Angola Tour 2008

Packed to the gills with stuff (so, so, so much stuff!), only an hour and a half after our scheduled departure time- here we are, ready to set off on our 9 day trip down the coast of Angola- from Luanda to Lobito, followed by Benguela, then down to Lubango, finally Namibe and Tumbwa- and then to turn around and do it all in reverse!

Ladies and gentlemen, this post marks the completion of my attempts to document this trip. Start here, and read all the way to "The Desert" to take in the full experience, or if you've already read all the rest, know that you have reached the end, at the beginning. :)

Camping

My biggest worry about this trip was not about doing a lot of driving, not about having to sleep in a tent, not about cooking over a campfire- it was about being able to shower. Call me what you will (Dad still calls me Princess, so that is ok!), but I need a shower, every day, otherwise I am just not a happy camper (uh, pun intended?). Without a shower, I feel dirty, smelly, and greasy, and it's not a way I like to be. So, I was worried about the camping. Luckily, even though we camped 6 out of 8 nights, we had showers (cold, but that was fine) every morning. Whew. So it was all good. Here's some photo evidence that we camped!

This was our first campsite in Lobito. This is in the morning- you can see everyone is bright eyed and bushy tailed! :)

Cooking breakfast

See, lady-towel-heads are evidence enough we've had showers. :)

This was our second campsite- after the farm. It was actually another farm, but we camped further up on the "mountain". It was a really beautiful site.

Our campsite in the early, early morning. Some of our campers (the photographer) were woken up really early by the sun, and captured some great pictures...

...like this one!

Now, the two nights we were down in Tumbwa (the desert place) we stayed in this house. It was nice enough.

And here we have indoor cooking. The one in blue was making bread in the pojke pot- it's like a little black cauldron- great because you can throw anything in there, and then just stick it in the fire. When we went on the pre-trip shopping trip, he insisted that he would make pojke pot bread, and that we needed to buy lots of flour. But then we reached this house, didn't think we'd be camping anymore and started giving the ole guy a really hard time about his bread. So, he stepped up to the plate and made some really delicious bread in the pojke!

Big Jesus

I just don't remember the story on this one... similar to the one in Rio, I don't remember which came first. Lubango sits in a valley though, and this guy is up there spreading his goodness over the whole city.

And then there was this:

I said to him, "Isn't that a bit sac religious?" He said, "I'm not religious." Then he posed longer so we all could take a picture.

Joel's upbringing hasn't abandoned him completely (meaning, he didn't follow suit).

The view of the city from up there

The Chasm

There were two "sights" to see in Lubango- the Big Jesus on the hill and what we called the Chasm- which is actually called Tundavala. I'm not sure why it was, but somehow the world chasm ended up being said about 879 times in the hour that it took us to finally get to it. It was indeed a chasm though.

There was a funny little story though- we were in Lubango, and we saw one road sign showing the way to Tundavala. So we followed it. We followed the road for a long time, but saw no more signs. So, at one point we pulled over to ask for directions. The driver asked a man on the side of the street, "Is Tundavala this way?" He said yes. Then the driver said, "And what is it up there?" And the man replied, "It's nothing, it's just a hole." Understatement of the year!

Here we are, though you can't see what there really is to see...

This!

It's a giant gorge- you can barely see the bottom from up top.

We are standing at what is hopefully just a look-out now. Unfortunately, during the civil war, this place was used by soldiers to throw prisoners of war to their deaths. What a horrible way to die!

I seem to be missing some pictures...this was a really inspiring place. It was just a beautiful natural thing. Actually, Joel and I kept talking about how much my brother my enjoy the place! I'm not sure they would let you climb it Martin, but, it looked like it would have been fun! :)

People, street scenes, randoms

Across the street from a gas station sort of in the middle of nowhere. Kids selling stuff. We gave them some bread.

Lady and baby. Love this pic.

OK, this is us obviously- at the Chinese restaurant in Lubango! It was, for me, the best meal of the whole trip by far! I got to speak some Mandarin which was fun, and I got some veggies cooked in true Chinese style, which I haven't had since leaving Shanghai. The eggplant was so good we ordered two. Oh man was it good.

Kids on the street in Tumbwa. One thing that we noticed repeatedly was that these kids all take care of each other. We watched this group of kids for a long time, and these two held hand and walked around together the whole time.

See, I told you. :)

These little girls were so cute. They were eating toothpaste. She even has it smeared on her face, you see?

We saw a lot of kids on "bikes" like these.

At a gas station- we attracted a lot of attention where ever we went. We handed out bread and bananas and candy and water and toys all along the way. It's not much, but the light in their eyes was amazing.

A street market.

We gave these kids a whole bag of apples. It looked like this might have been an orphanage.

In Lubango we discovered that kids have to bring their own chairs to school- hence this scene.

They don't have a lot of toys, so they play with whatever is around, including rusted out old vans.

Different kind of kids! :) Did I mention before that there were goats and cows all over every where we went? There were.

A shot of Sumbe I think. Very typical look of a town.

A car in Benguela.

One of ours. Just funny. :)

Ladies selling stuff by the roadside in Namibe. I caught the eye of the little girl with the beer bottle, and I waved at her. Almost until we drove away she just kept staring at me and waving.

Market in Lubango (this is by the way, what the market I shop at on weekends looks like as well. People just sit on the street side- sometimes they have makeshift tables, sometimes not).

Buying bananas

Oh, those same kids going to school again. :)

This was the bar where we met the farm guy (see his tractor in the background?). We gave the kids in this picture candy and balloons.

They didn't really know what to do with the balloon at first, and when one popped, the little one almost cried. We gave him another.

They were shy, and tried to run away to play with their new stuff.

Lobito market.

same

Something burning somewhere. Lady with stuff on her head.

These people were some of the first we came across on our trip. We gave the kid a piece of candy, and one of the drivers gave him a Coke. I felt so bad for him after that because he sucked down both SO fast- I just knew that sooner than later, he would probably have the worst stomach ache!

Lady with oh so cute baby. One thing that we couldn't help but notice was the state of the breasts of the women in the countryside. For one thing, there were just lots of them that weren't wearing shirts at all, which, well, we're just not used to are we! This lady did have a shirt but, it was mesh, so you could see her long, flat as a pancake breasts through it. We girls reasoned that it's a combination of never wearing a bar, plus nursing lots of babies, topped with the way they always have something tied over their breasts, literally flattening them down. If you look closely, you can see that this young woman's breasts look more like that of a really old western woman's.

The Farm, Part 2

So the morning after the really stupid night, we had a weird wake up call as well. The head farmer dude decided to wake us up by introducing a bleating kid (baby goat!) into our tents. Luckily my tent was not the one that the goat first went into, and I got to just come out and hold the goat. So, here is a just out of bed, swollen face me holding a baby goat. So soft, so cute. So glad I didn't eat his brother.


After breakfast we went for a tractor ride up the mountain.

Ready to go!

Everyone piled in

Holding on, standing up front, taking it all in

The scenery:

On top of the mountain
(Eh, I guess it wasn't really a mountain- not big enough, but, the view was spectacular anyway!)

The view

Coming back down the "hill" (I guess!)

We actually stayed at the farm twice- on the way south, and heading back up north. The previous pictures were all from the first trip. In the following picture, our drivers are fixing a tire that got a flat that happened at some point after the farm, on our second morning there.

Here's all of us, including the main staff at the farm

Some kiddos we saw when we were leaving the farm...