Central Africa

Sudan

Democratic Republic of Congo

Congo Republic

Gabon

Cameroon

Equatorial Guinea

Central African Republic

São Tomé and Príncipe

Uganda

The proverbial dark heart of Africa is nowadays illuminated by modern life, mass communications and satellite photography, but somehow the brooding and primordial nature of the region remains undisturbed. Since the days when Joseph Conrad nosed his steamboat slowly up the Congo River, to shed his particular light on the atrocities of the Belgian Association Internationale Africaine, the silence has remained largely unbroken. The region has drawn and fascinated travellers, writers, adventures and freebooters from the early slave traders to Joseph Conrad himself. American travel writer and social commentator Robert Kaplan once said of the solid mass of vegetation that still carpets the region, that superstitions, suspicions and fears are boiled up like a soup in a living space where visibility is limited to meters, and where anything could be lurking around any corner.

While this one of last corners of the world to resist the intrusion of modern thought and action, Central Africa, and in particular the vortex of life that is the Congo Basin and the expanse of the Virunga Mountains, is a fragile and deeply imperilled region where the last of such vital species as the mountain gorilla cling precariously to viable existence. It is a beautiful land of rain and mists, of snow-capped mountains and Rift Valley Lakes, of dense population pressures and vast reaches of uninhabitable swamp and forest. It is indisputably the heart of Africa, and contains a handful of countries such as the two Congos, Cameroon, Gabon and Central African Republic, with affiliated neighbouring East African states of Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda, all with a mixed mythology of romance and beauty, of mysticism and terror in a synthesis that in Africa is as natural as life itself.

Central Africa has parts where travel is reasonably easy, and parts where it is impossible. As Africa emerges out of the manifold horrors of the latter half of the 20th century, conditions for travel are getting easier every day. Uganda and Rwanda are both nations with scars, but with an equal determination to preserve a peace that was hard fought and won. Others like Cameroon and Gabon have enjoyed long periods of peace and stability, and through which travel is both relatively easy and comfortable. Yet others, like the Democratic Republic Of Congo and Southern Sudan still seethe with violence and insecurity, and yet also have large areas that are not only accessible, but demanding tourist attention – for it is eco-tourism alone that the viability of natural species and environments will be proved, and in this lies their best chance of survival.