I'd booked myself one extra day in Luanda (which sounds remarkably like "Rwanda" when the local people pronounce it, a fact that frequently confused the heck out of me when they were talking until I remembered the similarity).

One day turned out to be plenty of time to see the main sights of the city since there aren't very many. I'd still like to go out to see Angola's famous waterfall, which has the second biggest span in Africa, but this is about 5 hours drive each way. A bit too far for a day trip!

Part 1: Finding my Hotel

My driver, Belmiro, & I spent the first 90 minutes of our tour, trying to find the second hotel I'd booked into. I'm perfectly happy staying in $1,000/night hotels when someone else is paying but am less keen on this when I'm paying! As such, I'd booked a hotel that was just around the corner from Epic Sana ... or so it seemed!

Although I had the address, none of the streets have names that are sign-posted anywhere & Belmiro didn't have any credit left on his phone so what would've taken 5 minutes if he'd only had Google maps, took significantly longer as we drove around the neighbourhood, stopping to ask random strangers if they knew where this mysterious hotel I'd booked was.

Fortunately, this process of asking random people for directions is quite common in many countries including Angola so everyone was quite happy to help ... but sadly no one provided anything useful & all we ended up with was various contradictory sets of directions and so we kept driving aimlessly around the city, hoping in vain to magically discover the hotel.

Finally, I had the brilliant thought of going somewhere that had WiFi so I could bring up the address on my phone & show Belmiro exactly where we needed to go.

Luckily, Belmiro was good friends with the security guard at one of the nearby buildings so he graciously got me into their network & I brought up the address in Google maps. It showed we were about a 5 min walk away ... practically on top of it already!

I also brought up the website of the hotel, including the phone numbers, however neither of the numbers listed were being answered! It's not easy sometimes ... but you just have to laugh!

We thanked the security guard & drove off with newfound enthusiasm & confidence. We pulled up near where we thought we should be & asked some more random strangers for directions. Fortunately, the ones we picked were the security guards for the hotel! Yayyyyy! I couldn't believe we'd finally found this place, which, of course, has no signage anywhere to indicate it's anything other than a normal house! Why would you?

After checking in, we dumped the suitcase & finally got to start out tour, about 11.30am!

Part 2: The Island

First, we visited "The Island", a barrow spit of sand that has been entirely misnamed, as it's joined to the mainland. Francisco, the HR Manager at the bank I was working for, had actually taken me to one of the restaurants/bars here a couple of nights earlier.

The Island is a curious mix of wide expanses of beach, derelict buildings, construction sites, up-market restaurants & bars, plus a few food carts & street vendors selling completely authentic CD's & inflatable toys!

We stopped to watch a group of young people playing dodgeball on the beach, admiring their enthusiasm in the 28C heat (winter is tough in Luanda!), & became so involved in their game that we felt like celebrating with them when the girls won!

Part 3: The Mausoleum

Afterwards, we continued on to the mausoleum of the first president of Angola, Angostino Neto. It's a huge space-age structure that stretches 120m into the sky & looks completely out of place compared to the surrounding shantytown buildings.

Still, We were glad to go inside & enjoy the aircon while Neusa explained all the ins & outs of the president's achievements.

She had an impressive knowledge of everything presidential & her English was also quite good so I was able to learn a lot about what he'd done between 1975-1991.

As we found out, she's also a significantly better photographer than Belmiro, who seemed incapable of pressing the shutter button, without simultaneously also dipping the camera, resulting in a series of blurred, completely unusable photos, much to the amusement of Neusa & I!

Part 4: The Money Museum

We reluctantly left our air conditioned comfort, headed out to the car, kicked the dogs out from underneath its shade, & drove to the money museum.

It's a small underground museum, dedicated to all things monetary, both past & present, and all the construction materials were sourced in Angola, a fact they're very proud of!

The currency in Angola is the Kwanza, which sounded to my mind suspiciously like the word Quando. So for pretty much my entire time in Angola, I was either humming or outright singing "tell me when will you be mine, Kwanza, Kwanza, Kwanza"!

Last Stop: The Fort

After this, I asked Belmiro if we could go to the old fort that sits on top of a hill, overlooking the city. I'd read that other tours go there & it looked like it would have some nice vantage points for photos.

After much persuading & asking more random people if we were indeed allowed up there, he eventually agreed, although I think he half expected to be stopped by machine-gun bearing army officers.

As we both found out, it was originally built by the Portuguese to defend the city but it's actually a military museum now so it's perfectly fine for anyone to visit. As it was late in the day, quite a few things were closed but we still wandered around, taking a few photos.

Belmiro had grown up in Luanda but he'd never been to the fort before! After our visit, he announced he was going to bring his kids up to take a look too.

Weary from our day of driving, walking & photographing, Belmiro took me back to the hotel & we sadly said goodbye as a different driver will pick me up in the morning.

Last Night in Angola

As it was my last night in Angola, I thought it was probably time to eat outside the hotel by myself so I found somewhere nearby that sounded fine on TripAdvisor & headed out confidently on foot.

As I'd previously observed, there aren't too many expats walking the streets of Luanda, but I'd checked safety issues with the locals on my course & they'd indicated I should be fine so off I went.

After walking around for ages & not finding where I wanted to go (the GPS on my phone didn't seem too accurate without any data signal), I gave up & went into a small restaurant that looked quite nice. It sounded Italian but served seafood & sushi so maybe it was just the Portuguese name.

Luckily for me, there was a waiter there who had studied in Cape Town so his English was almost perfect, probably the best I'd heard in Angola. He helped me navigate the menu & select what turned out to be an amazing meal of fish & vegetables. Perhaps the best I'd had the whole time I was there!

Feeling quite pleased with myself & my navigation skills, my return trip took about 1/4 of the time I'd taken to get to the restaurant.

Nearly Missed my Flight

The next day, I nearly missed the flight from Angola to Johannesburg, not because of my usual reason (leaving it too late or getting my times wrong) however.

No, on this occasion, I got to the airport with plenty of time, even considering the very long queues & managed to get through immigration & security relatively quickly.

I made a quick stop at what might win the award for "Crappiest Priority Pass Lounge Ever" to get the only food available, a toasted sandwich. The WiFi also wasn't working, "Just broke this morning!" ... hmmm!

Anyway, I was sitting by the gate in departures, waiting for the call (all the planes need buses to take you out to the plane as none of them dock at the airport itself).

They announced something in Portuguese & everyone got up so I did too. When I reached the top of the stairs to go down to the bus, the lady was saying "Maputo". I said, "No, Johannesburg".

This caused some mild hysteria as everyone was madly yelling at each other & their radios & rushing around.

Apparently, I'd missed the first few calls so now they had to organise a bus to take just me out to the plane!

I still made it well before the scheduled time but nearly missed it!