You can see our smaller coaches on the dock waiting for us and several officials arrived in the black sedan and came aboard prior to giving us permission to disembark.
We drove through town and 'took in the sights'. Lots of roadside stalls and markets - look behind these stalls and see where people live.
I am going to include a few 'street scenes' taken from our coach while on our way to our first stop. They are self-explanatory.
There were some nice commercial buildings downtown.
Here's Gabon's answer to Starbucks.
This woman's carrying a tub of ice with bottles of water for sale - how heavy that must be.
Our first stop was at the Leon M'ba memorial. He was the first Prime Minister, then first President of Gabon. They told us he killed his wife but we learned that no-one dies of natural causes in Africa - there's always a reason for a person's death even if they're 95 years old, have terminal cancer or die in a car accident.
Inside the memorial we saw a few photos and representations showing the 'Heil Hitler' salute. We didn't really understand it but it left a ponderous impression on us.
This was a rather unusual building with an unusual tower behind.
This was some sort of Government building which we drove by ... I suppose I wasn't supposed to take a picture of it.
This has to be one of the weirdest pieces of art I've seen. This was a jumbled explanation for it but it I just call it ugly.
Peddlers were everywhere - especially near traffic lights (few and far between) and in between lanes whether there's an island or not. The man in the yellow shirt farthest away has no legs - probably land mines.
We saw a few nice fountains but none of them had water in them. I don't know if they were drained dry by the populace or if they were just left to dry out.
Football (soccer) is huge in Africa - in fact in most of the world except the U.S. - as evidenced by this buoy just offshore.
We stopped for lunch at the Maisha Hotel which put on an awesome spread for us. We were joined by the U.S. Ambassador and his wife and one of his attaches - he's from Eugene, Oregon. He gave a very interesting talk.
Here are two dessert plates.
How important is football you ask? This is a roundabout and you can see what they think of it.
These people were waiting for a taxi.
Street scenes
It was so good to get back to our ship.
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