An hour's walk from the village of Mboula, nestled on the road to Ebolowa in the Mengong district, are the Alop Caves. A historical fresco, a site whose history combines the mythical with the mystical, this neglected jewel is nevertheless a gold mine of discovery, education and adventure.
Before each visit to this sanctuary, initiates and elders retreat behind closed doors to entrust the path to the ancestors, whose approval is absolutely necessary for a smooth journey. You go there by steep roads, branching off between the cocoa trees, often bumping into pruned trunks, coming up against the rebellious roots.
For the hike organized as part of the Bia So Mengong festival, July 2025 edition, the villagers cleared the access roads, a sign of resilience rather than resignation, a way to mark their attachment to the festival.
We move forward with a light step. Forming a procession animated by a thousand anecdotes, walking in a jerky rhythm, the step sometimes fast, often slow, but always reassured. The guide, Mr. Mbongo'o EMMANUEL, chief of Mboula, takes the lead of the line. Hikers face peaceful clashes with rebellious roots, shrub remains, a rolling stone, a swamp, a rotten fruit.
In short, a whole litany of benign tests.
On the way, nature speaks. Not in the cacophonous language to which the modern city has accustomed us, but in that of deep meditation on the depths of the invisible world. Silence is essential, as is the connection with oneself. We listen to the sound of silence, we hear the message of the forest, we shudder at the buzzing of the earth's belly, at the signs of the times.
It is a hundred-year-old tree that teaches you the value of patience, it is dry foliage that cracks to lull you to sleep with its meditative music, it is this termite mound, a unique work of art, on permanent exhibition in the divine series of the equatorial forest.
The path also offers the possibility of meeting local residents, clinging to the udder of nature to get their food and their food. They harvest the door, of which here is the season. A variety of wild mangoes whose seeds, a kind of almond, are prized here. They are used to prepare a local sauce with multiple virtues: Nfiang dô'o
The site welcomes you in a mixture of mystery and wonder.
In fact, your head is bubbling with questions: How were these caves, these underground and natural cavities formed? What scalpel of the sculptor, what skilful hammer blow has succeeded in creating these openings leading to escarpments with an unobstructed view? Who is the author of this goldsmith's work that brilliantly mixes sculpture and architecture to create a work without a label? So who drew up the plans for the book? And who made it?
The words are fragile in the face of the immensity of the book. It is a tourist place, but also a living memory of the colonial presence in the South. The chief of Mboula remembers that, during the colonial period, his ancestors hid in these caves to escape servitude and escape forced labor, such as that of the construction of railway roads.
The caves of Alop will therefore have been a refuge as well as a shield against the extermination of the Mboula. Here, everything is organized in such a way that one has the sanctuary on one side, and the living room on the other.
The Alop Caves are a masterpiece of tourism that is now waiting to be developed so that its potential can be revealed to more people, and that the calm it offers can welcome more minds in search of adventure.
Bia So Mengong Festival - Where Dreams Became Reality!