Virée au Cap Estérias: Food, Memory, and the Soft Places That Shape Us
- mendingmilesco
- Nov 24, 2025
- 5 min read
Updated: Dec 22, 2025
Written by – Lu Johnson, Founder and Curator at Mending Miles Co.
Sometimes home offers its own kind of mirror, especially when you return to it after years of becoming someone new. Truth and clarity do not only live in faraway places tucked between airport terminals or stamped behind customs doors. Before travel became the way I reconnected with myself, I knew that even in the thick of my post traumatic development, there was a place back home that could hold a reflection my heart craved.
That is what Cap Estérias became for me. A reminder that even in familiar places, life can meet you with fresh eyes. And this coastline met me exactly at the crossroads of transition, grief, and the quiet hope of rebuilding.
I had just returned to Gabon after nearly two decades away.
A return shaped by loss, by courage, and by the weight of becoming a stranger to my own story. Leaving behind my career in hospitality leadership was one thing. Leaving behind the version of myself who held everything together was another.
Home was waiting. But so was healing.
Bye Daddy, hello healing.
My uprooting was not casual. It was the bold, trembling decision to stop delaying the things I secretly dreamed of but was almost too shy to pray for. Less than six months before clearing out my apartment and deciding what still belonged in my life as a domestic violence surviving widow, I told my father the plan. I had just returned from Gabon for my grandmother’s burial, and something shifted.
I told him that in fourteen months, I would quit my job and uproot my life back to Gabon.
Plenty of time, I thought. I had run my plans by him before, I expected questions. I expected the usual scrutiny. This time he said something I had never heard so effortlessly:
“That is very good mama. It is a great idea.”
For someone who had questioned almost every decision I made, even down to my sweater color, his approval felt like a divine alignment.
A quiet green light.
So when he died just shy of fifty days later, I did not wait fourteen months.
I boarded the same flight “he” took home and began my adventure where his ended.
Grief has a way of pulling you forward when standing still feels unbearable.
Cap Estérias. Always Cap Estérias.
My father was a personal and professional mentor to so many. More than three hundred people attended his funeral. Delegations came from near and far.
One of my roles was tending to the group visiting from Kinshasa. They were there for the celebration of life, but also experiencing Libreville for the first time. Coordinating their movements, ensuring their comfort, and managing every detail with a local driver became my anchor
busy and creative is my favorite way to avoid grief when I am not ready to face it.
They had mentioned that Kinshasa is landlocked and they wanted to enjoy Gabon’s coastline. After rotating through every beachside restaurant I knew in the city, something in my spirit knew exactly where to take them.
Le Cap Estérias.
I myself had not been in nineteen years. I remembered it from childhood, but now I arrived as a woman shaped by many lives. A woman reconciling old memories with new truths. A woman rebuilding her relationship with joy on the other side of loss.
We left Akanda at 11 a.m. Bright sun. Soft heat.
Their lively chatter filled the car, full of anticipation. There is something healing about hearing others fall in love with your home in real time.
The cows grazing outside the Agondje stadium. The Raponda Walker Arboretum. The artisan village market with palm wine tastings. The lush breaks of forest interrupted by schools and busy intersections.
At the very end of the road, a woman flagged us toward parking with practiced ease. Her name was Mado, though I would learn that only after we sat down.
Her restaurant, La Maison Bleue Chez Mado, sits right at the edge of Corsico Bay, a coastline where the tidal shifts feel almost theatrical. Some days the water stretches endlessly into the horizon. Other days it greets the cliffs with boldness.
That day, the tide was high. Waves rose beneath the lighthouse perched up on the cliff. I had eaten here at low tide before, sitting right on the sand with the ocean far from reach. But that afternoon, the Atlantic welcomed us up close, shimmering in a way only nature knows how to do without trying.
Mado directed our eyes to her menu board; Fresh fish bouillon. Crab farci. Razor clam. Crocodile stew. Grilled chicken.
I ordered her fire roasted chicken. It fell off the bone effortlessly. The delegation chose crocodile stew and raved about the experience of eating crocodile while watching waves crash below. Food cooked with patience. Food that tastes like someone who knows their craft intimately.
What struck me most was Mado’s presence. Years in hospitality leadership had taught me that you cannot teach the love for creating meaningful moments. You cannot fake care.
And she had it in every step, every gesture, every plate.
Her craft was honest. Her service was intentional. Nothing performative. Nothing rushed.
As we ate, something settled in me. Something soft. Something familiar.
A reminder that food is more than nourishment.
It is memory. It is story. It is soul work disguised as seasoning.
That afternoon stayed with me.
Enough that in the following year, I created my Libreville food-travel itinerary, with one signature route called Virée au Cap Estérias inspired entirely by that moment.
And I kept going back. In the span of a year, I brought nearly twenty-five people to that same cliffside view.
Each group savored Mado’s crab farci and fresh fish dishes.Each one watched the tide rise and fall.Each one bathed in the bay.Each one paused long enough to realize:
The most unexpected places often hold the richest lessons.
Cap Estérias taught me that home can still surprise you.Chez Mado taught me that food is a keeper of stories.And that day taught me that reconnection often happens when you least expect it.
Whether you travel across oceans or return to a childhood coastline, presence is your passport. It reminds you that you belong in your life, right where your feet land.
The Invitation
Mending Miles is about honoring moments like these.
Moments that call you back to yourself.
Places that teach you how to stand softly in your story.
If this resonates with you, and you have been craving a journey that feels like nourishment rather than escape, my curated trips are built for exactly that.
For women ready to reconnect.
For women ready to rediscover.
For women becoming.
Healing waits for you.
Sometimes it only takes one coastline, one table, one story, and your willingness to say yes.
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