Nature Reserve

If you are not using GTS transport, you may be best to take a tourist taxi to Abuko, near Lameng (Lamin) and negotiate a price including a stop over and return trip. There are taxis at Abuko but they will cost much more for your return trip as there is no other real alternative.

Abuko is the Gambia's largest and best known reserve, set up by an English warden, it is in an ideal location to attract many species of bird and wild animals. Apart from a small section of fenced in animals, there for medication, rest and recuperation.

Abuko does not cage its animals. Go with peanuts or bananas and a camera and you will have some wonderful pictures of hand feeding monkeys.

The reserve is not just animals and birds, it has over 50 varieties of labelled trees and if you go with a guide they will point many out to you and explain their domestic and agricultural uses.

Abuko Nature Reserve is the only successfully functioning Ape Rehabilitation Centre in the world. Here chimps and gorillas born in captivity in zoos in Europe and America are taught how to live and survive in nature. The specially trained Gambian wildlife Conservation Department are on full time service to care for these animals. Once the chimps can adapt themselves to nature, they are then set free on Baboon Island up river near Georgetown.

This is not like an UK zoo, it is much closer to nature and that is really its charm and excitement. Abuko is very well worth a visit and is ideal to combine with a trip to the wood carving centre at Brikama.