It’s November 2018 and I’m in Libreville, Gabon’s capital, joined by my good friend and fellow sound recordist Stijn Demeulenaere. Over the following month we will travel over two thousand miles, hike in the rainforest, be charged at by gorillas, swarmed on by bees and other insects, cross rivers on logs and most importantly, we will record so much natural soundscapes that it will take us months or years to go through it all.

Do check out my Patreon page and my sound effects libraries if you want to support me.

I’ve been planning this expedition for more than 6 months now, alternating between excitement at the prospect of such an ambitious undertaking and being daunted and disheartened by the lack of tourism infrastructure. Most of the local guides and car hire companies that I approached never got back to me. Others got back to me a few times and then completely stopped replying. Only one guy seemed to take this more seriously but he asked for astronomical amounts of money and insisted that we plan the entire trip in advance. I was not convinced I wanted to work with him before landing in Libreville so it felt a bit like jumping into the unknown, with very low chances of success.