Cocobeach is a town in northwestern

Gabon Gabon ( ; ), officially the Gabonese Republic (), is a country on the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, on the equator, bordered by Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the north, the Republic of the Congo to the east and south, and ...

, lying on the south bank of the

Muni River The Muni (French: ''Rivière Muni'', Spanish: ''Río Muni'') is an estuary of several rivers of Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.''A directory of African wetlands'' By R. H. Hughes, J. S. Hughes, p. 501 (on Google Books Part of its length forms part o ...

. It is the capital of the Noya Department. It has a

beach A beach is a landform alongside a body of water which consists of loose particles. The particles composing a beach are typically made from Rock (geology), rock, such as sand, gravel, shingle beach, shingle, pebbles, etc., or biological s ...

and is the main

border town A border town is a town or city close to the boundary between two countries, states, or regions. Usually the term implies that the nearness to the border is one of the things the place is most famous for. With close proximities to a different coun ...

for

Equatorial Guinea Equatorial Guinea, officially the Republic of Equatorial Guinea, is a country on the west coast of Central Africa. It has an area of . Formerly the colony of Spanish Guinea, its post-independence name refers to its location both near the Equ ...

ferries A ferry is a boat or ship that transports passengers, and occasionally vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A small passenger ferry with multiple stops, like those in Venice, Italy, is sometimes referred to as a water taxi or water bus. ...

sailing to Cogo across the river and the border. The town is very small, containing just a fishing village, a small market and a number of adjacent

es. It is one of the major travel destinations in the region owing to the Crystal Mountains inland from the town, which contain some of the oldest rainforests in Gabon. These were able to largely escape the drying effect of glacial periods of the

Quaternary The Quaternary ( ) is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), as well as the current and most recent of the twelve periods of the ...

due to the persistent fog from the

Benguela Current The Benguela Current is the broad, northward flowing ocean current that forms the eastern portion of the South Atlantic Ocean gyre. The current extends from roughly Cape Point in the south, to the position of the Angola-Benguela Front in the no ...

providing moisture during the dry season. Mairie de Cocobeach au Gabon

Climate

Like a good portion of Gabon, Cocobeach has a

tropical monsoon climate An area of tropical monsoon climate (occasionally known as a sub-equatorial, tropical wet climate or a tropical monsoon and trade-wind littoral climate) is a tropical climate subtype that corresponds to the Köppen climate classification category ' ...

(

Köppen Köppen is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Bernd Köppen (1951–2014), German pianist and composer * Carl Köppen (1833-1907), German military advisor in Meiji era Japan * Edlef Köppen (1893–1939), German author ...

''Am'') with a long wet season from September or October to May and a short dry season due to the cold, foggy Beneguela current during the southern hemisphere winter. Compared to more southerly parts of Gabon, Cocobeach is somewhat wetter, with around ten to fifteen percent more rainfall than Libreville and a

dry season The dry season is a yearly period of low rainfall, especially in the tropics. The weather in the tropics is dominated by the tropical rain belt, which moves from the northern to the southern tropics and back over the course of the year. The t ...

usually several weeks shorter. Although no reliable climate data exist, it is often thought that annual rainfall further north may reach as high as .

References

{{Authority control Populated places in Estuaire Province Equatorial Guinea–Gabon border crossings