10 PLACES VISITED: ANGOLA: 1) Luvo, 2) M’banka Congo, 3) Luanda, 4) Lobito, 5) Benguela, 6) Catengue, 7) Lubango, 8) Tundavala Gap, 9) Serra da Leba Pass, 10) Namibe.
9 OVERNIGHTS: DRC: 1) “L’Hotel Galaxie” Matadi. ANGOLA: 1) Bush Camp in Nkoko, 8km south of Luvo, 2-3) “Junior Comercial et Industriale” near airport Luanda, 4) “Hotel Amigo” Lubango (Elev 1,761), 5-8) “Hotel Miranglo” Lubango (Elev 1,761).
7 RUNS: DRC: 5-6) Matadi (2). ANGOLA: 1) Lubango (4), 2) Namibe.
1 UNIQUE WILDLIFE: ANGOLA: 1) Silver Turn.
BLOG POST TRAILER: Another Solo Trip. My fourth taking the total days outside the truck to 34! In this post Riza, Yuki and I travel from he top to the bottom of ANGOLA, visiting the capital Luanda, high altitude Lubango and seaside Namibe over 6 days and 6 nights. In this post we officially leave Central Africa (DRC) and enter Southern Africa (ANGOLA).
What a surprise ANGOLA was. A country trying to get ahead, especially with tourism. A rising star in the south! It has the same setbacks as the 3 countries before it - governments that line their pockets leaving the majority poor. The upside is the push to encourage tourism and the police DO CARE about tourist safety!
After I re-joined the truck after Solo Trip 3 we spent an extra night in Matadi DRC and I upgraded to a hotel to relax and get another run in. We spent most of the next day crossing the border into ANGOLA from DRC. This is a notorious border and is known to take a long time. We had to move a bush camp that night into a local school near the border because the police were worried about rebel attacks. They even posted a guard at our camp all night - impressive. They were not after money - they actually wanted to ensure we were safe. This is the first big difference we noticed about ANGOLA. That night we planned Solo 4, driven mainly by the desire to visit the capital and largest city of Luanda and to stay at seaside Benguela and spend more time in mountainous Lubango. The truck was not staying at these places and focusing once again on bush camps. The next day we were off to Luanda.
Once again the police helped us. They kept a list of all the people on the truck and where the truck would go day by day so that the next police checkpoint would expect us. No truck = trouble and they would investigate. Since 3 of us got off the truck they prepared a separate list and took us by police car to a checkpoint where locals wait for public and private transport to Luanda.
We were there from 10:30am to 2pm and finally a coach came by bound for Luanda. The journey took 8hrs and we arrived at 9:30pm, 4.5hrs late (TIA) after many stops along the way. I was lucky to find an English speaking lady to chat to on the coach and her waiting son took us to a hotel before returning tot he catch depot to pick up his mum - more positive experiences of Angolans.
Thanks to the son we stayed in a very cheap hotel at $AUD40/room/night instead of the published $USD100 in the travel guides and online. Eventually we found out why it was so cheap - it was a “love hotel” where young couples go to “have a good time”!!! At least the room was clean and working. Luanda (Pop 6.5m) was a very surprising city. It had the best seaside promenade - palm lined with gardens and even basket ball courts! The city is on the go. Construction everywhere. The downside is that there are still slums inside the city and a huge slum area between the city and the Atlantic coast just like the slum “favelas” of Rio in BRAZIL. We started our assault of the city by visiting the “Fortaleza de San Miguel”, built in 1634, in very good condition and perched high above the city at the south end of the bay. From the fort we could see the entire Presidential compound, next to the CBD and dominated by a huge cupola that looks like the Congress Building in Washington DC - this is the parliament of ANGOLA.
Further afield, you can also see a tall spear-like tower that looks like Dubai’s Burj Khalifa - this is the Mausoleum of the first President, Agostinho Neto, finished in 2015 on the occasion of 40 years since he architected independence. The fort itself contains all its original buildings intact complete with the signature Portuguese blue and white tiled mosaic walls depicting scenes of African wildlife and landscapes. As we walked the promenade towards the north end (2km in all) we would often walk into off-streets to observe the amazing variety of architectures and conditions of buildings that made up the Luandan skyline. It did not feel like an African city - more like something in South America or even south-east Asia. We walked the promenade to the north end and returned to a spot close to the hotel via off-streets, parallel to the promenade but deeper into the CBD. Luanda city is an eye opener.
The north end is vey rough with some shanty dwellings in between the modern city office buildings and lots of garbage on the street. The south end is better presented but its roads are still messy. What surprised us was the number of new buildings under construction and most are steel and glass - a departure from the concrete and brick that we saw up to now. There are also many original buildings built by the Portuguese in the early 1700’s that are abandoned and decrepit. We caught a share van to “Kero Bika” a huge supermarket just out of town but on the way to the airport. It did not carry all the lines you would expect (e.g.: there was no cheese or toothpaste, but there were tooth brushes - go figure!) but what it did have was super cheap (e.g.: a whole roast chicken was $AUD4.50, bananas $AUD0.90/kg and 1L wine casks $AUD1.80). The next day we travelled directly to Lubango. It was another epic coach trip leaving at 4am and arriving 4.5hrs late at 8:30pm.
The coach itself was air-conditioned with steeply reclining, well padded, fabric seats. We made several stops and the scenery was simply stunning. A variety of landscapes culminating in the high-altitude mountains of the “Serra Do Chilengue” range. Our stay in Lubango over 4 nights was magnificent.
We hired a manual Suzuki Celerio and I drove in Africa for the very first time - right hand drive on the right-hand side through crazy traffic and pot holes. I liked it. This was the cheapest way to see the many sites of Lubango, most being out of town. I am surprised how quickly and easily we were able to hire the car with full insurance. Full here was cheap at $AUD0.80/L. Lubango (Pop 257,000, Elev 1771m) is a great place. So scenic. So colourful. So relaxing. So much cleaner than other African cities and towns.
We walked down the main boulevard towards the bottom of the ridge with “Cristo Rei” (Christ the King) statue high above us. We visited the brand new Chinese-built railway from here to Namibe and the new train that comes with it. By 2:30pm we had our brand new shiny white 1.3L manual Suzuki Celerio with aircon. We wasted no time and got on the road to “Criso Rei”, 15min and 379m above us at elev 2150m. What a view. Spectacular. Not only the whole city but the mountains beyond. Fluffy clouds and blue sky made for the best photos. The statue is made of white marble, 30m in height and was finished in 1957. The “LUMBANGO” Hollywood sign is also a great photogenic object. Can see it from all parts of town. From here we made our way to the famous “Tundavala Gap”, 26km from the Lumbango. It is a huge plateau with a massive split in it caused by water erosion at elev 2261m overlooking a valley floor 1000m below.
The view is heart-stopping. We stayed until sunset which is the best time to photograph the sun’s golden light on the fissure itself. The silence here and the view of distant rains and nose-diving silver turn birds made this a magic place. The next we drove to the seaside town of Namibe some 180km away. Along the way, the first impressive physical feature is the “Serra da Leba Pass”, a 16km section of hairpin turns that connect the Lubango plateau at 1761m with the valley floor 914m below at elev 847m. The Serra de Leba mountain range is also photogenic - unusual planetary like peaks covered in trees and with rocky piles in front. At about 50km from Namibe these mighty mountains are replaced by a semi-arid desert sporting a mini canyon with dry rivers, fancy flagged bridges, villages with low square shaped dwellings like on Star Wars and green farm oasis at the bottom of some canyons.
A strange site indeed. Namibe (Pop 86,000) is on the Atlantic coast and whilst its town is very colourful, the beaches are not that great. A big boulevard complete with garden in the middle lines the centre of town and most of the building are pastel coloured Portuguese colonial buildings with some art-deco style, including the former cinema! We drove out of town to literally the end of the road to find a more secluded beach but no luck. (Picture Below: main boulevard in Namibe).
Most of the shoreline is badly littered but the beach in front of town was not so this is where we spent the last hour of our stay here after 1hr of driving around. I went for a run along the beach, past the shipwreck of a big container vessel. The beachside promenade was a small street with lots of cafes and restaurants and chairs and table covered by colourful odd-shaped cloth sails. At 12:30pm we headed off back to Lubango. We made some more stops to photograph the Serra da Leba mountains and the windy road from he bottom of the pass. We celebrated both nights following our self-drives with bubbly because of the new-found independence and flexibility that it gave us. Our final day in Lubango was a rest day of clothes washing, shopping, emailing, blogging and movies before rejoining the truck on Friday 25 March 2016 for our journey into NAMIBIA.
BLOG POST DETAIL:
DAY 126, Thu 17MAR16, 0km, "Auberge Aux Delices” to “L’Hotel Galaxie” Matadi DRC (Run5). Today it was back to the truck after 16 blissful days on our own! Another hilly run this morning taking me 246m down and 246m back up. Quite good. At 10:30am we caught a cab down to “Pont OEBK” or the Maradi Bridge which is a huge 520m long suspension bridge across the Congo River, built by the Japanese in 1983. It is here that we would meet the truck from 11am onwards. It was a conservative time and it was not until around 12:30pm that a big yellow object appeared at the other end - they were finally here! By this time we were very hot having sat under a small corrugated iron shelter with the bridge police for some 90min in the heat of the day. Everyone was glad to see us and they looked quite weary and very tanned. The truck was smelly and dusty. It took us some time to settle in to our new environment. It took ages to drive through Matadi.
Then we turned into a huge school and yard operated by the Protestant Church. We all thought we were stopping for lunch until Andi announced that we would be staying here the night since our ANGOLA crossing just near Matadi was likely to be closed and we were shifting to Luvo some 90km away and it was too late to drive there now. Bliss. I would get to stay one more night in a hotel and go for a run and shower tomorrow morning. Riza, Roberto and Yuki decided to stay with the truck so I set off on my own to get local money and try to find a hotel near the truck. Success. I found a hotel just 5min walk down the road. This was I did not need to rely on cabs and could have dinner with the truck tonight. It was around 4pm so I decided to head to the hotel and watch a movie (about the genocide in Rwanda in 1994) in my cool air-conditioned room.
It was a terrific and restful afternoon - it reminded me of being home. Instead of cheese with my wine, I feasted on a giant avocado that Riza picked out for me for only $AUD1.50 - I am not an avocado guy but I loved this one - a great substitute for cheese and very satisfying. I returned to the truck around 7pm for my first hot dinner in some days - curry chicken with rice - hit the spot! I enjoyed speaking with the rest of our group about our Solo adventure and listening to their dramas in the bush, the best being how it took 7hrs to get the truck out of mud! In the 15 nights that we were gone they spent 11 in the bush without water and 4 with access to water.
The record was 6 in a row without water - only 1 more than I had experienced. The only difference was the heat and humidity and two evenings of rain. I was so glad to have missed all of this! After dinner I invited my tent buddy, Doug to stay with me that night since there was only one shower for the truck to share and I wanted to gossip with Doug about what had REALLY happened on the truck while I was gone. It was a great, relaxing night. Doug is great with gossip. Learned all about the real ups and downs. We then settled to watch Alien 4. Slept around midnight.
DAY 127, Fri 18MAR16, 106km, “L’Hotel Galaxie” Matadi DRC (Run6) to Bush Camp in Nkoko, 8km south of Luvo ANGOLA. I had a hard time getting up at 6:15am but business was business. My last run in DRC. We set off for the ANGOLA boarder at 9am. The landscape near the border was very green with rolling hills dotted with smaller trees.
We arrived at the border town of Luvo at around 11am. There are two towns of the same name in either country and they look like refugee camps. Trucks everywhere. People selling stuff everywhere. The change from French to Portuguese was chalk and cheese and hard to get used to. Thank goodness Roberto knew how to communicate - made things so easy. It was a horrendously slow process getting out of DRC and coming into ANGOLA. The ANGOLA border post insisted on writing details down for 24 people despite the fact that Andi had already produced computer printouts for them. Then they ran out of ink to stamp our entry! Finally the photocopier broke down to copy the passport details page. A day in the life! We had lunch inside the truck at the border post. By 5:30pm we were done but exhausted from sitting in a stationary truck in the humid heat.
Worse still there would be no water to give us relief later on - just baby wipes and for me some wine to take my mind off this!!! We reached our bush camp just 12km south of the border at 6pm. We set up our tents and the cook group placed their first saucepan on the fire when out of the darkness a police car arrived. Oh no. We have all seen this routine before. After some lengthy discussions with Andi/Grant and Roberto translating the police asked us to leave this spot and follow them to the school yard of a small village called Nkoko just 5km away where the police would stand up a guard and watch us. Roberto told us later that the police suspected that there were rebels in the area and safety was their priority. They did not try to extract a bribe so we believed them! The only downside is the poor cook group having to pack up their chopped food and hot saucepan and their tents.
We arrived at the school at around 7:30pm and noticed a covered balcony around the class rooms that was wide enough to set up Doug’s thin mozzie net for a much cooler sleep. Doug and I had it up in 10min using my clothes line and it was just big enough for the two of us. Then Riza, Yuki and I sat down with Andi to talk about our cunning plan for our fourth Solo Trip to the capital Luanda, beach-side town of Benguela and finally Lubango inland which contains waterfalls, volcanic formations and a smaller status of Christ the King copied from Rio! Success. Our Solo Trip was possible and Andi agreed to the pickup location and date. We were in heaven! Solo Trip 4 would save us another 5 to 6 nights of waterless bush camping! The only downside would be an expensive hotel i Luanda - it is officially the most expensive city in Africa because of all the foreigners that stay there on business associated with the diamond and oil industries. What great outcome. This was our only bush camp after 15 nights of Solo 3 and tomorrow we would embark on another 6 nights of Solo 4. Unreal. We all then packed since we would get off the truck at our first stop at around 9am. I then enjoyed a celebratory wine with Doug as I backed up all my photos and clips which I would leave on the truck. I slept at midnight with the moon fully visible and fully revved up for a trip tomorrow...
DAY 128, Sat 19MAR16, 517km, Bush Camp in Nkoko, 8km south of Luvo to “Junior Comercial et Industriale” near airport Luanda ANGOLA. Up at 6am. My 75th country run would have to wait until Luanda since we left at 7:30am today - too early. Also it was a rest day and supposed to be my cook group - another shop and cook missed! We arrived in M’banka Congo as expected at 9am and sprung into action to prepare for our Solo 4 departure while the rest of the truck did cook shop and visited the town. Andi, Yuki, Roberto and Riza went out to buy a SIM so we could keep in touch and then changed plenty of money for our hotels and transport. At 10:30am we presented ourselves to the police who would remove us from the truck list and add us to a new list. The police in ANGOLA actually track where every tourist is located and mark off their progress as they travel through checkpoints.
They do this for our safety and to spring into action if there is a problem. What a contrast to the police we met in GABON, CONGO and DRC who all tried to extract money from us. We farewelled our truck and climbed into the police car which drove us the bus station and police checkpoint around 5km out of town. We had missed the morning buses so we would wait at the checkpoint to ride in a private car headed to Luanda. This is allowed by the police and a common way for locals to travel given the limited buses. It was a wait that we will never forget! There were 6 officers stopping cars to inspect them and find someone to take us to the capital. Worse case scenario is that if no car was to be found we would need to sleep at the bus station and catch the 6am bus the next morning. We felt we were in safe hands but there were no guarantees for private cars.
There were 3 others waiting before us and they managed to get into a car at around 11am - this encouraged us. At around 11:30am our own truck drove past and offered to take us to the next town tomorrow but declined because we knew that we would miss the bus again (6am departure from all towns) and we were hopeful of getting a car and did not want to loose time. At around noon our hopes took a dive but were quickly lifted when another 6 people turned up to wait like us for a private car - this encouraged us again. We liked an laughed with the police as skimpy tri-wheelers went by and we shouted “Luanda Luanda”! At around 1pm a senior officer arrived and let us know that transport was on its way - music to our ears. At 2pm a giant coach from “Macon” company turns up with a large “Luanda” sign in lights on its front - we sighed with relief and ran to it at the gesturing of the police. The coach was old but very spacious with reclining seats and only half full so we waited a while for more people and by 2:30pm finally began our intrepid Solo 4 journey.
It was overcast with plenty of cool moist air filling the coach to drown out the severe BO smells of the locals. Plenty of women and children on board and the fact that the police allowed us to board, assured us. The scenery was great. Gentle rolling hills of lush green grass and spotted with small trees and deep olive bushes. Villages are red mud bricks with corrugated iron roofs. Every town we passed had music playing sounding very Brazilian / South American. We could still see a lot of cassava wrapped in green leaves eaten with fish and bean stew, much like in other countries bordering the Atlantic. Avocados are also huge and plentiful here. For a time the rolling hills were replaced by lush green forest, not as thick as CAMEROON. Night fell quickly and one stop followed another for drop-offs, pick-ups, pee-breaks and even food. This added tremendously to the trip. At around 9:30pm the huge glow of Luanda finally emerged and it took us a good hour to negotiate the sprawling suburbs of this vast city to get to the coach depot about 12km from the centre.
It has been a long time and quite rare that I have arrived so late into a destination without any idea of where I will lay down my weary head. The solution often comes down to shear luck as it did tonight. I had chatted with a lady on the coach whose English was reasonable good - she was an Angolan living in South Africa and was here to visit one of her sons. Naturally, being late, the son was at the depot to pick her up. When I asked her and her son advice on where to stay, she immediately instructed her son to drive us to a place they had in mind and then to come back and pick her up. What a lady! She single-handedly constructed our first good impression of Luanda and indeed Angolans! The son drove us approx 30min to a place next to the airport. The place was dingy but well guarded and the room had our ideal staples of aircon, fridge and running tap water (not bucket). Why was it so cheap at only $AUD40 per night for the 3 of us! The answer came quickly. This place was a “love hotel”! Young teens would “hang out” here. You get my drift. Let’s face it - we asked for “cheap” and we got it. Luanda has the reputation for being the most expensive city in Africa with the cheapest proper hotel rooms starting at $USD100/night. We got away with murder! The room was clean and comfortable and close to the centre and that’s all that mattered! The rest is psychological! It was now just passed midnight and we are starving! Before leaving the son offered to take us to nearby KFC which was the only place open and we could quickly talk back from. So Colonel Sanders it was that night. And it was very very good. It was also cheap. It was a memorable night and we were so happy just to be in Luanda as planned with a full day ahead of us...
DAY 129, Sun 20MAR16, 0km, “Junior Comercial et Industriale” near airport Luanda ANGOLA (Run1). Once again I surprised myself that I could get up and run 10km on only 4.5hrs sleep with a belly full of finger licking good and cheap Angolan red! By this point of the trip I was down in weight (I reckon 65kg) and in good shape. I was also looking forward to running my 70th country! My run quickly revealed just how spread out Luanda was - much like Los Angeles - sprawling in all directions with the usual garbage but much better roads. Unfortunately I had to make a brief stop at a hotel to let the Colonel’s chicken loose - it played havoc on my system - it was either flawed or I simply was not used to it - I hardly ever have KFC.
We set off at 9:30am and caught a share van down to the middle of the bay in the city’s centre on "Avenida de 15 Fevriere”, the date of independence. What a fabulous Atlantic promenade - better than Libreville and the best of any city we have seen to date. It reminded my immediately of Rio - hotels, residences and bars (not as many) fronting the palm-lined boulevard, complete with the occasional basketball court, mini-soccer field and children swings. Luanda (Pop 6m) is the third largest Portuguese speaking city after Sao Paolo and Rio. Amazing. More than Lisbon! Founded by the Portuguese in 1576 it has a very pronounced skyline of tall buildings just like any modern city but is choked with traffic and pollution. The Dutch occupied it for a while but the Portuguese used it for slave trading to Brazil from 1550 to 1836. Most white Portuguese left for South Africa as refugees during the Civil War never to return. The city has slums areas called “musseques" which are the equivalent of “favelas” of Brazil.
Millions of people living in shacks on top of one another! After the Civil War ended in 2002 the city experienced a construction boom from diamonds and oil which is still going on but only for the few. One third of ANGOLA lives here but 53% live in poverty. We started our assault of the city by visiting the “Fortaleza de San Miguel”, built in 1634, in very good condition and perched high above the city at the south end of the bay. We spent ages here since it commands the best views of the city and surrounding suburbs, including a huge shanty town between the fort and the Atlantic - this is why it reminded me of Rio - what should be prime land next to the ocean is occupied by slums! Shanty towns are called “meesques" here, the equivalent of “favela” in Rio. From the fort we could see the entire Presidential compound, next to the CBD and dominated by a huge cupola that looks like the Congress Building in Washington DC - this is the parliament of ANGOLA.
Further afield, you can also see a tall spear-like tower that looks like Dubai’s Birge Califa - this is the Mausoleum of the first President, Agostinho Neto, finished in 2015 on the occasion of 40 years since he architected independence. The fort itself contains all its original buildings intact complete with the signature Portuguese blue and white tiled mosaic walls depicting scenes of African wildlife and landscapes. On our way from the fort back to the promenade we passed a very modern petrol station with mini-super market much like in Australia. Contrary to what we read, everything was the same price as in Australia or cheaper - cans of legumes or veggies want for $AUD1 and a Magnum Ice Cream went for the usual $AUD2.50. We were delighted since we figured supermarket prices would be better. We also figured that we were ahead given the very good exchange rate we got for USD cash on the black market - I was definitely not going to use ATMs here, where the exchange rate was about half of the black market! That’s were the difference lay! As we walked the promenade towards the north end (2km in all) we would often walk into off-streets to observe the amazing variety of architectures and conditions of buildings that made up the Luandan skyline. It did not feel like an African city - more like something in South America or even south-east Asia. Around 2pm the sun really started to burn and Riza wanted to eat something or turn into a vicious viper so we found a nice 4-star hotel and sat in their cafe/bar with WiFi. It was a good time to plan the rest of our Solo journey and book our next coach trip. Our experience of helpful and friendly Angolans continued.
Young Carlos at reception with an OK command of English and Riza filling in the gaps in basic Spanish ranglo Real” and was able to extract all the info we needed to plan our trip. We decided to leave Luanda tomorrow and catch the 12 hour coach direct to Lubango to spend more time there.
Sadly there was not enough time to visit Benguela if the truck managed to pick us up on the 23rd. Riza stayed at the hotel to eat whilst Yuki and I continued our walking tour of the city. We walked the promenade to the north end and returned to a spot close to the hotel via off-streets, parallel to the promenade but deeper into he CBD. Luanda city is an eye opener. The north end is vey rough with some shanty dwellings in between the modern city office buildings and lots of garbage on the street. The south end is better presented but its roads are still messy. What surprised us was the number of new buildings under construction and most are steel and glass - a departure from the concrete and brick that we saw up to now. There are also many original buildings built by the Portuguese in the early 1700’s that are abandoned and decrepit.
We met Riza outside an old church just a block from the hotel and caught a share van to “Kero Bika” a huge supermarket just out of town but on the way to the airport. A bunch of young Christian school students had to show us the way. This is easily the biggest single hypermarket we had seen to date. It did not carry all the lines you would expect (e.g.: there was no cheese or toothpaste, but there were tooth brushes - go figure!) but what it did have was super cheap (e.g.: a whole roast chicken was $AUD4.50, bananas $AUD0.90/kg and 1L wine casks $AUD1.80). We stocked up for a room picnic tonight and our coach trip the following day. We got back to our love hotel at 8:30pm and enjoyed a sumptuous dinner. We hit the sack at 10:30pm in order to get up at 2:30am to catch our 4am coach. We had organised the taxi driver who brought us back from the hypermarket to pick us up in the wee hours of tomorrow morning.
DAY 130, Mon 21MAR16, 882km, “Junior Comercial et Industriale” near airport Luanda to “Hotel Amigo” Lubango ANGOLA. Where was he? The taxi driver was supposed to pick us 3:15am to drive us the 15min to our coach depot and now it was 3:30am. Lucky for us we had seen 3 taxi’s drive past earlier so we grabbed the next one and rushed off to Rocha. When we arrived the guard fed us the shocking news that the 4am coach departure had been changed to another depot. It was 3:45am and our driver indicated that he knew where it was. Wrong. He didn’t know. He pulled up several times in front of closed businesses with sleeping guards. No luck. It was now 3:55am and we started to panic.
Luckily we passed “Macon” the rival coach company and I forced him to stop there so we could ask them and find out when they went to Lubango. We had a backup. If we missed the 4am we would come back here and catch their 6am. Fortunately that was not required since the instructions they gave us were good enough to get us there at 4:10am and lucky for us the coach operated on African time and had not departed.
We scrambled to get tickets and at one stage the taxi driver would not open the boot since I refused to pay him the full amount because he lied to us about knowing where this second depot was located. I paid him just to get our luggage and it was our first real negative experience. We left at 4:30am and settled in to sleep. The coach was the best to date. Air conditioned with reclining padded seats offering great support. I stirred at 7am and then finally took advantage of a pee-stop at 8:30am to re-enter the world around me. The landscape was brilliant which is why we caught a day bus and not overnight. We travelled along the coast starting with lush green rolling hills which eventually changed closer to the coast. The costal road started to get spectacular just after Sumbe. I huge wetland area surrounded by cliffs full of dry waterfalls that feed it and cause it to drain into the Atlantic coast.
Wet season begins in March with most rains coming in April. The view remained green. Closer to Benguela we started to ascend reaching 350m and surrounded by mountains and rocky outcrops covered in palms. Villages varied considerably from the very small traditional round mud brick and straw to rectangular concrete blocks with iron.
The day was cloudy and the road paved but average - good in some places, bad in others. About 100km before Lobito, the greenery that we were so accustomed to disappeared, replaced by dry, semi-arid plains with trees and scrub. Lobito appeared out of nowhere. It is punched on the edge of this plain with a sudden descent down tot he Atlantic where there is a huge port. Lobito looks like a desert town like we saw in MOROCCO.
We then hugged the Atlantic coast for another 30km to reach Benguela, 515km and 10hrs from Luanda - we were meant to be here at noon in 8hrs so we were running badly behind! Benguela is a colourful seaside town boasting many cafes, restaurants and boutiques, far from the noise and pollution of Luanda. It was untouched by the Civil War so there are still many original, well-kept Portuguese built edifices dating back to the 17th Century. Portugal used this seaside oasis as the main slave trading port into Brazil. We left here at 3pm facing a possible 8:30pm arrival into Lubango - after dark which would make it harder to find a hotel. After an hour the landscape changed again. Dramatically. We became surrounded by rocky mountains with boulders, thick shrubs and Baobab trees (flat topped with trunks that get wider at the base). We had reached the “Serra Do Chilengue” mountain range reaching 800m.
The clouds suddenly darkened in front of us. We made a stop in Catengue where I bought palm oil fried potato chips, fresh roasted peanuts and grilled corn from the locals to have with my Keso chicken at our room picnic tonight - lets hope we have a room to picnic in!!! We did!!! Even though we arrived at 8:30pm, 16hrs after we departed and 4.5hrs late - TIA! Once again we were lucky. A young student with his car offered to take us to a cheap hotel near the centre of town and we jumped aboard. Our room looked great and we were so tired that we grabbed it without doing our standard checks: 1) turn on aircon, 2) turn on all water taps, 3) flush toilet, 4) check fridge. Later as we settled in we discovered that 1) and 3) were negative and the manager could do nothing about them tonight and would move us to another room tomorrow. We quickly put that behind us to focus on our room picnic at 10:30pm and watch a bit of TV. We all fell asleep instantly.
DAY 131, Tue 22MAR16, 80km, “Hotel Amigo” (Run2) to “Hotel Mirangolo” Lubango ANGOLA. As I was approaching my hotel after my Lubango run out towards Namibe, I noticed another hotel just one house up from my own. Bugger - I should have tested the room first and walked there last night! Lessons learned! I would never let fatigue do that to me again. Riza and I walked to the new hotel and met the person that was to make our stay in Lubango - Sonia. She was first generation Angolan born of Portuguese parents who emigrated here 20yrs ago. She visited Portugal often and learnt to speak terrific English there. We were saved. Not only did she give us a better room at a better price but told us that the best way to visit the geological sites surrounding Lubango was by hire car - it was way cheaper than taxi and there were no tour companies.
She organised a hire car for just $AUD55 all included except petrol. We would pick up the car at 1pm. Until then, Yuki and decided to do a walking tour of the city whilst Riza would rest because her foot was playing up again. Lubango (Pop 257,000, Elev 1771m) is a great place. So scenic. So colourful. So relaxing. So much cleaner than other African cities and towns. It is built on a high plateau surrounded by a huge ridge with a statue of Christ with outstretched hands (a shrunken replica of the one in Rio) and a sign “Lubango” just like the “Hollywood” sign in LA. In many ways this place reminds me of Cusco in Peru which has the same physical features and status of Christ. Buildings are painted in pastel colours with lots of old Portuguese colonial style buildings (Wooden shutters, balconies, terracotta tile roofs).
Like Benguela, this place was not touched by the civil war because of its inaccessibility. We walked down the main boulevard towards the bottom of the ridge with “Cristo Rei” (Christ the King) statue high above us. We visited the brand new Chinese-built railway from here to Namibe and the new train that comes with it. At around 12:30pm we started our hopeless expedition to find the car hire company. I do not know what it is about Africa but many businesses do NOT supply a street name and number, just a suburb or locality. This one was no exception and we could not find it. We rode on motor bikes to speed up the search and keep the cost down but no luck. We rode back tot he hotel and organised them to bring the car to us which would cost an extra $AUD10.
By 2:30pm we had our brand new shiny white 1.3L manual Suzuki Celerio with aircon. We wasted no time and got on the road to “Cristo Rei”, 15min and 379m above us at elev 2150m. What a view. Spectacular. Not only the whole city but the mountains beyond. Fluffy clouds and blue sky made for the best photos. The statue is made of white marble, 30m in height and was finished in 1957. The “LUMBANGO” Hollywood sign is also a great photogenic object. Can see it from all parts of town.
From here we made our way to the famous “Tundavala Gap”, 26km from the Lumbango. It is a huge ridge split in two via a volcanic fissure at elev 2261m overlooking a valley floor 1000m below. The view is heart-stopping. We stayed until sunset which is the best time to photograph the sun’s golden light on the fissure itself. The silence here and the view of distant rains and nose-diving silver turn birds made this a magic place. The fact that we could get here so easily in our own car opened up a new dimension in our African travels. Never thought I would be driving here. ANGOLA is definitely on the way up. On our way back to the hotel we enjoyed the stage rock piles that surround the road to Tundavala Gap and also passed by the South African giant super market of Shoprite - could not believe it was already here. Another fantastic room picnic - this time featuring Champagne to celebrate our car, what we had seen today and the trip to Namibe that we would make tomorrow...
DAY 132, Wed 23MAR16, 396km, “Hotel Mirangolo” Lubango to Namibe return ANGOLA (Run3). Up at 6am and on the road by 6:30am because we needed to return the car by 2:30pm. The 182km trip to seaside Namibe typically takes 2.5hrs direct. It took us 3.5hrs because we stopped several times to take photos of the absolutely spectacular and changing scenery along the way.
The first impressive physical feature is the “Serra da Leba Pass”, a 16km section of hairpin turns that connect the Lubango plateau at 1761m with the valley floor 914m below at elev 847m. This pass is only surpassed by the “Trolingen Way” in NORWAY and the “Paso de los Libertadores” connecting Mendoza ARGENTINA with Santiago CHILE - both of which I have been lucky enough to see! It starts at 43km from Lubango at its highest and ends 59km from Lubango at its lowest.
The Serra de Leba mountain range is also photogenic - unusual planetary like peaks covered in trees and with rocky piles in front. At about 50km from Namibe these mighty mountains are replaced by a semi-arid desert sporting a mini canyon with dry rivers, fancy flagged bridges, villages with low square shaped dwellings like on Star Wars and green farm oasis at the bottom of some canyons. A strange site indeed.
Namibe (Pop 86,000) is on the Atlantic coast and whilst its town is very colourful, the beaches are not that great. A big boulevard complete with garden in the middle lines the centre of town and most of the building are pastel coloured Portuguese colonial buildings with some art-deco style, including the former cinema! We drove out of town to literally the end of the road to find a more secluded beach but no luck. Most of the shoreline is badly littered but the beach in front of town was not so this is where we spent the last hour of our stay here after 1hr of driving around. I went for a run along the beach, past the shipwreck of a big container vessel. The beachside promenade was a small street with lots of cafes and restaurants and chairs and table covered by colourful odd-shaped cloth sails. At 12:30pm we headed off back to Lubango.
We made some more stops to photograph the Serra da Leba mountains and the windy road from he bottom of the pass. Whilst refuelling 20km out of town we met a Portuguese wine grower who was here to start a vineyard just a stone’s throw from he petrol station - he invited us to go back but sadly we were already late returning our car and the late fees were unjustified. It also starting sprinkling at the station so off we went. On our way back we got a message from Andi reporting that they would pick us up on Friday instead of Thursday - bliss - we had a whole extra day to rest tomorrow. We arrived at the hotel at 3:20pm and called for the car to be picked up - I remember this time because the car rental guy tried to charge us more for being late - the hotel staff backed me up but it tool ages to resolve. We were charged another $AUD10 for the car pickup and another $AUD10 for being late. In total the car, including fuel and extras cost $AUD95. If we had picked it up and dropped it off on time it would be only $AUD55 - not bad for a developing country! We celebrated that night with more bubbly. We had seen Namibe and had an extra rest day in Lubango tomorrow. I fell asleep watching “Dr No”...
DAY 133, Thu 24MAR16, 0km, “Hotel Mirangolo” Lubango ANGOLA (Run4). Today was rest day. Up at 8am, run then an included hotel brekkie at 10am - the best so far. I then sat down to email, produce and post this blog and make some calls. Also washed clothes in preparation for more bush camps on our way into NAMIBIA. Took all day sitting in the air-conditioned comfort of my hotel room with Cristo Rei in the distance. Popped out at 5pm to get some food then back to the press. On my way for food I met some tribal locals called the “Mumuila” - the women put red sand in their hair and walk round the city bare-breasted. They wear colourful clothing including necklaces. They also rub sand on their bodies. The sand orients them from having to bathe often and keep mozzies at bay. When I returned I went back to my blog but unfortunately Yuki’s SIM ran out of data at 8:30pm so we bought some more in the morning and I was able to post this blog by 9am the next day...
DAY 134, Fri 25MAR16, 0km, “Hotel Mirangolo” Lubango ANGOLA (Run5). Another blissful day of rest. It was an early run at 6am because we thought we would check out at noon and be called onto the truck at 5pm BUT this did not happen. We stayed another day and night at out lovely Miracle-Angola hotel! A whole day of rest and a balcony sunset experience second to none! When Andi rang and informed us that the truck would be overnighting in Tundavala we almost fainted with excitement! We took to the rooftop of our hotel at sunset overlooking the entire city and celebrated our 7 nights in Angola with drinks and laughter, long into this Angolan night...
PS: A LITTLE ABOUT ANGOLA:
ANGOLA (Pop 24.3m) is officially part of “Southern Africa” and another war-torn, corrupt-government country where the only one who pays the ultimate price is the locals. It is twice the size of France and the 23rd largest country in the world. Palaeolithic man first occupied this area around 8000BC with three main tribal groups evolving until Portuguese Vasco da Gama dropped anchor in 1483 leading to colonisation in the 16th Century. The Portuguese concentrated on Brazil during this time and really did not start extracting iron ore, copper, diamonds and oil until the 17th Century when they discovered just how much existed.
The Portuguese sourced most of their Brazilian slaves from ANGOLA during the 16-18th Centuries. Independence came in 1975 with the Portuguese literally doing a “lift and shift” of everything they had, leaving the capital Luanda (Pop 6m now), a ghost town! From 1975 to 2002 there were many conflicts between three main groups for control of the countries vast resources: a group backed by Cuba and Russia, one backed by Europe and the USA and one going it alone with help from the DRC.
Eventually the first group won and Cuba installed the first President who was very popular since he drove the War of Independence. Elections were held in 2002 and 2008 and the country has been relatively stable since then but it is estimated that the 2nd and 3rd Presidents pocketed around $USD4b leaving most locals in poverty. Another disgrace. Even today there are huge areas of land marked for diamonds that are off limits to everyone. ANGOLA runs system of government with a President and Ministers and a Congress of elected people. There is still too much power in the Presidency. From 2010, under the new Constitution, the leader of the winning political party becomes President. ANGOLA has many ethnic groups speaking 42 indigenous dialects but most youth prefer Portuguese. Half the population is Catholic with the rest of various charismatic Christian groups and very few Muslims. Music is very strong and has influenced the music of Brazil, particularly “Samba”. ANGOLA does not much wildlife since it was displaced by the wars and never replenished. The Atlantic beaches however are pristine.
PPS: INTERESTING FACT ON AFRICA:
20% of the African population believes in traditional indigenous faiths, all of which believe in a supreme “creator” but believe that objects such as trees, caves, certain musical instruments can be endowed with spiritual powers that heal or bring good fortune.
REFLECTION: Do not expect much from “hotels” in West Africa. Our experience to date, based on 41 nights in hotel rooms, is that they are very very basic, often with toilets that do not flush (you use a bucket of water), not much water pressure, hardly any hot water and the classic - constantly failing power. Staff are keen to help but often very slow or hierarchical (they cannot do anything unless they check with their boss and they check with theirs and so on and so forth…). By all means, let staff know about about big problems in your room but do it in a polite way and show them the problem to avoid misunderstandings. Over time we built up a tolerance for most problems and just worked our around them - be prepared to do this! PS: Most counties HATE 3 or 4 people sharing a double room even though they will sleep on the floor and pay extra!!!
