Unfortunately Angola often has to be rushed through by people who only have a 5-day transit visa but if you manage to get a 30-day tourist visa it’s well worth using the time on it to explore. The Angolan landscapes are varied and beautiful and the towns are surprisingly sophisticated (Sunday seems to be party day!). Accommodation is expensive but bush camping, albeit by the side of the road, is easy as the countryside is sparsely populated.

Our route
As we were going to be travelling at the start of the rainy season we decided to take the coastal roads to take advantage of the dry coastal belt that runs from Namibia to Luanda. We had also heard (rightly) that the coast was very beautiful with 4x4 roads rather than the boring pot-holed tar of the main, central road. [We’ve since spoken to people who say that road from Benguela to Cucula is a good, graded-dirt alternative to the most difficult bit of the coastal stretch.]

We drove up from the Santa Clara/Oshikango border to Lubango and from there down the perfect switchback road to Namibe. After a quick southerly diversion to Flamingo Lodge and Parque do Iona we headed north on the notorious (and great fun) road to Benguela and Lobito and from there to Luanda. From the capital, we drove north to N’Zeto and the border into the DRC at Noqui/Matadi.

Bearing in mind we didn’t hit any rain/mud, the driving time alone (for those with that dreaded 5-day transit visa) was seven days: two days from the border to Namibe, two days from Namibe to Lobito, one day from Lobito to Luanda, one day from Luanda to Nzeto, and one day from Nzeto to the Noqui/Matadi. But you'd be going some to do this consecutively.

Border formalities
At Santa Clara, all you need is your pre-arranged and purchased visa, there are no other costs for you or your vehicle (we never got asked to produce any insurance). However, we had to explain very clearly that we were tourists to avoid getting all our money out of our safe in front of a crowd of locals after the particular guy we were dealing with produced a document stating that we each needed US$200 a day for travel in Angola. Luckily for us, and our poorly spoken Portuguese, a more senior officer arrived and hurried us through. The Santa Clara office is open from 8am and the Oshikango office on the Namibian side also opens from 8am. Cleverly, due to the time difference these are an hour apart. Coming north we just had to wait but if you’re coming south I guess you might get stuck in no-mans-land!

And don’t forget that right-hand side/left-hand side of the road thing – there are a lot of coppers on the Angolan side, whom are friendly and reasonable when you explain you are a tourist (we were subject to a cursory vehicle inspection until they got bored after just two bags of clothes) but don’t take too kindly to you driving on the other side of the road.

The visa
Having been worried about this one for quite some time, we tried the embassy in Lusaka whilst there. The very flamboyantly dressed young man greeted us positively then proceeded to explain that it would be VERY difficult to get a visa here as everyone in Luanda ignored him. After about an hour of to-ing and fro’ing (well, what can you do to help? what can we do to help? etc) we decided to try in Namibia like everyone else. (We subsequently met a German couple that spent 40 days pleading with this guy until they finally, somehow, got their visas.) We were greeted far more abruptly in Oshakati, Northern Namibia. We had read that this was THE place to get the visa but things had obviously changed. “You’ll be better off trying in Windhoek,” she said to me eventually, with a meaningful look.

By the time we got to Windhoek we had everything in place. By now we had decided that the best way to get a letter of introduction was to legitimately book something and we had been in touch with Angola Adventure Safaris (www.aasafaris.com) who manage Flamingo Lodge in the south of the country and Kwanza Lodge in the north. Although we don’t normally pre-book stuff we were keen to do some touristy stuff in Angola rather than just fly though, and if they could give us a letter of introduction so much the better. The incredibly helpful Liesl in the Cape Town office advised that either Windhoek or Rundu was our best chance, promptly wrote us a letter in Portuguese and faxed it to Windhoek. When we went in we were told that the ambassador wasn’t around that week and nothing could be processed until the following week. Fine, we said, could we fill in the forms and then leave it with you to manage?

The following Tuesday we went in to check progress and nothing had moved because we hadn’t left our fee. So we paid and went back on Wednesday. Sorry, the ambassador is out at meetings, please come back this afternoon. We finally got our visas on Thursday - ten days after first going into the Windhoek embassy. Not bad considering some of the stories I’ve heard…[As an update to this: we have met many overlanders coming south who have not managed to get an Angolan visa in any country in the north. Most are opting to miss out Cabinda as it’s impossible to get a transit visa for here on the Congo border, and get a transit visa for ‘mainland’ Angola at Matadi. Apparently there’s a small fine for each day you overstay your five days (not the huge fine mentioned in the Lonely Planet).]

In summary: in Namibia try Windhoek or Rundu (at the moment but things may change quite quickly!). The Windhoek embassy is in Aussanplatz and the visa section is open 9-12am. Cost: N$1,000 each (!!). Take letter of intro, passports, copies of passports (ID and Namibia visa pages), 2x photos and lots of patience.

General driving conditions and accommodation
It’s true that quite a few of the roads are in poor condition but some are good fun as long as you resign yourself to the fact that it will take four times as long to get somewhere and treat it like a grand day out. Also, Chinese road builders are working rapidly through the routes - some are already completed and are very good – and it’s likely that the situation will have already improved by the time we get this on the website!

All hotels, guesthouses and camping in Angola are expensive. A number of municipal works vehicles have rooftop tents so bush camping seems fairly common. As regards the land mines, the west is much clearer than the east and you can easily bush camp on recently used vehicle tracks or service roads running alongside the road-building programme. The British consul in Luanda did tell us the mines moved after heavy rain and also to avoid driving into the gap left by broken bridges (of which there are quite a few).

Specific conditions
The timings are from our GPS and are ‘time moving’ – they don’t allow for time spent getting out of the car and pre-walking the route! Here are the road conditions, towns and accommodation options for each section of our journey:

The border to Lubango (10 hours driving)
Roads. Very good tar south of Ondjiva. Road building from there to Chibia with a variety of bad dirt, graded dirt ready for works and old, potholed tar. North of Chibia there is a quicker stretch of narrow and strangely bumpy tar.
Towns and accommodation. As you move north from the border the undergrowth quickly gets thicker. As there are also plenty of service roads running along this road building stretch it should be pretty easy to bush camp.
Only Ondjiva, Xongango and Chibia are towns of any stature and each has a pensao or two. Ondjiva is in the process of being built and is starting to look like a Namibian town (there is a useful bureau de change here) and Chibia is a pretty place with lots of old buildings. Outside of these towns there are a couple more pensaos dotted along the main road - we camped in the car park at the friendly pensao in Chibemba and they also had OK rooms for 2000kw.
Lubango has apparently had loads of work done on it recently and it shows. It has attractive colonial buildings, a couple of great cafés, that imposing Christ statue and a relaxed feel. We camped for 3000kw a night at Casper’s Lodge, situated with all the other tourist places up Ave Neto, past the Grand Hotel and on the left. A cheaper option would be to camp out of town at the abandoned site near the Tunduvala volcanic fissure (S14050.698 E13024.201). It was deserted when we went but, judging by the wine-box-rubbish, it looks like it might get lots of day-visitors at the weekend.

Tunduvala detour (add a couple of hours)
Tunduvala is volcanic fissure and a beautiful spot - worth a visit even if you don’t camp there. Go up Ave.Neto and turn right along the road past the N’Gola and Coca Cola factories (turning: S14055.712 E13028.243). Tunduvala is 16.4km (about half an hour) along this road.

Lubango to Namibe (3 hours driving)
Roads. This must-do road (EN280) has perfect tar and is a tourist attraction in itself. You can visit the Lubango Christ statue and the mirador overlooking the Leba mountain pass before descending the steep switchback road to the desert. There is a toll at the top of 150Kw. Along the road are boys selling eggs. Buy some as these lads have the only chickens in the country (almost).
Towns and accommodation. There is nowhere to bush camp along this road (unless you’re happy parked on tar with trucks trundling past all night). Namibe is a sleepy port town with some interesting colonial buildings but it’s not had the renovation of Lubango as of yet and feels run down. There are some shops and places to eat but you’ll have to search around; we had breakfast in the Girasol café, which had good Delta coffee and cakes and an expensive mini-mart. The accommodation is expensive in Namibe but we stayed at Pensao Coragem (S15011.811 E12008.732) - one block behind the Maritime hotel - for 4800kw for an OK ensuite double. They also have a secure car-park they might let you camp in (?!). One block along from this was Lady D’s Pensao, which was very nice but priced at 7900kw for a double.

Flamingo Lodge (S15o34.213 E12001.189)
South of Namibe is Flamingo Lodge, ostensibly a fishing place but we used it to explore Parque do Iona. We took our car and Kabous of Flamingo came in their Toyota so we could play in the dunes and get a tow out! Great fun. Cost: $200 for the hire of the Toyota. If you had two cars and just wanted a guide I imagine it would be cheaper.
The campsite has good facilities (hot shower, gas-stove and generator!) and the bar has cool beer. Camping $20pp – worth it for the letter of introduction for the visa application alone!
To get there, take the signposted turning from the Namibe to Tombua road (S15035.801 E12012.271), let down your tyres and allow about an hour. You’ll need to prebook with Rico +244 923 494 992.

Namibe to Lobito (14 hours driving)
Roads. Good tar with some potholes 40kms after the turning north from the EN280. Tar ends after 80kms and the road slowly deteriorates until disappearing at the Rio Chicondua just south of Lucira, where broken bridges and riverbed driving amuse the many locals. There is a fork in the road as you approach Lucira - complete with a ‘Bem Vindos a Lucira ‘ sign - choose left for the town and right to continue north on the EN100. Here the road dissipates into many tracks diverging and converging as they move straight up the mountain. Lucira to Dombe Grande is a notorious road but is also great fun. With one of us walking ahead for most of the day, we managed these unmade mountain passes of diff bashing rocks in one day. After Dombe Grande, there is good compacted dirt until the junction with Baja Farta, 15kms south of Benguela, where good tar starts again. The Benguela to Lobito road is just being finished and will be a dual carriageway very soon.
Towns and accommodation. Lucira is a busy little fishing town that we accidentally visited. The police on the sea front are very helpful and in hindsight it could have been a good place to bushcamp on the beach (we bushcamped on the road at the top of the next hill). There are too many people to bushcamp near Bentiaba or just south of Lucira (on the Rio Chicondua riverbed) but the rest of the road is quite deserted. It’s fairly open and exposed south of Lucira, although between Bentiaba and Rio Chicondua there are some tracks leading to the coast which look like they have bush camping potential. North of Lucira you’ll be camped right next to the mountain road but are unlikely to be bothered - the only people we saw all day were some cow-herders.
For our second night, we bushcamped in an old quarry just south of Dombe Grande (S13o05.500 E13 o02.280) which we christened Nappy Quarry after the disposable nappy that kept us company. At Baja Farta, just south of Benguela, Praia Azul is posh but good for a swim and a rest after bush camping - try the beaches further along this road for bush camping opportunities. Benguela also had lots of pensaos.
Benguela is the smaller, older of the two towns and scrappy in places. There is a very civilised café (Porto Avioes) on the seafront and, being a Sunday, the entire town was walking around or sitting in their cars or playing football on the beach. Lobito is bigger and busier, with a port and industrial area in the southern part of town. If you want to see a completely different side of town, veer left at Shoprite (instead of right for the road north) go over the railway and head out onto the peninsular. Grand houses, beach restaurants and hundreds of drunk people having a party (on a Sunday at least).

Lobito to Luanda (7 hours driving plus stationary traffic jam time)
Roads. Turn right before Shoprite and head up onto the cliffs and the Huambo road. The badly potholed tar gradually improved until we reached Porto Amboim, thereafter it was good until Luanda.
Luanda is pretty crazy, especially the traffic which the worst I have found in Southern Africa at least. Coming from the south, it took us two hours (midday on a Tuesday) to drive the last 10kms. There are roadworks on the outskirts and very few roadsigns so we got lost and joined a traffic jam through the sewage and rivers of Barrio Golfe near the airport. Leaving the city on a Saturday morning at 10am, it took one hour to Cacuaco, where things became a little more normal.
Towns and Accommodation. There are many service roads running along this nearly completed stretch of road; we camped well away from the trunk road and were undisturbed. In Porto Amboim, we camped on the beach in front of one of the restaurants, which was very expensive to eat in but they provided fresh water, toilets and a security guard (which I am sure we didn’t need). There are villages just before and after Quicama national park, so try to bush camp well before if you need to. A small toll is payable at the north side of the bridge over the Kwanza River.

Kalandula Falls detour (add a couple of hours)
A good detour from the road just north of Sumbe is to the impressive Kalandula Falls. Take the road towards Gabela – the turn-off is not signed from the south but is a well-used fork with advertising billboards (S11007.946, E13056.175) – and follow it for about 26km until you see the falls on your left. Just after you’ve seen them there is a signed car-park manned by a family who look after the site in return for donation.

Mirador do Lua (S10059.281 E14005.745) is 55kms south of Luanda, signposted just off the road. Strange rock formations overhanging the ocean and a prostitute with client in a car!

Luanda. We stayed at the Yacht Club (S05033.740, E12010.680) out on the Ilha, which is very popular with overlanders. The staff and bosses ask for no money but have very little patience with poor Portuguese when they are busy. Try and use the showers in the swimming pool as the staff ones are grotty.
There is a good internet place on Ave Missau, and café’s, bars, restaurants, bakeries and supermarkets are littered around the city. There are hundreds of banks and the fuels stations are going up two a week but the lack of refineries in the country does nothing to help the massive queues at the pumps.

Luanda to N’Zeto (7 hours – on a weekend and on a dry road)
Roads. Good tar to Caxito. From here the road north (turning in the town – not before as our map says) is annoying disintegrated tar all the way to N’Zeto. Instead, take the road via Barra do Dande, which is brand new until Caranca.
Towns and Accommodation. Caxito is a busy crossroads with a good supermarket and places to stay. No other towns worth mentioning until N’Zeto. N’Zeto is bombed out and neglected, apart from the Catholic Mission and the sparkling new MPLA office. There is a fuel station and a few small shops. We beach camped 15kms south of N’Zeto (turning at S07013.984 E12052.528), which is beautiful and peaceful with a nice fishing family that live in a tent on the cliff. In N’Zeto we stayed over Christmas at the Catholic Mission where the priests, Emile and Paul, were more than hospitable.

N’Zeto to the border (7 hours)
Roads. The road to Tomboco is good graded dirt. This was done quite recently so the horror stories from older blogs no longer apply to this stretch. From Tomboco to the border the road becomes quite steep and rough – 4x4 necessary! In the mud this would be very slow and slippery. There is an airstrip and then 6km of tar just before you reach the border at Noqui.
Bushcamping. There are plenty of friendly (if begging) villages along the way and we camped on the side of the road quite easily. There are public water taps in Tomboco.

Food, water and beer
Food is expensive in Angola, supermarkets in particular. There is less agriculture and so fewer people selling fresh produce in the street, the situation worsens the further north you travel. Bizarrely, there is a real shortage of eggs and they were near impossible to find north of Luanda. Portuguese rolls are easier to find.We found roadside stalls selling veg in Giraul on the road from Lubango to Namibe, just west of the turn-off north to Benguela.Fresh water is available in municipal areas but not so fresh from boreholes in smaller places. Bottled water is available but most of it is imported from Portugal. Cuca in the north and N’Gola in the south are good beers but the Portuguese imports are priced similarly. We paid 60kw in local places and up to 150kw in tourist/expat places!

Money and fuel
You cannot buy Angolan Kwanzas outside of the country but in Angola the Casa do Cambios and banks require no paperwork or ask any questions at all – quite a change after Namibia. The Casa do Cambios offer better rates than the bank. We found them in Lubango (high street), Namibe (centre) and Luanda (behind the big pink National Bank building on the front). USD got the best rate and you can also get a good rate for Namibian dollars in the south of the country. Many fancy places in Luanda take USD. The ATMs in Angola do not take foreign cards as yet.

Fuel is cheap at 29kw (20p) a litre at the stations, but the poor refinery facilities in the country mean that there are many stations that are dry and two-hour queues at stations that have fuel. Many Luandans get up at 4am to fill up before work but weekends seemed to be quieter. All stations are owned by the national company – Sonagol – and they are building stations everywhere, some with nice cafes. Apparently they have goal to have stations every 150km.