Angola - Strawberries

Brett: We left late and on Bruce's advice, headed inland towards Dondo for some varied scenery. It was a good detour, but we were all too lazy to do the extra 6 hour detour to see Pedras Negras (Black Rocks).  Annoyingly, the wire on the temperature gauge came loose - an easy fix, but doesn't help when I was already watching it closely. Just after dark, we found a reasonable spot (near Quibala) off the road to free camp - the first time we’ve struggled to find a freecamp spot in Angola - the damaged, deserted buildings and thick mist gave it a very spooky feel (S10 15.625 E14 48.31). At midnight, some guys drove in hooting and flashing their lights, so I came down to see what was going on. Despite the hooting they were actually quite friendly. I told them we were just tourists looking for a place to camp for the night and that we would be gone in the morning. They were happy with that, and with smiles and handshakes all round they left.

Mary: We had a really long day’s driving the next day. The scenery was great and different again, with lots of hills and mountains. We pulled off the road somewhere past Waku-Kungo – as usual the Kerr’s put our tinned-hot-dog-sandwiches to shame and whipped up a beautiful tuna salad with all the trimmings. Just as we finished our lunch a farmer drove past us. He stopped to chat and left us with a bag of beautiful oranges – people here are really welcoming of tourists. We camped 50km before Lobito in a brilliant spot among some baobabs (S12 21.615 E13 51.521). Brett made a spatchcocked chicken on the braai while I did a load of washing and we stayed up playing cards late into the night.

We found the Shoprite in Lobito and did a serious stock-up. We also found internet for the first time in ages at a hotel in Benguela, although it was quite expensive. We had lunch at Baia Farte, taking in the awesome views and then drove through several mountain passes towards a highly recommended free camp spot (S13 20.716 E12 38.792). The engine temperature went above normal on one of the hills because we were pushing it a bit harder than normal, but seemed ok on the 4x4 sections down to the beach. If it can handle this, it will make it home if we drive carefully.

Brett: We had arrived at in the dark and woke to awesome views of Binga Bay. We decided to leave Parc de Ioma for another time when the car is running better and headed towards Lubango. The Leba Mountain Pass is an amazing feat of engineering from the 1970s (that looks like 2 hearts from a certain angle) - our car didn't overheat, but we passed plenty of other cars that had. We had such a sense of what we have achieved on the trip when we saw an overland group tour heading the other way - Southern Angola is about as far as most people will go and we were coming from the other direction, having gone the whole way round independently. We camped at Fazenda Farm (aka Strawberry Campsite) (S15 0.464 E13 24.446) in Humpata where Garry and Erica were brilliant hosts. We highly recommend this place for overlanders - $10 is cheap by Angolan standards and we even got some free strawberries. We sat around a big fire with them and a group of friendly Capetonian bikers, including the eminent labour judge, Anton Steenkamp, who very kindly offered us all their leftovers – they didn’t have space to carry anything extra on their bikes.

In the morning, we checked out the Voortreker graves on the farm and then went to visit Christo Rei overlooking Lubango (the others are in Lisbon, Portugal and Rio, Brazil. We sampled the cafes in town and the great views at Tundavala. We filled up with cheap petrol ($0.60/l) for the last time and left town. We turned south at Cahama and camped in a field (S16 20.841 E14 15.174) with the sound of chanting coming from a nearby village. It feels like we are now quite close to home, and with the Kerrs keen to spend as much time as possible on the East Coast we have all decided to speed up a bit – it’s a pity though, especially since the visa was so hard to get – we would have loved to have had more time to explore Angola.

We look the rough road via Otchinjou and Chitado, which makes for a nice drive and has a few easy 4x4 sections. The Kerrs were hanging back because of the dust, but after a while of not seeing them, we circled back, finding them stuck in the mud at a really extreme angle. They had seen us wheel spinning in some mud (too lazy to engage 4x4) and decided instead to go around it. Just as they had done that, the ground gave away and they slid into the worst of the mud got properly stuck. They cleared the mud around the diffs and tried driving out, with a dozen or so bystanders hanging on to the high side of the car to try stop it rolling. They weren’t winning so we had a chance to pay them back for the beach rescue by towing them out.

The Angolan side of the Rucana border was quick and easy, but they did a very thorough search for drugs and guns searching in many typical hiding places, like under the landy seats. They also tasted our toothpaste, and smelled our shampoo and herbs. At the Namibian side, they reminded us to drive on the left and made us move our car to the left of the road before we could go into the building so that we didn't block the road (nevermind that we hadn't seen any other cars all day). Angola was the only country where we couldn't find 3rd party insurance - in Namibia, 3rd party insurance is included in the fuel tax. At the border, there was nobody around to stamp our carnet, but they guy at immigration told us not to worry about it, they wouldn’t be fussed when we exited Namibia (which was true).

Angola - Properly Stuck

Brett: We visited the Mirador Luna (view of the moon), which is similar to Leconi Canyon and decided to camp on the beach below it. We found a steep road down to a village and then headed along the beach along the hard-ish wet sand. The beach was quite sloped so it was tough staying on the hard sand, and it turned out that it was nearing high tide and the only good place to get on and off the steep beach was at the village. The Kerrs raced ahead to keep up momentum but we just kept bogging down, and with the recent radiator trouble we were really worried about overheating. The sand became softer and steeper as we went further from the village and it was too narrow to turn around - we were committed and had to keep moving to avoid getting stuck. By now the Kerrs were well out of sight. Eventually we got stuck in the sand. We dropped the tyres down to 1.1 bar (as low as we could) and dug ourselves out. It was scary with the tide coming in and the waves about 1m from us. We set off again and it just got worse and worse, with Mary clinging to the grab handle as the beach got steeper and steeper, and with me trying to keep an eye on the ever-increasing temperature gauge, until we had one of our very first shouting matches:
M : “Don't go so fast, one swerve and you’ll roll the *&%$£! car!”
B : “I have to use full throttle or we WILL get stuck!”
M: “You’ll definitely get us stuck if you drive like such an idiot!”
       < one tense minute later >
B: “S&%$*! We're over heating... I’m going for the bank!”
M: “Well rolling the sodding car isn't going to fix the over heating!”
B: “Getting washed away by the sodding tide won't help us either!!!”

We eventually got stuck close to the top of the bank with the car at a crazy angle, but at least it was a few meters away from the rapidly rising tide. The Kerrs were far down the beach and had also got stuck twice, once with the waves coming right up to their wheels, but they managed to get out using their trusty sand tracks. Once they were free they headed back to help us. After a lot of digging, shifting the driftwood & dried seaweed, and repositioning the sandtracks, they managed to tug us off the soft sand into the flat, harder stuff just back from the beach.  We were all exhausted, so after a lot of high-fives, we camped right where we stopped (S9 13.639 E13 4.808). This was the first time we had really got properly stuck, and without Luke & Shell there to tow us we would have been digging for hours.We had a few celebratory beers while watching the sunset and then Luke & Shell taught us to make risotto –  it was absolutely awesome – what a great end to a very eventful day!

At sunrise, Bruce turned up on a quad bike. It turned out that we had camped on private land, but he was a nice ex-Zimbabwean who had lived in Angola for 19 years (through the war), and once we explained that we weren’t part of a tour group, he didn't really mind us being there. He also told us that we had been lucky because we could have damaged turtle eggs if we had driven on the beach in summer – yikes! I guess you can't know if a beach is safe to drive on without someone getting some local knowledge first.

Angola - The untravelled North

Brett: Crossing the border from DRC is a dramatic change - it suddenly becomes peaceful and sparsely populated. The buildings at border control are all new and it took a while to figure out where to go. The guys at immigration seemed to take a while to work out what to do with us, too. The customs guy was very friendly, giving us tips on the best places to go dancing in Luanda. He was very meticulous as he stamped the carnet and filled out the custom document in Portuguese that we would need to show at roadblocks. Someone then came to search our car - we could see he was very curious about our setup, but also too polite to ask too many questions.

We changed some money in Luvo and had some lunch. We instantly liked the place and it was starting to feel fairly familiar and Southern African rather than West African. The little shops were a bit more expensive than other countries, but very friendly and nobody around was begging. A guy selling sodas in a bucket came over to us singing and dancing. He had a huge smile on his face and when we said no, he left still singing, dancing and smiling.

The road from the border starts out as good tar through great scenery. There was still no fuel at Mbanza-Congo. At the checkpoint in town, the police signaled us to wait a little while, but didn't ask too many questions, and then waved us through. As we left town, a police pickup passed us with its lights flashing and were waving for us to follow them. We quickly figured out that they wanted to escort us, so we kept driving slower and slower and finally stopped - we were lucky enough to not have a transit visa and so had no time constraints. Apparently they were ordered to escort us because a tourist had been killed in the North once and that they would be in trouble with the police chief if they let us travel alone. With a big language barrier (made bigger by the fact that they didn’t want to understand our arguments), we eventually managed to phone the police station and speak to somebody in English. We convinced him that our safety was our own responsibility and that we could go on our way. Our police escort reluctantly agreed and we drove off, but just before we were out of sight, they started following again at a distance. We pretended to stop for the loo and they passed us. Just as they went out of sight, we turned around and raced back the way we came, turning up a side road which lead up to a cell phone tower. This was a perfect spot for freecamping, with great views, so we set up camp just before sunset (S6 28.841 E13 57.089). We felt like fugitives as we played cards that night (Luke and Shell taught us 500 and Black Mariah) and at about 10pm, the police finally found us. They were quite friendly, and joked with us about sneaking away from them, but they wanted to leave someone camping with us, and we were back to square one with not wanting a police escort. Eventually after a lot of back and forth and going over the same ground, they suddenly gave up, and with massive smiles, waved and left. We had a peaceful night and at sunrise, the care taker / guard of the cell tower turned up. He pretty much ignored us, turning on some music on his radio and getting on with his chores. We made him some coffee and tried out our appaling Portugese on him, before setting off for the day.

We stopped for a snack at Tomboco - the dough balls in the market are highly recommended. Everyone was extremely friendly and wanted us to take group pictures with them. There were a few more police checkpoints that were expecting us - someone had radioed ahead telling them that we were coming and they all wanted to give us an escort, but they didn't argue too hard when we told them we didn’t need one. We got some petrol in Nzeto for $1 per litre from a plastic barrel - it was expensive for Angola, but cheap compared to most other countries. All the other fuel stations had either run out or were still under construction. We also managed to fill up our water at the town bore hole – with the pumps running it was too noisy to talk to each other, but when we showed them our jerrycans they knew what we were after and were happy to fill us up. We found a great spot on the beach just south of Nzeto and camped there (S7 18.05 E12 53.053). A school group turned up for a few hours, but ignored us – what a pleasure it was to be back in the land of easy freecamping! Angola still has some land mines in places from the war (mosly in the South Eastern corner of the country), but it was easy to find well used tracks to good free camp spots.
In the afternoon, a helicopter flew directly over us and we joked that it was the police again, come to check on us. We were suddenly back in the land of cool evenings, but we played a fairly drunken few games of pictionary until late into the night anyway.

What remains of the famously bad road is between Nzeto and Barra do Dande, but a new road is being built. The bumps are large and rounded, so driving over them feels a lot like a roller coaster. We drove through amazing dense baobab forests, with great and varied scenery through the day. After a long day, we reached the tar at Barra do Dande and set up camp at the top of a hill (S8 27.18 E13 24.065), overlooking the bay and the palm forests.

Mary: We had a lazy morning, and left late after a good breakfast. I bought a radiator cap from a guy on the side of the road thinking that it would solve the mystery of the disappearing water (no visible leaks). It didn't, really, but we had no issues carrying on if we topped up the water level every morning. The first proper petrol station was just north of Luanda, very modern and with a brand new bank & ATM next door, near the turn off for the Bay of Wrecks. It was about 950km since the last petrol in Brazzaville, and we hadn't filled up our jerry cans there, but we had seen diesel on the way at Songololo. We also found an accurately named shop called Bom Pao (Good Bread), where we stocked up on beautiful Portuguese rolls straight out of the oven. We drove down to the beach and then along it a short way to where the wrecks are. Apparently the Portuguese wrecked their ships here rather than letting the "enemy" have them when they abandoned the country. We still had some individually wrapped portions of decent French butter filched from a restaurant in Gabon, so we treated ourselves to some hot bread and good butter for lunch. There were some fishermen pulling in nets that were a few hundred metres long, so we watched them for a while and when the catch eventually came in we bought some fish for dinner. We bought some groceries on the outskirts of Luanda, but couldn't convince ourselves to brave the traffic and check out the most expensive city in Africa – despite knowing the name of the best nightclub from the guy at Customs. On our way past we stocked up with more “bom pao” – somehow we had eaten our way through about 8 Portuguese rolls at the beach. We are definitely back in the land of plenty, with shops, petrol, & cash getting easier to find.

Angola Visa Mission

The Angolan Visa was the most difficult visa to organise on our trip. The Ethiopian, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigerian and DRC visas also have their challenges, but they don't come close. We finally managed to get 30-day Angolan visas, but it took a lot of work - we estimate about 10 half days of effort and around $300 (including photocopying, scanning and DHLing), but part of that was because we were investigating the process.

Officially, you need to apply for your visa in your home country, but as it lasts 60 days, it generally isn't practical. If you are South African and heading North, then you can go in for fingerprints and wait 10 days (although I have heard of it taking 6 weeks). I would recommend contacting Angolan Getaways (www.angolangetaways.com) to help with the letter of invitation etc. We have also heard of a few people getting Angolan visas in Zambia. If applying from the UK, they don't require fingerprints yet and do allow postal applications.

Plan A: Since 2008, only 5-day transit visas have been available on the route. Our initial plan was to DHL our South African passports to Angolan Getaways to organise 30 day visas for us, but 2 months before we needed to apply, they added a fingerprint requirement so we would have needed to show up in person.

Plan B: Use the Togo Residency that we got with our DRC visas to apply in Lome. The consul was away for a week so we couldn't speak to him directly, but someone else on the staff made it clear that it would be very difficult, require a notary to sign all documents and take 3 weeks.

Plan C: Get the transit visa in Abuja, Nigeria. It was possible before we started the trip, but not since 2011. We wanted the longer visa anyway.

Plan D: We went into the London Angolan embassy and made contact there. They offered to write us a letter of introduction for the Abuja embassy in Nigeria. We spent the morning in the Abuja embassy twice. The first time, the guy behind the counter was quite rude and told us to go away - he was sick the second day and the guy standing in made a real effort. They couldn't process the visa unless we had a 6-month Nigerian visa, which is impossible to get as a tourist. The computer system has no room for exceptions and the IT guy in Luanda couldn't find any way around it. They couldn't do the work in London and print it in Nigeria because the stamp has to match up. We struggled to get the Consul in London to talk to someone in Abuja because of the huge power index (someone can't raise an issue with their superior). The numbers they gave us for the Abuja embassy were wrong and we couldn't take our own phone into the embassy and pass it to them because of the security risk - the security guard couldn't ask someone inside if they could escort us and the guy inside couldn't walk outside because of the security issues. Eventually, the helpful guy phoned London on his personal cell phone and they discussed the issue, agreeing that it is a real problem in the system, but that there is no solution - it is unlikely that this will reach Luanda.

Plan E (success): We DHLed our passports back to London and because we had made contact before, they issued us 30 day visas in a few days (3 weeks is the norm). We have the luxury of 2 passports which saves having to wait around. Each embassy has slightly different requirements, but this is what we needed for London - we applied for the Ordinary visa in London, but the Tourist visa in Lome and Abuja. Others that applied through London sent fewer documents, but the application took longer to process. There were a few exceptions, but this seems to be what most people are doing now.

• We organised a Letter of Invitation through Angolan Getaways.
• A friend helped us translate Letters of Employment into Portuguese. They need to be on letter head paper with a company stamp.
• We made a temporary booking for a hotel in Luanda as proof of accommodation.
• We used original bank statements that were 4 months old, plus recent prints from the internet.
• We wrote up a detailed itinerary for 30 days (although this is impossible to stick to on an overlanding trip)
• Cover Letter explaining why we wanted to go to Angola.
• Proof of Address (UK drivers licence)

Plan F: Get transit visa in Dolise, Congo or Matadi, DRC - most people have been rejected recently

Plan G: Several people have shipped their cars around Angola (or air freight with bikes). It is really expensive, with many hidden costs, lots of corruption and stuff getting stolen is common. You have to fly separately.

Plan H: A few brave souls recently have driven through DRC from Kinshasa to Lumbumbashi, which takes 2 to 4 weeks depending on the weather and is aparently quite hectic - we didn't really feel like this one.

Plan I: Some embassies have suggested going back the way we came - 55,000km, REALLY?         

I would also recommend taking a letter in Portugese saying that you take responsibility for your own safety and don't need a police escourt in the north. It doesn't work for the transit visa though - we had time so we could drive 30km/h and park on the side and wait until they got bored.

Angola

Angola spent the first 27 years of independence from Portugal in civil war which ended in 2002 after the death of the rebel group leader. Fighting continues in a separatist movement in oil rich Cabinda, a province separated from the rest of Angola by the DRC. North and South Luanda provinces (North East corner bordering DRC) are major diamond areas and also considered dangerous.

Several other overlanders have mentioned Angola as a highlight for the scenery and culture. There are so few tourists here that it is real exploring - many roads require a 4x4.

The thoughts so far are
- Noqui - Border with DRC
- Luanda - Capital, tropical Mussulo island, the Benifica Market for Kwanza River
- Lobito - scenery, Restinga Peninsula, beaches

- Benguela - art deco architecture, Baia Azul for desert beaches

- Lubango - beautiful escarpment-type scenery with crazy roads cut into steep hills

- Namibe - stay at Flamingo Camp, Arco Lagoon, beaches, desert, Mucubais tribes

- Iona National Park - links up with the Namib-Skeleton Coast National Park which stretches to Richetersveld National Park, creating one of the largest coastline reserves in the world

- Cahama

- Kunene River - Canoeing (entering from the Namibian side), Ruacana Falls, Himba tribes

- Santa Clara - Border with Namibia

There were issues getting visas in 2009, and many overlanders had to rush through on 5 day transit visas. That should hopefully be resolved, but we may need a letter of invitation. Visas are required for all foreigners & can be obtained in Congo. 5 day transit visas seem to be available at the border if we can't do better...