the natural and city sights of Angola

I should have said ‘final photo from the tribal part of this visit’, as there was also some great scenery as well as the Tropical Modernist architecture of Luanda and Namibe.

The southern half of Angola is pretty dry (at least it is during August) – most of it not quite desert, but still very dusty and sandy.  The downside was the dust thrown up by the vehicle in front (that car being reserved for the guide and her partner, and its front seat claimed by an older Spanish tour group member who said she got car sick if she travelled further back in a vehicle), but that was more than made up for by the rocks and canyons (such as Curoca Canyon above) and the occasional oasis (such as Arco Oasis below).



There were also old rock paintings in a couple of caves, and engravings on the sides of a rocky outcrop on the way up to one of the caves.  Apparently they are amongst the oldest in southern Africa, estimated to be some 20,000 years old.

We visited the animist cemetery at Virei, all the tombs marked by piles of buffalo skulls (with the horns attached), which was very strange!

& the beautiful Tundavala Gap, here at sunset.


Finally – the cities.  Luanda, to my surprise, is the sixth most populated city in Africa (after Cairo, Lagos, Kinshasa, Nairobi and Johannesburg), with a population of some 10.4 million.  & as there are not that many high-rise buildings, it sprawls over a very large area.  I’d given myself two days before the tour started so as to see some of it, but one of the problems the country is going through at present is insufficient cash to meet the current needs of the population (a hack into the electronic money systems of Unitel earlier this year means that electronic payments cannot be made and so everyone needs cash), so I lost one whole day queuing at a bank to access the ATM at a moment when it had been refilled with cash!  But on the other day I managed to visit the old(ish) Portuguese fortress as well as buying my onward bus ticket … and our tour did include a little bit of time around the city although not as much as I’d have liked.  We went to Merchant Street (the oldest street in the city, dating from the early 17th century), to Frederick Engels St (Angola being - officially, at least - a communist country), the Iron Palace designed by Gustave Eiffel and saw the Augustinho Neto Memorial and the Monument to the Unknown Soldier.
The tour also took us to Namibe - a beautiful city, which I didn't really manage to capture in my photos.  But here is an example of the tropical modernist architecture that the city is well known for.

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