Luanda - my impressions

OK, so this starts inside the airplane while arriving in Luanda.
One hour or so before you get there you'll look down and, if the sky is clear, you'll see nothing but red dirt and the occasional tree here and there, but when you start approaching the city you'll see a sea of poorly built houses and huts and red dirts streets. These are the slums around Luanda.
The city's official numbers say 2 million live there, but in fact the real number is a lot closer to 8 million.
I didn't get any photos because I didn't want to risk showing them to the border police if they asked me to (not very probable, but it could happen).
I got to the airport and there could be no mistake. I was definitely in Africa!
I had a driver waiting for me and for another guy that works at my girlfriend's company.
We started our drive to the hotel. The traffic is amazing. At 6:30 am it took us about 1 hour to do about 5 or 10 km inside the city. The positive side is that the driver took a bunch of shortcuts and was able to see my mother's and my father's old houses.
No pictures, the driver said. As we were in the middle of the very very slow traffic the driver told me it would be better not to have the camera out. So I did that. More or less...


(a street in Luanda)

To be honest, everything looks a bit menacing.
We eventually got to the hotel, where I stayed for the day. I wanted to go for a tour of the city but I was informed I shouldn't do it by myself, and no drivers were available to go out with me,
The Hotel is the "Epic Sana". Here are some photos:

(the view from the hotel pool)

(the hotel pool)

(the pool area)

I leave you some more photos taken from the hotel room.
I had a few more taken with my cellphone but it broke so I lost them all...

(Luanda from the epic sana window)

(again Luanda from the room window)

(can you imagine the bay if it wasn't full of half sunk boats and all the sewage of the city?)

(another amazing view)

At night we went for dinner at the "ilha de Luanda" (Luanda's Island), which isn't really an island, that sits opposing the city, where there are some very nice restaurants (I advise you the "Cais de 4") with an amazing view over Luanda.
The city itself is a mix of colonial age buildings and the most modern skyscrapers.
If you talk to the locals they will tell you they are very suspicious of the new buildings built by the Chinese.
In sum, I loved the city, and was sad I couldn't stroll around the streets by myself, getting to know a bit better the place. I hope I have the opportunity some day.