Lobé Falls
Chutes de la Lobé
Interesting facts
- A tiny aquatic riverweed, Ledermanniella batangensis, found only in Cameroon and recorded at the falls, is rated critically endangered and may already be extinct.
- That riverweed takes its scientific name from Grand Batanga, the coastal area around the falls where it was found.
- The Lobé rises in the Ntem massif at the heart of Campo-Ma'an National Park and crosses equatorial rainforest all the way to the Atlantic.
- Lobé is a Bulu name, and the river keeps it along its whole course from source to sea.
- The river drains a basin of about 1,940 square kilometres, and gauging in the 1950s put its mean flow at roughly 105 cubic metres per second.
- Its main tributary, the Nyete, was once so rich in fish that Bulu people kept many fishing camps along its banks.
Why it is worth it
Few rivers end the way the Lobé does. Just south of Kribi on the Atlantic coast of Cameroon, the river comes out of the forest and pours over a broad stair of dark rock straight onto the beach and into the sea. It is one of the rare places in the world where a waterfall empties directly into the ocean. The falls are not high, with a drop of about 20 metres, but they are wide. French-language sources describe a front close to a kilometre across, split into many separate channels and cascades that run white between the rocks.
For the people who live along this coast, the Lobé is a sacred place as well as a beautiful one. Three communities share the area: the Batanga and the Mabi, who live along the rivers and the shore, and the Bagyeli, forest hunter-gatherers. Studies of the site describe the falls as a meeting point of these three cultures. Local belief holds that water spirits live in the pools at the foot of the cascades, and the falls have long served for offerings, for healing rituals and as a place to seek contact with these aquatic deities. Pirogues are paddled right up to the base of the falls, where fresh water meets surf, and canoes continue up the river into the forest beyond.
Kribi is a port and resort town in the Océan department of Cameroon's South Region, known for long beaches of fine sand. Two species of sea turtle, the leatherback and the olive ridley, come ashore to nest along this stretch of coast. A conservation programme here works with fishing villages so that turtles caught by accident are released rather than killed. The falls themselves are the town's best-known sight.
Getting there
The falls lie on the coast about 6 km south of Kribi. The nearest airport in a straight line is Bata (BSG) in Equatorial Guinea, about 108 km away across the border. Within Cameroon, the nearest is Douala International Airport (DLA), about 126 km to the north, from which Kribi is reached by road.
On these lists
2.88146, 9.89769per Wikidata