'One of my most memorable safaris ever was one made to the Iguela coastline of Gabon in Equatorial Africa where the rainforest meets the Atlantic Ocean. We had a camp built for us on the beach, in a location where Gabon’s unique savanna rainforest ‘mosaic’ encroaches right down to the edge of the Atlantic ocean. We were there to see the forest elephants that emerge out on to the beach during the rainy season. Apart from Francois, our Gabon guide, we were entirely on our own in a very exotic and lonely location. Looking at the towering forest wall behind our tiny beach encampment, it was easy to assume that our particular stretch of coastline had always been empty wilderness as it was now - always a dangerous assumption in Africa. One afternoon, we made a supply run across the savanna plain behind our strip of coastal forest, to a small fishing camp on a lagoon several kilometers from where we were camped. On the way back, Francois asked if we wanted to see some old graves that he knew of ‘nearby,’ and an hour later we found ourselves standing in front of some of the loneliest graves imaginable. They were the sole visible remnants of what must have been a village in the 1850s, now long gone, except for the graves of a few Scottish traders, who had died young and far from home. Elephant dung was in amongst the headstones, most of which had been knocked over, making it a very evocative and strangely romantic scene, one that powerfully fired my imagination. Depicting the frailty of man, the passage of time, and the enduring resilience of nature, here was a tiny tableau that perfectly summed up my understanding of the Equatorial African experience - then and now.'

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