Into The Wild

As newly relaunched lodges open up access to the gorillas of Congo-Brazzaville’s northern rainforests, we trek the jungle trails of Odzala to make getting to them part of the adventure…

- Nick Redmayne

Underneath the bare night sky, the bar’s courtyard was standing-room only. A febrile throng of Congolese, Angolans and variegated expats moved to a surging fusion of African and Latin beats. The band’s insistent, reckless melodies played out as a waitress circulated purposefully, her tray glistening with tall bottles of Primus beer. It was late, and at La Bodega de Brazza anything could happen on a sultry Brazzaville night.

It had been a heady introduction. Earlier I had dug my toes into the golden sand of Brazzaville ‘beach’ and stared across the river to the high-rise centre of Kinshasa, capital of the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). I’d already acclimatised enough to exist uneasily in present-tense French; to count the cost of a cold beer and the price of an Airtel SIM card. But only under the starry sky, my head swimming with careless rhythms, did I feel I’d truly arrived.

An initial sense of disbelief is not an uncommon reaction among those first setting foot here. All too often, people wrongly equate the Republic of Congo (commonly known as Congo-Brazzaville) with the chaos that encircles the region: the troubled Central African Republic to the north, the disputed Angolan exclave of Cabinda to the south, and its largest, noisiest neighbour, the DRC, to the east. That’s not to say the history of this former Marxist state is unblemished.