Landing in Lubango

Lubango is the third biggest city in Angola and because we wanted to get to know a bit more of the country than only the Namibe, this was where we flew to.
At the airport we had Jeff, the lodge keeper, waiting for us. We had no idea how he looked like because when we booked he just said "don't worry about that, I'll find you"! And so he did.
I think it wouldn't be that hard. There aren't that many people looking like tourists in Angola you know...
Anyway, he got to us and took us to the car in which we would go to the Namibe. The car was a Toyota Landcruiser, not the newest but not an old one either. It had maybe 2 years, but this wasn't the chocking part. The chocking part was the whole off road preparation the car had in it! Double chockers in each wheel, huge off road tires, special suspension, the works!
When I saw it, I thought to myself "this guy is an off road geek". He spent the same amount of money in preparing the car that he did in the car itself, but it was so clean, and e paint job so scratch less that I was honestly convinced all that was just for show! Boy, was I wrong... But that's for another post!So Jeff suggested we should get moving, go to the Tundavala before lunch, and then head to the lodge of a Portuguese friend of his to get something to eat. And so we did.





















(Lubango from the top of the hill)

The Flamingo Lodge

The Flamingo Lodge was our final destination in Namibe. The place where we were staying. When I say Namibe I'm referring to the area, not the city. The city of Namibe was about 70km away in a straight line.
The lodge belongs to a South African guy and is maintained by a young couple of biologists that live there and tend the place while they do their research.
To get there we left the city of Namibe and drove 70km on the beach (literaly on the beach).


(our car on the beach - we had to take air out of the tires so it wouldn't sink in the sand. The guy on the picture was Chico, our cook / bush guide / fix all guy)

It is imposible to get there if you don't have a 4x4. Even if you take the "more normal road" you still have 40km of riverbed to get through, and the total distance is about 90km instead of 70km.


(welcome to Flamingo Lodge! - yes, those are whale bones!)

The place is very very neat and well taken care of. It sits on the beach and is surrounded by mountains and cliffs. You're now in the middle of the Namibe desert, a couple of kms north of the skeleton coast.
You have the main building with the bar and restaurant on top of a hill, and on the beach you have the guest houses (or should I say huts).


(the beach accommodation)

Every house has two or more beds, and a private bath with hot water (a luxury in a place like this!). Our hut had already an occupant when we got there. A bat. We were disturbing the poor creature that lived there all year round. This ended up being very useful because of the roaches. Bats eat cockroaches.
The problem with roaches is (maybe it's an urban legend) they love crawling into tight spaces.
A friend of ours told us a story that happened to him in a trip to Indonesia where a friend of his had a roach stuck in his ear for a week before the local doctors found out and were able to pry it out.
We always slept with ear plugs...


(the view from our bedroom was incredible)

We were there during winter time so it was a bit cold / windy to hit the water but I imagine that during summer time this is a wonderful place to be if you want a beach holiday in an exotic country!
Even not being good for a day at the beach, you never get bored for there are too many things to do around here. Just ask the lodge keepers, they will tell you which activities you can do.
We even went fishing (we caught nothing, but it was fun!).
Check out the ride for the fishing expedition:


(can you guess what happened to this poor car? They rolled it over. No one got hurt fortunately. As it was totally wrecked they just chopped off the ceiling, included one wood board on each side of the car - to keep it from folding in two - and there you have a fishing car!)

The trip to Namibe - Intro

This trip needs some previous comments.
i didn't just decided it was a good idea to go to Angola on vacation. I would probably be one of the 3 people that did that in the last 20 years or so!
The reason I went to Angola was to visit my girlfriend who was there working for a few months and, as a big part of my family was born there, I decided it was time to go and see the country I'd heard so much about while growing up!
First stop was Luanda, obviously, and only the next day we went to the south.
There are 5 tons of advice I should give you before you visit Angola. The most important:

• It would be best to visit if you already know someone living or working there.
• Visas are extremely hard to get, and quite expensive too. Tourism visas are virtually impossible to get
• Book a very nice (and very expensive) hotel. 5 star will do. Under that you'll be putting yourself at risk. I stayed at the most recent - Epic Sana. Quite good.
• Don't think for a moment that 5 stars mean anything like you're used to in Europe or the US.
• Be careful where you keep and show your money.
• Try to hire a driver (most international rent-a-car companies will get you a car with the driver) and avoid driving yourself as much as possible. If something happens (and it is quite easy to happen) you'll be a deep trouble if you're the one holding the steering weal.
• Book everything in advance.
• Always have 1000 kwanza bills on your pocket. You'll be distributing them as candy. "Bribes" are as common as the air you breed (police road blocks, airport, ...).
• Try not to walk by yourself on the street. Even during daylight it may not be advisable.
• Never carry a laptop, camera or cellphone in sight. You'll lose it almost for sure.
• Sunscreen is mandatory.
• Do the full medical checkup and vaccines (check with your medical centre which are the mandatory vaccines you should get). They wont let you in if your vaccines are not up to date and if you didn't get the mandatory ones).
• Mosquito repelent. You need to bring at least one gallon of it! Seriously, you should carry some mosquito repelent with you at all times, and keep spreading it in your skin (feet an all).
• There is a lot of poor people, so if you get easily upset by this just don't go.
• Everywhere you get to there are lots and lots of small kids on the street that will approach you. Most of the times they just want to talk to you and sometimes ask you for some money (but not always).

All in all, I loved this trip because it had a special personal meaning for me, but also because this is an amazing country.

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.

Uluru - AKA Ayers Rock

On the road to Uluru we’ve seen Mount Eduard, and we thought (at first) it was the Uluru. Good thing we had the Lonely Planet book to set us straight!


(Mount Edward)

If you don’t know, it’s kind of easy to confuse.
The open area is so huge that we had a half circle rainbow!


(half circle rainbow - the first I've ever seen)

And when we stopped for gas we could see the sunset on the mount Eduard thing.


(sunset on Mount Edward one)


(sunset on Mount Edward two)

We actually have a lot more pictures of Mount Edward, because at the time we thought it was the Uluru.
We got to Uluru very late, and went to find a place to park the van.
At 5:30 am the next morning we needed to be up and awake to see the sunrise on Uluru. Here’s a photo of the sunrise.


(Sunrise at Uluru, at about 5:30 am!)

There’s no photoshop, it’s just the color the thing has under that light (and despite the clouds)
Compare it with the color at 9:00 am


(Uluru after the sunrise - not so cool as about 4 hours earlier!)

Or at 17:00


(Uluru at 17:00 - notice the different colours? And at night it is simply black! Uauuu!)

Completely different.
And then we went for a 10km walk around the mount. It took us about 3 hours, and 2 liters of water.
If you decide to do it, be sure to take a hat, a fly net (to put over your hat and face) and plenty of water. It wasn't a sunny day as you can see in the pictures, but still I was sweating like a pig (and I'm in a relatively good shape).
And the flies! I think all the flies in the south hemisphere were at this place! It was horrible. You can solve it bu buying a hat / face net that you just put over your hat and has some sort of lace that ties around your neck. Another advice you'll thank me dearly later.
Here are some photos


(drawing of a leaf, I think)


(natural cave on the side of the Uluru - the natives used to find shelter under these natural rock formations)


(waterfall - One can only imagine how is the top of this monstrous rock because you're not allowed to go up there, but I imagine it as a lost world, full of trees and weird animals!)


(the rock - as you can see, the geological "breaks" are vertical, when they should be horizontal. Clearly something of great strength was at work here - maybe some aliens?)


(the stone face - can you see it? It looks mad!)


(the Dingo!)

No, it’s not a dog, it’s a Dingo. Which is a kind of wild dog. They say they’re a bit dangerous, but this one didn’t even looked at us…


(the side wall that connects to the lake)


(the lake on the base of the rock)

And this was it. The great walk around the Uluru, or Ayers Rock.
The trails are very well marked, and it doesn't matter where you leave your car. There is a visitors centre nearby. Not too interesting though. You have a bunch of very old native people that are put there to make arts and crafts. Personally I felt sorry for them.
In the main parking lot there is some stairs that lead to the top of one of the rocks. They were closed the day we were there because of the wind and the rain, but when the weather allows you can go up the stairs (for a small fee). This is the only place where you can do this because this huge rock is sacred in the local culture. You're not even allowed to photograph many of the parts of the trail.
As we came to understand, there is a road that goes round the thing. The view is pretty much the same you get if you walk, so if you don't feel like walking for 10Km, just get in your car, turn the AC to the max and drive around it.
We thought that we should walk, because we were there, and because we thought it was cool to tell our friends...

Koalas gone wild!

We were driving along and we’ve seen a sign saying that we should be careful about wild life in this piece of road.
We’ve seen loads of signs like this one before, but we didn’t see any animals (and no roadkill as we’ve seen in Tasmania). So we didn’t really care.
Pipa did mentioned that the Lonely Planet book said this road was a good one to see Koalas.
At a certain point we saw a car parked on the side of the road. i slowed down and there they were. The trees were infested with Koalas!
And they don’t look like the one we’ve seen at that weird zoo in Tasmania either!
Look at them!


(climbing koala)


(curled koala)


(koala observing its surroundings and looking for the next prey)


(cuddling koalas)


(wtf! koala)


(koala with the baby koala)

A bunch of them even had small ones with them!


(the same koala with the baby - I like the furry ears a lot!)


(now the koala with the baby is looking at me)


(sleepy koala)


(sleeping koala)

It was really cold… I can understand the feeling of this little guy!
It’s a shame the light wasn’t really right, otherwise the pictures would have been great! But one has to do with what one has… right?

At the Whitsundays

We were here to spend two days in a boat.
But first we had to endure a night in a backpackers hostel in a shared room where a bunch of drunk idiot kids where also staying.
While waiting for the departure time we went out to the beach in Arlie Beach:


(The beach at Arlie Beach)

A good appetizer for what was to come.
The boat we were going to spend the next 2 days and night isn’t just any boat.
In fact she was built for the British Navy sailing team, launched in 1989 by some Duke in England, and participated in the whitbread round the world regatta.
Her name is the British Defender


(British Defender)

It’s a bit of a shame that such a great piece of naval engineering (for its time) ended up chartering people who can’t say the difference between the bow and the stern, but on the other hand it gives us all the possibility to sail in a Maxi Yacht (despite all the interior being rearranged and refitted for the chartering purpose…)


(British Defender, again)

And if you’re into this kind of thing, there are at least 10 different Maxis you can choose from. None of them very recent, but still… it was really cool!
The crew was all girls (4 in fact) who completely controled the thing


(the deck)

And in the end we got to get a bit of true sailing. The fellow with the purple t-shirt only left the spot he is in this photo on the end of the second day…


(sailing)

And you may wonder why is everyone sitting and not lying on the side of the boat.
They were before (I was too), but after I got up and went under to get a cheese sandwich, the girl lying most to the bow felt kind of strange, and threw up. We were heading upwind, and everyone (except for me that was under fixing the sandwich) was lying on the side. Do I need to explain what happened? Ok, basically everyone got a bit of the previous dinner (partially digested) on them.
After they realized that the wet feeling it wasn’t a wave or a drop of rain, they all decided best not to lye or sit on the brownish yellow stuff on the deck.
This is where I found them.
Enough about the boat. The Whitsundays is all about the 98.9% silica white sands and the crystal blue waters, so look at the pictures and feel envy!


(sand stretch)


(the white sands beach at the Whitsundays)


(the turquoise waters)

And the wildlife, in this case a Stingray that was standing in half a meter of water, right next to me.


(meeeen! It's a stingray!)

And because the boats go through this way everyday, when they come to these cliffs they just use a whistle, and a couple of eagles come to the boat.
Then there’s the “throw the sausage into the air so the eagle can catch it mid flight” They asked not to put photos on facebook, so I wont. But this isn’t facebook, so it’s ok.


(the eagle)

One of the most amazing places I’ve ever been, and one could easily spend one week or more sailing around these islands, and discovering these amazing snorkeling and diving places.