Africa Safari Blog

With stability returning after a protracted civil war, and a few pioneering safari operators entering the mix, Angola is once again a destination of choice for those intrepid souls seeking unique cultural experiences. Here, Mark Stratton rubs shoulders with the people of the Namib Desert in the nations southwest.

Our Toyota Land Cruiser ground to a sudden halt. On the sandy track we had followed through the western Namib Desert stood a group of lean men, each naked from the waist upwards and carrying a heavy wooden staff…

We were lead through the thorny bush until we reached a melee of people and livestock. Men and women danced while a nearby cauldron of blood and animal intestines bubbled away – it was a feast for our senses. Watching coyly were younger women, their bodies smeared with an ochre soil mixture glistening with powdered garnet dust. We had gate-crashed a wedding.

Our guide thought the tribe might be the Mucacureca, but he couldn’t be certain because so little is known of southwest Angola’s many nomadic tribes, most isolated for years and forgotten during the nation’s 40-year civil war.

The conflict ended when government troops killed the rebel UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi in a gunfight on 22 February 2002 – a peace agreement was signed just six weeks later. While the fighting was over, Angola’s infrastructure was in ruins with millions of its people displaced. Yet such tragedy should not stigmatise a nation with such diversity. It is home to tropical forests, thousands of kilometres of pristine Atlantic coastline, Portuguese-flavoured cities, hip music, vast
national parks, exotic tribal groups and a potential mineral wealth comparable to South Africa. For individuals, however, travel remains challenging. It’s a test of patience getting a visa, hotels are extremely expensive, the national parks are awkward to reach and there are no budget flight options available. These facts have led few to venture into Angola since the outbreak of peace, leading some people to call the country Southern Africa’s final unexplored frontier. Tourists’ apprehension has been amplified by the less than flattering comments issued by Britain’s
Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which has often made Angola sound like the ‘final frontier’ that even James T Kirk would boldly refuse to go to. That said, inroads are being made by several intrepid companies who run 4×4 trips through the country.

My Angolan foray started in Lubango, where I flew in from Namibia’s Windhoek International Airport. This tattered but handsome city has a million inhabitants, many housed in a corrugated-iron shanty suburb where rusted roofs mirrored the surrounding baked bronze desert. Jacaranda trees add a dash of purple throughout the broad colonial boulevards, particularly when viewed from above on the Lebbe Plateau; there you can stand at the massive stone feet of Lubango’s very own version of Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer.

Lubango is the gateway to the Angola’s southwest, a landmine-free region that is reasonably developed (by Angolan standards) as it witnessed little fighting between UNITA and the Marxist MPLA government. It escaped most of the conflict primarily because of its lack of diamonds and oil reserves, both of which fuelled the war in other regions for decades. Nonetheless, I did see scattered signs of the conflict such as abandoned tanks in Lubango and bullet-strafed facades. And down the coast I hiked to an abandoned Cuban coastal fort where Castro’s ideologues once lobbed shells at South African ships that were suspected of smuggling arms to UNITA.

My Cape Town-born guide and southwest Angolan resident, Ray, has witnessed great change. “When South African and Russian forces left in the early 1990s there was just sporadic fighting followed by ceasefires, which would see the opposing generals meeting up for a drink,” he says. “But over the last few years you cannot believe the difference stability has brought,” he enthuses. “Shops and banks have reopened and people are fixing up their houses.”

One of southwest Angola’s most alluring attractions is its Atlantic coastline. Leaving Lubango southwards via the horizonbusting Lebbe Pass and its helter skelter road, we eventually made it to the coastal plain, effectively the northern extension of Namibia’s renowned Skeleton Coast. At times the mountainous dunes forced the road onto wild, empty beaches awash with floundering shipwrecks and sun-bleached whalebones. Despite the skeletons, this coast teems with life – basking Cape fur seals are as common as seagulls, ghost crabs tango back and forth along the strandline and pink flamingos fly to and fro.

Along the coast are a few decaying Portuguese colonial-style seaside towns. Namibe and Tuambe have character – lashings of faded grandeur. And both possess vibrant local markets and the crumbling neo-classical facades of swish holiday villas and ruined Art-Deco cinemas. But there is currently little reason to linger in either, as facilities are scarce.

Besides camping in the Namib Desert, the best bet for accommodation remains the occasional beachside lodges. One such place is Flamingo Lodge, south of Lubango. It commands the mouth of the parched Rio dos Flamingos and is buffeted by the warm thermals gushing forth from the Namib. It’s extremely remote, set amid 70km of uninhabited beach.

The rustic bungalows are not luxurious but the hospitality in its ocean-facing restaurant and bar is first class. We’re welcomed on our first night with a fresh seafood banquet of sushi, clams, crab and giant fried oysters.

The lodge reels in anglers dreaming of world record line-caught catches of garrick or rock cod. “The war was a blessing for the sea,” says Ray. “It meant there was little over-fishing and hardly any development.” However, if catching the ‘big one’ for your dinner isn’t your bag, why not spend your time looking for ‘bigger ones’ – I had the pleasure of observing humpbacks, but pilot and southern right whale species also frequent the area. Swimming in the Atlantic, parasailing along the surf, or hiking into the surrounding flat-topped caramel hills (where the silence is deafening) are also great ways to enjoy your time.

Despite the abundant marine life, it’s important elsewhere to lower one’s expectations of seeing wildlife. Angola certainly has some spacious national parks, but they have nothing on neighbouring Namibia’s for safari encounters. Much of their wildlife was poached or shot for food during the war.

It takes almost two days of driving to cross Iona National Park, an immense 8000 square kilometres of once not-so protected land. Iona’s golden savannah and weathered maroon escarpments form part of a series of ever-changing desert landscapes that we crossed during our week-long, southwestward traverse through the Namib. We journeyed through dune fields, followed fleet-footed oryx, saw crystalline hills sculpted entirely from quartz, bathed and slept at
Pediva’s beautiful hotspring oasis, and even stopped to marvel at the triffid-like qualities of the Welwitschia mirabilis, one of the world’s oldest living plants.

There was little in the way of classic safari wildlife, yet this magnifies the importance of what you do see. So rather than dismissing impala, klipspringers or bulky kori bustards as simply big cat fodder, they become cherished sightings to stop for and enjoy. They are survivors of Angola’s ecological meltdown.

Ranch-owner and businessman Alvarro Raul Ferreira Baptista has been trying to remedy this situation. Deep in the Angolan Namib is his desert ranch and lodge. Omauha Lodge’s guests stay in rooms ingeniously squeezed between jumbled granite kopjes. It’s great fun sharing the place with the rock dassies. Alvarro has fenced in 5000ha of bush and dreams of recreating the wildlife he remembers from childhood. “I once saw eighty elephant here in one herd,” he reminisces. “There were lions and rhino too, but now there is virtually nothing.” The last rhino, he recalls, was poached in 1981. He tells me that in the 1970s there were thousands of zebras, over 4000 of which were shot during the 1990s. He’s now taken animal populations into his own hands, reintroducing species like zebra. These imports from Namibia will enable his guests to go on wildlife drives. His safari plans looked a little less ambitious when we observed a leopard sauntering across the track one evening while driving back from visiting ancient rock-paintings nearby. “I didn’t pay for that one,” he said with a smile.

Leopard and landscapes included, there is one element above all else that thrilled me about the expanse of the Namib in Angola: the myriad local tribes who inhabit the desert. During our long days of driving we would suddenly and unexpectedly be rewarded by stunning encounters. We would gawp at each other, breaking our respective routines of driving and herding.
It was just beyond Iona National Park that we first encountered the region’s most mythical people: the Himba. If, like me, you have only seen them in Namibia, where many are fast becoming tourist curiosities, you will truly be taken aback by seeing them in their natural environment. Their lifestyle here is said to have changed little over the past 400 years. We passed several of their camps but didn’t stop, as fierce hunting dogs usually guarded them. Bushes inside the camps were cloaked with drying animal skins that had been dyed ochre, the identical colour of Himba women’s soil-smeared skin. In one encounter, when we met two young Himba women strolling through the desert, one asked for water while the other – without hesitation – removed an intricate copper bracelet and handed it to one of the women in our small party by way of trade for the precious liquid.

Elsewhere, we were privileged to enter the inside of a sharpened log stockade in a Mucawana village to witness a celebration of the village’s elders. Then, of course, was our earlier, enlightening introduction to the Mucacureca and their wedding festivities. There is simply no other traditional cultural landscape like this remaining in Southern Africa. And that surely amounts to the very essence of why I’d recommend Angola during its admittedly difficult post-war transformation.

It’s an increasingly rare opportunity to step outside our comfort zone and discover a completely different world.

http://www.travelafricamag.com – Travel Africa Magazine Powered by Mambo Generated: 29 December, 2008, 09:55
Source: http://www.travelafricamag.com/content/view/1505/56/ (Magazine Articles/Issue 43)