NAMIBE..... NOT NAMIBIA. OUR FIRST TASTE OF A DESERT

NAMIBE, DESERT IN THE SOUTH

Me snoozing in the sun

On the first school holiday, half term, we thought it would be good to see another part of Angola, so we booked ourselves into a fishing lodge in the south of the Province of Namibe which some colleagues at the school recommended. Namibe is the southern-most province of Angola, and is mainly a very flat and rather dull hard sand and pebble desert. However, the coastal strip is completely different. It is made up of the same sand like material, but is weathered and worn into a beautiful mini version of painted valley in Arizona. Amazing buttes and gully's and arroyos. Superb!

Flamingos flying along the beach

The choice of a fishing lodge isn't the first place we would have chosen, given that neither of us is even remotely interested in fishing, but our friends had told us the area was beautiful and one could simply relax and enjoy the place... not obliged to fish... so we booked. Getting there entailed flying by domestic airline (TAAG) to the city of Namibe, our first glimpse of life outside Luanda. It turned out to be a very different place to Luanda, much like a typical old southern Portuguese town. Lots of tiled buildings, wide streets, trees, and a general feeling of calm and peace. It was almost clean too! About the same degree of cleanliness you would expect in a southern European town, I suppose. Altogether a pleasant surprise after the rigors of Luanda.

The Oasis in the desert

The flight was unremarkable, nothing fell off the plane and the trip afforded us some tantalizing glimpses of other parts of Angola as we bumbled along for the several hundred KM of the trip. About the only thing of note was that I have discovered now, after a number of domestic flights with TAAG, there are unfriendly people in Angola, and they all work for TAAG as hostesses. They behaved rather the way I imagined Soviet hotel managers behaved.. Grumpy, bossy and grim faced. Also, getting checked in at Luanda airport was an experience......... Regular third world chaos... Shoving and sweating. But we managed that OK. What was less amusing was that on arrival at Namibe airport (actually called Yuri Gagarin Airport) we found that no one was there to meet us. Now this was a problem, as there are no busses or taxis and the airport was in the middle of nowhere! So, taking my courage, and my three words of Portuguese, I managed to organise a lift into Namibe, to a hotel, thinking that from the hotel we would be able to phone the fishing lodge and arrange to be picked up..... So that is almost what happened.

Sandstone cliffs

We got to a small hotel, and Lotty went in and asked the porter if we could phone Rico (the owner of the fishing lodge). Upon hearing Lotty say that name, the fellow who had driven us in from the airport shouted that he knew Rico very well, and he also knew where to find him in Namibe! So, that was all organised for us by a gang of happy Angolans, and in due time we found ourselves in a heavy 4x4 jeep hurtling out of the town of Namibe... out into the flat desert.....

Lotty contemplating the Owner of the Lodge's baby

For about an hour we drove along a dead straight road, over a flat and rather dull desert, which made me, at least, wonder what we were in for, wondering where the advertised "beauty" was to be found around here. However, after this part of our journey, the driver suddenly turned off the road into the desert, and off we went, bumping along at about 60 km per hour over a rapidly changing landscape. We drove along a dried up river bed mainly, with occasional lurches into proper sand dunes... all the time at this speed, so it was pretty rough going. But, the advertised beauty was with us. The desert was breathtaking, even from inside the speeding jeep.

Butte

After some 30 km of this, we finally arrived at the Lodge. Which, as you can see from the pictures, is not exactly the height of luxury, but the people there were friendly, terribly apologetic that they hadn't been at the airport and generally made us welcome.

Once we had settled down in our little hut, and been introduced to the motley group of Angolans and Afrikaners who were there, we realised that we had found exactly what we were looking for...peace, simplicity and a truly beautiful place, in a bleak sort of a way.

Lotty in the middle of no-where

Our days here were mainly taken up with sleeping, reading, chatting to the other people there, eating superb freshly caught fish and going for walks in the surrounding desert.

The desert was wonderful! Such a silence............... And beautiful too, as I hope you can see from the pictures. I had a lot of trouble choosing which pictures to put on this blog, we have so many from that short holiday.

This is either love, or we needed support.....

So, basically, we spent a week here, doing almost nothing, which might seem reprehensible perhaps, but in fact it was the first proper break that we had had since 1997, so we needed to do nothing for a while.

Had to be included! Sunset over the Atlantic

The desert had a range of landscapes, inland it was as flat as a billiard table, going on for ever, it seemed, with dead straight roads cutting across it, and every so many miles a shot up deserted restaurant, otherwise nothing to see at all. Except!!!! Except in the middle of this desert we were taken to an oasis. This was a case of driving for god knows how many km across the flat desert, and then suddenly, with no apparent sign, turning off and the road and driving into the desert. And suddenly after several Km we found ourselves descending into a sort of a long narrow valley, going quite deep into the ground. his broadened out, and there it was, the oasis, a huge lake, surrounded by greenery, as any self respecting oasis should be. A wonderful peaceful place. We found a very small village of reed huts there, in which about 50 people lived, who obviously made their living from growing and selling vegetables...though god knows how they got it to market!

More desert

Desert....and Sea

The bar at the Lodge. The two white things are whale's jaw-bones

Our luxury accommodation

Rocks

In due time it was time to return to Luanda, so we were put into one of the huge 4x4's and driven off back across the desert to the road to Namibe airport.... You remember, the famous Yuri Gagarin Airport. An uneventful drive, except for us coming across a wrecked Pick-up truck beside the road with an extremely dead guy lying nearby, who had apparently managed to somersault his truck and been thrown clear of it and smashed his poor head on landing....
So, the guy who was driving us, a very competent young man, hunted around for the dead man's wallet and took it and off we went again (he was going to report it to the cops in Namibe).

Our flight back to Luanda was pleasantly uneventful, complete with the Soviet style hostesses, grumpy as only TAAG hostesses can be. Leaving the airport terminal (for want of a better word) in Luanda and driving back to the school was a real shock.... We had forgotten how the place stinks and how decrepit and ruinous it all is..and so many people!

It had been a pleasing week, relaxed us a lot, and showed us that Angola is not all like Luanda, something that we have had confirmed by a later trip we took to a town called Huambo, which is my next posting. An exciting story of landmines, ruined tanks, BBQ's in the bush and other such things...watch this space!