Word: ported
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Richard Wilhelm, PORT ANGELES, WASH...
...That's view is shared by Emile Gorayeb, whose family owns half the town's restaurants, hotels, casinos and nightclubs. Born in Madagascar, Gorayeb was once a petrolier himself, at a refinery in France. But what brought him to Port Gentil was not oil. Instead, at the edge of town, he built a sanctuary for gorillas, chimpanzees, wild pigs, deer and other animals rescued from hunter traps or injured on the roads. His self-financed foundation is part scientific institute, part environmental lobby, part zoo. His latest project is to have Port Gentil's schoolchildren plant thousands of palm trees...
...named, a few years ago, as the world's most expensive city. With a bunch of carrots selling for $10, a box of eggs fetching $13 and rent on a medium-sized house touching $6,000 a month, it's still comfortably in the top 10. The reason? Port Gentil is a ville petrolier, an oil town that has drawn rig workers and executives from places as far away as Texas, Aberdeen and Caracas to earn fortunes pumping Gabon's oil reserves - and spend it like there's no tomorrow...
...sheer volume of cash sloshing around Port Gentil's streets lends them an unreal atmosphere. At the dump on the edge of town, Gabonese boys sort through trash in search of something to eat. But walk into any downtown cafe, and $400 will get you a bottle of 1999 St Emilion Premier Cru Bordeaux. The handful of paved streets are scarred with potholes the size of small swimming pools, but they are jammed with new top-of-the-range SUVs. Excursions on offer include tours of the jungle on giant-engine trail bikes or tours of the coast in giant...
...Gorayeb certainly becomes quite feverish when he talks of how robbers broke into his cages and slaughtered his animals. ("I cried, oh, I cried."). He's just as animated discussing Port Gentil's future. "If there's a big sea or even a lot of rain today, Port Gentil floods for days," he says. "This town is built on sand - there's no soil - and it's almost underwater already. I used to have a bungalow on the beach. Today, the sea has taken the beach, all 200 meters of it, and the bungalow...