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Capital: Brazzaville
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In Brazzaville my collegues and I stayed at the Cosmos Hotel on the right bank of the Congo River across which can be seen the few skyscrapers of Kinshasa in Zaire.
After a few days in Brazzaville we flew to Pointe Noire to visit petroleum production facilities. All these people had been assembled to welcome the president returning from a neighborhood country. They stayed in line to cheer us as we took off in the same plane.
I did not have time to take many pictures on this trip but this one of an experimental eucalyptus plantation was worth taking. The eucalyptus tree is naturally fast growing but these are extraordinary. The trees in this grove are identical clones produced cells taken from a few individual trees carefully selected for their exceptionally rapid growth. The plantation's research director told me that these trees had been planted less than four years ago!
The program must have faced unforeseen difficulties because our forestry industries out of business if the Congo could grow trees that fast!
