Let’s Sail Up the Congo River with Chalo Africa

A Scheduled Trip to Republic of Congo

Highlights

About this Safari

Up A Lazy River…

Up a lazy river where the Picathartes’ song
Awakes the bright new morning
Where we can move along
Blue skies up above, everyone’s in love
Up a lazy river, how happy you could be
Up a lazy river-er with me
Up a lazy river with me…

Dear All,

Here are the final updates on our Congo trip – I hope you will agree with me that despite the loss of the habituated gorilla trek from our original program, we now have many other highlights, and the current river cruise is as rich as it ever was, even richer.

1) To combat the threat of potentially low water levels in the Sangha river, we have inverted the direction of the cruise. Instead of starting the cruise by sailing upriver from Brazzaville to Ouesso, we will now fly first to Ouesso (thereby eliminating the need for any overland transfers), and then sail downriver to Brazza after our time spent at the TriNational Sangha. Aug -Nov are typically the rainy months in the Congo when water levels rise in the river system. These levels start to gradually fall again in January. By completing the shallower Sangha section of the trip right at the beginning, we hope to avoid this problem altogether. By the time the water levels start to drop, we will already be on the main Congo river!

2) In our original program, we were going to spend only 1 night in Dzanga Sangha NP in the CAR. We were trying to cram in a lot of activities into that one-night stop at Doli Lodge. In this new & improved program, we will be spending 3 full nights at the famous Sangha Lodge. This will give us the ability to visit Bai Hokou, do an agile mangabey trek, our birders can devote time in search of the elusive picathartes. We will also get to spend time at the famous platform at Sangha Bai and should there be any pangolins being rehabilitated at Sangha Lodge, we will get an opportunity to visit the pangolin project too. Needless to say, this is a serious upgrade to the original program & at no extra cost to you.

3) In the original program, all told, we were spending 4 nights in the Triparks area. In the amended program, we are now spending 7 nights in what we hope will be a very rewarding part of the cruise. These 3 bonus days are special and will allow us to explore without rushing.

4) In terms of logistics, and assuming that we are full boat of 28 people (right now we are at 22), we will be divided into 2 groups of 14 each, and these 2 groups will then be further sub-divided into two sub-groups of 7 for the various activities in the national parks, so that we are never too many people for any non-boat-based activity.

5) Since we have lost access to the habituated gorilla groups because of the silverback deaths, we have added on an optional visit to the Aspinall Foundation’s Lesio-Louna gorilla sanctuary at the very end. Should you decide to do this, you will need to tack on an extra night to the trip at the very end. We are offering this extension at cost, recognizing that this is an unanticipated extra. But it will bring you into close proximity with lowland gorillas in the process of being rewilded.

6) Mbeli Bai at Nouabale-Ndoki NP in ROC is currently under repair/construction and may or may not be ready by December. So we are now planning on visiting the nearby Wali Bai instead, where the last group had very good wild gorilla sightings.

7) Drumrolls- we are bringing along a very special guest scientist on this trip and we couldn’t be more pleased. Russ Mittermeier is a renowned scientist who actually has a whole Wikipedia page devoted to his work – you can read more about him here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Mittermeier He is one of the leading primatologists, herpetologists and conservationists of our times and chairs the IUCN Primates Group. Russ will present a series of lectures to us over the course of the cruise, and share his lifetime of knowledge with us. It will be such a privilege for us to have him on board.

8) We have tweaked the bonobos visit – instead of 2 groups doing this bonobo activity on 2 separate days, we will all disembark together for this trek. There are 3 habituated groups that we can track here, and by spending the night at the project HQ, we will have the opportunity to trek them once in the evening, and then once again in the very early morning. The bonobos are one of the highlights of this trip and one of the rarest great apes, and so we decided that it was better to maximize our chances with them.

9) As a result of this change, we have made the difficult decision of ditching the visit to the Téké queen. Instead, we have added additional ethno-cultural activities near Pikounda that were not there in the original itinerary.

10) As before, we are still offering the post-cruise Gabon extension. This may be of more interest to some of you now because habituated gorilla trekking is indeed included on this section of the trip, along with wildlife on the beach and nesting leatherbacks.

Everything else about the trip remains the same. We will still go briefly to Lobéké in Cameroon, look for the Bouvier’s colobus along the Mangui river, and still spend an evening with the Congo dandies in Brazzaville.

FLIGHTS: Because of pre-existing bookings at Sangha Lodge, we need to complete our visit at Sangha by the 29th of December, so we are requesting people to fly Ethiopian if they possibly can. The Ethiopian flight gets into Brazza at about 12:15pm on the 22nd, which allows the charter flight from Brazza to leave by 2pm so that you can be in Ouesso by 4pm and checked into the river boat in time for dinner. If any of you have already bought your tickets on Air France, then that flight arrives in the evening, and the AF people will fly to Ouesso the following day on Dec 23 on a commercial flight. But if you haven’t bought your flights yet, then Ethiopian is the preferred option. If you want to go in group 1 but still want to fly Air France, then we suggest that you come in a day earlier. Please let one of us know.

Ducret has now completed 3 Congo cruises, including 1 cruise that was a charter very much like ours, and many of the initial wrinkles have been ironed out. The cruises have all been completed successfully and we have received good feedback. Not everything went off as planned originally, but everything went off well. With pioneering expedition cruises of this type, we must be prepared to go with the flow, and have fun doing it. It is important to realize that this is not your usual well-oiled trip to sub-Saharan Africa, and I request you to please be patient and understanding on the trip. Tanvi is back from her recce trip in August and has made many excellent suggestions that we have now incorporated.

We will be making the group allocations closer to date of travel, once we have everyone’s travel information in hand.

We have had a few cancellations and now have a few free berths. Please feel free to write to us if you are interested. You can write at hello@chaloafricainc.com

Last but not least, since we will be ringing in the New Year on board the Princess, we have arranged a “White & Black Evening” at dinner on Dec 31st. This is the evening to shed your safari beiges and greens, and come to dinner resplendent in your all-black, all-white or black & white ‘safari chic’ or formal outfits! Please don’t stress this, but come prepared for an evening of fun, festivities & to bring in the 2025 as we sail down the Congo River – honestly, I know not a single person who has ever quite done something like that! 😊 If we have any musicians or singers in our group, please contact me and we’ll add you to the entertainment roster!

It promises to be a memorable fun trip!

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