Glimpses of Angola – Part 1 (Congo to Cabinda to DRC)

So little by little, most of our group left Pointe Noire. In the end, there were only 7 of us including Nev and Kristy. The truck was spacious but sadly empty with most of our truck family missing.

The border crossing from Congo into Cabinda, Angola was fairly easy. I stayed in the truck for the Cabinda side of the crossing and overheard the locals chatting amongst themselves, amused by the fact that we had some ‘cadenas’ (locks) on the truck. But then one of them said something to the effect of ‘Well, this is Africa’ and the other agreed it was a sensible idea! Then, after a few marriage proposals, the others luckily returned and we crossed over the border into Angola.

Everything was now in Portuguese which was a change since we’ve mostly been in French-speaking countries to date. Knowing only a few words of Portuguese (and understanding a minimal amount from my Italian and Kristy’s Spanish), at our first service station, we had to be 100% sure whether ‘gasolina’ or ‘gasoleo’ was diesel and as it turns out it was the latter.

We had to drive through Cabinda in one day so needless to say, we didn’t get to see much aside from through the truck windows.

The vegetation was lush and green with clumps of bamboo, and we were driving on good, tarred road.

Before too long, we were at another border crossing into the DRC. The border guard here called ‘Blaise’ was extremely friendly, spoke between 4-7 languages and loved the fact Lee is a teacher. Here we changed US$50 into Congolese francs, and with the largest note being 500 (about 50 cents!), we all ended up with wads of cash.

As soon as we hit the DRC, the tarred road changed to a bumpy, sandy road but soon enough we pulled up to our bush camp for the night, which was right beside a blazing fire from a gas pipe.

During a game of Trickster Scrabble with Josh, I noticed a beetle or two clinging to my t-shirt. Shortly thereafter, we found ourselves in the middle of a beetle plague. Some were incinerating themselves on the gas burner we were cooking on (so we had to check our food for beetles) but most just seemed hell bent on flying into our eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hair, and even down my pants! Josh was pacing backwards and forwards in an attempt to avoid them, Lee was fully covered up, I was huddled over myself minimising the surface area for them to land on, and Symbol was hiding in his tent while his camp chair was absolutely covered in them.

The others were pretty much carrying on as if everything were ‘normal’.

The beetle plague sent us to bed early and after telling Lee to get into the tent as quickly as possible, she dive-rolled in, face planting into her pillow! We found a few beetles that had somehow followed us in and were yelling ‘Contamination! Contamination!’ as and when we found them and scooped them out.

The beetles had left in the morning for the most part, aside from a few whose legs got stuck in the mozzie net tent and those that were crawling all over the truck’s seats dying a slow death from the insect spray.

We drove past nodding donkeys and an army tank on our long drive day the next day,

and stayed at a much nicer camp that night where we found glowing spiders.

The following day we drove through Matadi and there were some beautiful views on the way to the town itself

and its famous OEBK bridge (Port Maréchal).

In the short time we had there, I tried to get some postcards and stamps at the post office but all they had were ones of England which were not quite as exotic! We then spent that night at the border (and at the pub at the border along with some border guards), celebrating our soon-to-be second visit to Angola.