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Loango Shoreline, Gabon, 2003

"When I first stood on the beach in Gabon, I took off my clothes and contemplated writing home to say: 'Don't worry, Ma, I'm OK. Just don't come looking for me—you'll never see me again, ever.' Christmas morning a decade later, and here I was back on that same beach, where hippos surf and buffalo sunbathe."

—From "Gabon's Loango National Park: In the Land of Surfing Hippos," August 2004, National Geographic magazine

Photograph by Michael Nichols