comes from there. After two hours at the border, we manage to do what we failed to do twelve years ago: enter Angola.
We visited Congo Brazzaville on our overland trip by car (a Toyota LandCruiser 4WD campervan) from West-Africa; see our channel youtube.com/user/JanvanBekkum for hundreds of clips. More clips of Congo Brazzaville can be found here: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMYlw_C7EP8KqyTKPnPCZ38MjsZxf_bkB.
Music and/or sound effects:
- 'Lock And Load' by Purple Planet Music (purple-planet.com/);
- 'I'll Remember You' performed by ,distributed by YouTube (studio.youtube.com/channel/UC_rT1jOAACGE5B6IWTBFsPA/music);
- 'Gone Fishin' performed by Purple Planet Music (purple-planet.com/);
- 'Sneaky Snitch' by Kevin MacLeod. Link: www.incompetech.com. License: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/;
- 'Chansons de Bilitis (Debussy)' collected by Samuel Corwin (http://freemusicarchive.org).
- 'Fenster's Explanation' by Kevin MacLeod. Link: www.incompetech.com. License: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/;
- 'Americana' by Kevin MacLeod. Link: www.incompetech.com. License: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/;
- 'Brightly Fancy' by Kevin MacLeod. Link: www.incompetech.com. License: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/;
- 'Homecoming' by Purple Planet Music (purple-planet.com/);
- 'Symphony of the Streets. Hip-Hop Background Music for video 60 second' created by Maksim Dudchyk and uploadexd from Pixbay (pixabay.com/nl/music/orkestraal-symphony-of-the-streets-hip-hop-background-music-for-video-60-second. License pixabay.com/nl/users/maksym_dudchyk-34570439/;
- 'Calm inspiring technology logo short version' created by Alex Zavesa, distributed by Pixabay (pixabay.com/sound-effects/film-special-effects-calm-inspiring-technology-logo-short-version-518993/).
