Loango National Park

Gabon's coastal park offers one of the most tightly rationed gorilla visits anywhere: the Atananga group, habituated by a Max Planck Institute research project that began in 2005, takes a maximum of four tourists for a one-hour visit per day. Visitors wear surgical masks and keep seven meters back, and the habituation was set up to serve both research and tourism, so the encounter doubles as support for long-term science. The rest of the trip is the draw for many: lagoons, forest and beaches where elephants and even hippos sometimes appear. Access is slow, with a domestic flight, a long drive and boat transfers, so treat it as a full expedition rather than an add-on.