Libreville for few rounds of golf...

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I'm happy to have found a country where very few of my fellow travelbloggers have blogged from. Imagine, I could find only nine blogs about Gabon on travelblog.org!



This is not a small country, but they have only 2 millions inhabitants in the country, and a good 600,000 of them live in the capital, Libreville. This includes a serious amount of foreigners too, coming mainly from lower incomes neighboring countries. Everybody speak french here, or one of the many different dialects.



The country has been mainly turn around the oil industry as well as the wood industry provided by the huge tropical forest. As you know, oil prices are nowhere where they used to be, and it shows here. The country had develop a model where a huge part of the population was working in one way or the other for the public sector...but sadly today the public coffers look more empty than they used to be.



I've found in the people of Gabon some seriously friendly people. Walking around Libreville during the day time is a very nice experience. People are simply very friendly and the place look more than safe.



I have few friends in the country and I'm here to play some golf at the Libreville yearly Open. Not a lot of pictures here. There is a simple reason, there is not much attraction as a tourist point of view for the visitor here. There is the presidential palace or the cathedral, but none of them is much of an attraction. The city sit on the ocean, actually more a huge estuary giving on the Ocean few kilometers away.



What is striking here, is the price of everything. I thought eating out in Congo DRC is expensive, well, this is worst. They have anything and everything you would find in Europe in any supermarket here. But they do important everything here, even the tomatoes! You will find few foreigners here in restaurants, but trust me, it's mainly locals.



So apologizes for not being able to provide many pictures, I didn't go around with my camera most of the time. I stay 6 nights in the country. My crash pad was the super old and run down Meridien. When you found a place that is not run properly, this is it...well, it's either this or the new Radisson....but prices are the one you will find in London here!



I spend a lot of time playing golf. They have a pretty cool golf course here. We had some 30 pros coming from places like Cameroon, Guinea Equatorial, one from Congo and even few from Ghana and Nigeria....pretty international affair. On the amateur side, it's mainly locals and a nationals from Port Gentil or Moanda. Port Gentil is all about the oil industry, and Moanda is all about the mining industry. They also had few nationals coming from Cameroon.



I didn't do that bad this week. Took the longest drive for the men, also a fun experience. I must have finished around the 10th place in gross and took the second price for the Men category, could be worst!



I'm going to try to get back to Libreville before the end of the year. The country solidly need the price of oil to go up...let's see what the future will be made of. One thing for sure, I had a fun time visiting my 149th country!

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