A Batanga fishing village a short distance south of the Lobé Falls, Grand Batanga is the closest thing to an old coastal settlement near Kribi. The beach in front of the village is one of the best on this stretch of coast — wide, flat, and almost empty during the week — and the few simple restaurants under the palms grill whatever the pirogues bring in that morning.
The Batanga people have lived here for centuries and have their own language and traditions distinct from the inland Bantu groups. Walking through the village gives a sense of how the coast worked before the deep-water port arrived: smoked fish drying in the open, hulled pirogues drawn up on the sand, and small Catholic and Protestant churches dating to the German colonial period.