Getaway magazine
By Don Pinnock
Travelling with Kingsley Holgate on his epic journey around Africa’s coastline is about as rough as it gets. But blistering deserts, swollen rivers, impenetrable jungles, appalling roads and greedy officials are all in a day’s work for Getaway’s Explorer-at-Large.
The first thing I learn about the Outside Edge Expedition as I land in Windhoek for the onward flight to Ondangwa in northern Namibia is to polish my prank detector. Kingsley, who said he’d meet me there, is nowhere in sight. Instead there’s a local guy with a sign that reads: ‘DOW PINOCCIO GEETAWAY.’
Kingsley and fellow traveller Eugene le Roux, he says, have gone on ahead. My flight has been cancelled. He’ll drive me to Ondangwa (about 1 000 kilometres further north) and it will only cost me US$2 000. I stop in shock, to be saved by Eugene, who’s been hiding round the corner with Kingsley. They tip the ‘plant’ and declare me ‘had’.
In Ondangwa I meet the rest of the team: Kingsley’s wife Gill, their son Ross, journalist Annalie Muller, translator Babu Cossa and photographer, driver and boatman Bruce Lesley. There’s another fellow traveller whom I don’t meet: George. He’s Gill’s father and always wanted to go to Timbuktu, but died before he made it. So Gill’s taking his ashes there in a peanut-butter jar. The first thing I learn about the Outside Edge The next day we drive towards the Ruacana Falls on the Kunene River while I list roadside kuka shops: Al Qaeda Bar, Sis Bar, Let’s Push Bar, Corner Life Bar and dozens more … they obviously take drinking seriously in northern Namibia.
After an inordinately long wait at the Angolan border while officials try to find reasons why it’s absolutely impossible for us to enter their country without, perhaps, a small present, we trundle into Portuguese-speaking Africa and head for the mouth of the Kunene down roads from hell. They have a lot in common with stony riverbeds.
During lunch I get another taste of the Holgate way. Shortly after being roundly ragged for trying to wash my hands from the tap beneath the bumper of Kingsley’s Land Rover and finding them drenched in rum (that’s how he’s transporting his supply), an old Himba man appears. Kingsley invites him over and discovers he’s the local chief, Maholethinii Muhonba, a leader, he tells us proudly, of 301 people.
Can we buy a goat from him? No problem. Would he then invite his people over to eat it? He claps his hands in delight. The men are out herding, he says, but he’ll bring the women.
They come at sunset, silent, barefoot, smelling of butter, almost naked in a dozen shades of oiled brown. They’re beautiful, regal and move towards our fire laughing at our strangeness. Their hair is in ringlets down to their shoulders, each strand ending in an elaborate tassel which bounces as they toss their heads. Those who are married wear a topknot, some with beaded arches like the neck of a crane. They eat and dance with abandon, then drift back into the inky night.
It takes us four days to reach the Kunene mouth, driving through empty country across the plains of Iona. Kingsley jots in his notebook: “The brilliant yellow-grass plains are dotted with acacia trees, ancient welwitschia plants and pronking springbok – the whole surrounded by far pavilions of rough-hewn mountains. With the movement of the sun, these change colour from brown to grey and coppery sunset red.”
At one point we come upon the ruins of a park camp – this was once a protected wildlife area. There’s graffiti on one of the walls spattered with bullet holes that reads: ‘A NETO 31.1.76′ – the year Portuguese colonial occupation ended.
As we continue westwards, the sparse yellow grass is replaced by white quartz pebbles and the land is so flat we can see the curve of the earth. We’re sailing across a huge crystal desert.
In the distance, a speck appears and grows as we approach. It turns out to be a sign with a white bar and a red circle. No entry. No entry to what? Now we’re driving on a forbidden crystal sea.
Half a day later, we’re at the mouth of the Kunene and back on the Holgate line around Africa. There are some locals with rods pointing seawards. “This isn’t the best place to fish in Angola,” one says. “It’s the best place to fish in the world!”
The expedition chills at the mouth for a few days, fishing and listening to tales about diamond smuggling – and there are plenty.
Kingsley’s nervous about the next step – a run up the beach between high dunes and waves past Baia dos Tigres (the Bay of Tigers). He’s sitting there waggling his foot, a sure sign. We have to do the run at spring tide, because at other times the waves thump straight onto the dunes. The danger run’s over 30 kilometres.
“If we get caught, the expedition’s had it,” he says.
Early one morning, we head up along the beach and camp where it’s still safe, awaiting Neil Gouws, a guide Kingsley has arranged from Flamingo Bay Lodge further along the coast. He arrives before dawn and in a hurry.
“Move, move! We’re gonna to miss the tide.” We tumble out of tents, throw everything into the Landies and take off, scattering inquisitive jackals.
As dawn breaks we can see, on the horizon across the water, the village of Dos Tigres. It was once a thriving fishing centre with a canning factory, church and 50 houses. But the sea cut the isthmus that connected it to land and it’s now an island ghost town.
We’re racing up the beach at breakneck speed. “The adrenaline’s pumping,” Kingsley notes. “It’s dangerous. Sometimes the angle of the beach is too steep and we’re going like the clappers, tiger-striped dunes on the right, waves on the left. The vehicles are overloaded with kit and, if one rolls here, it’s tickets.”
The vehicle I’m in gets a flat tyre – leaking at the rim because we’ve deflated it too much. We stop and pump frantically, the waves splashing our backs, then wheelspin off again. Neil’s on the radio urging us to hurry: “Faster, faster or you won’t make it. The sea’ll swallow your vehicle.”
But finally, we’re through. The beach widens and we’re on the outskirts of Tombua, Angola’s southernmost town. Dogs yap at our wheels and we pass fishermen pulling in nets. “The town’s a shocker,” Kingsley writes. “It’s been torn apart by war and neglect, and overcrowded by displaced people.”
We promptly get arrested and are questioned for several hours. Kingsley’s completely unflappable with officials and begins working his magic. He smiles, shakes hands and hauls out a big book he calls his Scroll of Peace and Goodwill, showing them the signatures of Nelson Mandela and Bishop Tutu. He talks about his distribution of mosquito nets, schoolbooks and spectacles. Would they like to be part of this goodwill enterprise? They’re flattered and he tells them he’d be honoured if they’d sign. They do and we’re free again.
Next time the vultures descend, he shows them the signatures of previous officials: “Look, we have approval from your colleagues.”
The book becomes a rolling document of puzzled approval.
We head out of town past some men inexplicably beating a dog to death with an iron pole, then down a dry riverbed to what looks like heaven: Flamingo Bay Lodge. It’s a neat cluster of wooden chalets on a cliff beside a wide beach and is run by Neil Gouws and his wife, Ursula. Neil, it turns out, is a Springbok fisherman and Ursula cooks up some great meals: its butter-soft kabeljou for supper. But the high point is a hot shower.
Arrested again
The next night we camp in a dry riverbed, further up the coast, evidently the best place to avoid landmines, of which there is no shortage in Angola. In the morning I wake and lie for a moment staring at my tent’s instruction tag. It reads: “Do not pitch this tent in a dry riverbed.”
We head for Namibe, expecting another wreck like Tombua. The road into town passes a rusting ground-toair rocket battery and beyond it we find a quaint coastal town that must once have been a prime holiday destination. It’s been neglected since the start of the war in the mid 1970s, but is slowly being put back together again. There’s a clean market, a bakery selling fresh rolls and the usual nonfunctioning fountain in the square. Kingsley gets excited about the diesel price – it’s R2,95 a litre.
The Landies continue northwards to the town of Bentiaba and we get arrested again. Three policemen on mopeds swoop in as we’re looking over an old, half-ruined fort and escort us to the Big Man. The parleying begins again, Kingsley with his Scroll, the rest of us lounging on the veranda watching scrawny dogs argue and snap. Once free, we head up the main coastal road, zigzagging round huge landmine-blast potholes and negotiating a downed bridge.
Kingsley has a thing about lighthouses and we soon find one. It’s way beyond repair with no light, bullet holes spattering the walls and the skeleton of a cow fossilising in the lightkeeper’s lounge.
The pitted track dives down through a canyon with slogans painted on the rocks: “MPLA, revolution, reconstruction, justice.” The decidedly unreconstructed road leads to the fishing village of Lucira where drying racks are filled with the pink, split carcasses of dorado and shad. Kingsley hauls out his notebook and jots down: “A beautiful little decaying town.”
After Lucira signs of human habitation disappear. When we stop, the silence is eerie. There are no bird calls and no evidence of animals. But sitting round a fire in a riverbed that evening, four wild-looking men appear silently at the edge of its light. They’re armed with swords and pangas. Kingsley glances at them then leans towards Babu: “Tell them they’re welcome to join us,” he says. “But tell them, also, that we’re collectors of highly poisonous snakes and that the vans are full of them.” Babu translates and the swordsmen disappear briskly into the night.
I glance nervously after them, but Kingsley leans back in his chair, puts his hands behind his head and sighs. “This place is an adventurer’s delight,” he says. “A vast, empty country with virtually no infrastructure, great camping spots with firewood and endless freedom.” Like any good general, he knows how to calm the troops.
We descend a steep, rocky pass into Equimina, a lost-in-time village with a half-moon of yellow beach and a fuss of ragged fi shing dories. By now the trip has a daily routine and feels cyclical and endless. ” There’s the tractor noises of the cold Tdi Defenders starting up,” Kingsley writes, “the ritual of turning up the Engel fridges to full, readying the Motorola radios, switching on the Garmin GPSs, then down the track dodging wag- ‘n-bietjie bushes [Ziziphus mucronata] and hoping there are no unexploded land mines. At night we hunt for firewood, break out the circle of chairs, throw some meat on the fire, pour some Captain Morgan and watch the stars appear.”
Benguela puts an end to the reverie: thousands of Chinese Longcin-Delop mopeds, girls in tight jeans, children with beads in their hair, huge piles of smouldering litter, squatter camps, smart beach houses and a huge Shoprite store selling exclusively South African goods. As we park, a Porche Boxster slides silently past, dodging a land-mine victim hand-pedalling a tricycle.
We stock up, then head for Lobito. It’s a busy port with old mansions being restored or squatted and a smart beach restaurant – with alarmingly high prices – named Zulu where we lounge, eat and camp. “We deserve this after all those potholes,” says Kingsley with a glass of Mateus Rosé in one hand and a forkful of peri-peri chicken giblets in the other.
I get chatting to an Algerian oil worker about Angola. ” There’s huge wealth here and massive poverty,” he tells me, “and nobody in between.”
From Lobito, the road up the coast gets better and finally we hit tar, which takes us through the once wellstocked but now eaten-out Quicama National Park. The story goes that once it had a herd of 10 000 buff alo, but they were all shot from a helicopter, airlifted onto a waiting ship and sold to Nigeria.
We settle into Cuanza River Lodge for rest and recovery. It’s run by Bruce Bennett, a South African marine biologist who discovered how good the fi shing was in Angola and got hooked. A few days later, refreshed, we brace ourselves for Luanda.
What a frightful mess it turns out to be. Here’s the context: around 70 per cent of Angolan people earn less than US$1 a day, but there is immense wealth in oil, commodities (all imported), construction, communications, diamonds and transport. All this wealth is owned by about five per cent of the population (a good number of these being the president’s family), who drive hugely expensive vehicles (Prados, Hummers, Porches) and live in mansions. Around 10 000 vehicles are being landed at the port each month and almost all end up in the city’s daily traffic jams.
Add to this the fact that during the war – the real one with South Africa and the phoney one that was strung out for military benefit afterwards – the capital was the safest place, so people flocked in from everywhere, which explains the empty countryside we’ve been travelling through from the southern border.
Put all that together and you have Luanda. We hit the city at 07h00 and plug straight into stench, trash and insane traffic. The roads, designed for a city of maybe 300 000, are carrying to work or school the city’s population of between four and seven million (nobody’s counted). Two-lane streets become four-lane nightmares by virtue of desperation and blatant blue taxis, which jostle aggressively and dangerously for gaps.
Street sellers ply their pitiful trade in the constant gridlock. The air is yellow with exhaust fumes and burning trash mingling with the morning mist. For nearly half an hour I keep tabs on a young woman in a bright yellow top walking beside the road in high heels. Eventually she outdistances us. It takes us two-and-a-half hours from the outskirts to the centre. With nothing better to do, I begin logging vendor specialities. There’s dog-collar man, toilet-seat man, facecloth man, razor man, panga man, spanner man, cabletie man, bucket man, Jesus-pictures man, Michael-Jackson-gloves man, radio man…
The next day we flee up the coast to the Bay of Wrecks. This has a long beach which, for several kilometres, is littered with the rusting ruins of all manner of ships – tankers, cargo ships, fishing vessels and an assortment of other sea-going machines.
There are several stories about this amazing graveyard. The most prevalent is that when Luanda was besieged in 1975 by MPLA forces, Portuguese captains couldn’t get fuel and, not wanting the ‘enemy’ to get their hands on their vessels, ran them up the beach. Another is that the crews were airlifted off and heavy seas eventually drove the ships onto the shore. One rusting wreck which catches my eye – and it’s hard to avoid the symbolism given Angola’s history – is named Karl Marx.
It’s really spooky camping next to these hulks. They’re sad ships, dying, remembering their crews, far ports and high seas. I look up from the fire and see a freighter’s dark shape against the stars. Sleep well, gracious vessel. Dream of better times.
The road north from there is mostly destroyed and it takes us several days to reach Soyo on the banks of the Congo River. On the way we come across forests of baobabs and numerous broken-down trucks. One is full of oranges and is lying on its side. The driver has a T-shirt with the Union Jack on it and is stoned out of his head.
He offers us oranges for sale. The guard of another wreck begs for bread. At the town of Ambriz, we are arrested again, this time by naval fusiliers. We plod our usual round of officials and are eventually given a sea-view camp site on what was once a tennis court.
Finally we drive up to the banks of the Congo River. It’s huge. On the horizon I can just make out the northern bank – the Democratic Republic of Congo – 23 kilometres away. We meet a group of South African deminers who tell us the river cuts into the ocean floor a canyon which is 200 kilometres long and 1 500 metres deep. Local people call it Nzere, the river that swallows all rivers. Only the Amazon disgorges more water.
Our problem is how to get across. There’s no bridge, no ferry (it’s broken) and, to get to the nearest crossing upriver, we’d need to drive half way back to Luanda on trashed and mined roads before heading back north. “I’d rather fly a Tiger Moth upside down to Cabinda than do that,” is Kingsley’s comment.
He knows Africa like no other: there have to be river traders, so he starts digging. What’s being transported? Where’s the trade? Who’s running it? There are the official dockyards but, upriver, he finds the traders – rough men with rugged boats, battered but efficient, and he begins negotiations. How much to get the Land Rovers over to Banana in the DRC? The bargaining begins at US$6 000 and comes down to US$2 500. Can we really fit three Landys on a hand-made barge powered by two ancient Yamaha outboards and get across the Congo River? Ross and Bruce use lengths of string to measure. We’ll fit, just.
Congo crossing
At 06h00 one muggy morning, we arrive as scheduled to find the tatty barge backed up onto a beach. A crowd of roughneck pirates arrive and planks are slid out, accompanied by much shouting. Everyone has an opinion and voices it at full volume. They build a shaky-looking ramp over the transom and down into the barge.
The first Landy goes up and over to much cheering. The second breaks the ramp with a loud crack and the vehicle tips alarmingly. Planks are added, barrels are rolled under them and we winch the beast on board.
By the third Landy, the barge is listing badly, but the crew solves the problem by filling barrels with water as balance ballast. After several hours, we head upstream but, as we turn into the strong current, one of the outboards coughs and dies. Ross gets working on it and, after 15 minutes of high tension, it roars to life again, spewing blue smoke. Three-and-a-half tense hours after leaving, we beach in Banana.
It takes 80 yelling men to get the vehicles onto land – and another US$400. The DRC is bedlam – it’s Independence Day and everyone’s partying, including clusters of boozy soldiers with fingers on the triggers of their AK47s. We track backwards and forwards, avoiding soldiers and processions while hauling officials out of bars and, in one case, a church to clear our papers. They’re reluctant but we manage eventually and we set off north along the coastal road which is a rough track bordered by forest.
We round a corner and come upon a Pygmy having trouble with three jungle demons. They’re moaning, whirling, rustling threateningly, growling ferociously, waving their stick arms and are refusing to get off the road.
The creatures seem to consist of a dome of rustly leaves with large blue faces and tiny arms. They lunge at the Pygmy, raising clouds of dust, then slump down in front of the Land Rovers. After backroading in Angola and the Congo, we’ve come to accept almost anything, but this is way off the register. We stop and stare.
Some villagers appear, shrug as though demons are a regular thing, and invite us over for a beer while the Pygmy negotiates. We clamber out, giving the obstruction a wide berth, and are soon knocking back Cuco lagers and Captain Morgan rum with people who speak no language we can understand. After about 20 minutes, we all troop down to see how the Pygmy’s doing.
He indicates that if we move off the road, the demons will go past peacefully, but there’s no way they’ll move aside for the vehicles. We back all three Landies up the bank and watch the spirit things rustle past, still growling, and disappear round a corner. I don’t expect further explanation. After nearly a month on the expedition, I’m learning to do what the villagers did: shrug and accept.
We continue up the road towards the Cabinda border where a DRC official is enraged that we’re disturbing him on Independence Day. Anyway, he says, his chief has taken the stamp so we must wait. That night the camp site is in no-man’s-land between the DRC and Cabinda, and Kingsley invites the Congolese officials to a party. Meat, rum and dancing ensue deep into the night.
Next morning we’re stamped out of the DRC by our new friends who now have bad hangovers, but Cabinda won’t let us enter. Their chief has also taken home The Stamp. So we wait … and wait. When he arrives, he’s efficient, but charges us each US$78 to enter his country.
The first thing I notice in Cabinda is the birdsong – it’s like being in an aviary and so different from Angola. We camp in a quarry. All around are what look like bushes of varying size but, on closer inspection, they’re buildings, machinery or abandoned vehicles, all being swallowed by the riotous greenery.
Next day we’re at the border with Congo Brazzaville. A policeman peers short-sightedly at our passports until Gill gives him a pair of spectacles and he gapes at the documents, amazed. There’s a cell beside the counter holding three young men. They ask us, please, to steal the keys from the policeman’s pocket and let them out because they’re thirsty.
“Why are you there?” I ask.
“Money enrobment,” they reply with pride.
A few kilometres into the country, we’re stopped by two policemen with funny flat caps who look as if they’ve been relocated from the French Foreign Legion. They demand papers and passports, then refuse to give them back unless we pay CF6 000. Ross refuses, they get fierce, so he fetches the satphone and mock-dials. “Monsieur Ambassador,” he says, “there are two gendarmes who are demanding CF6 000. Is it legal? No? Ah, their names? Nommes?”
The cops look unsettled. Ross offers the phone to one of them: “Le ambassador requeste nommes,” he says in awful French. They spring away from the instrument as though it’s a snake.
“Go, go, go,” says one, cramming our papers into Ross’s hands. “You go, now, orders.” We head up the road towards Pointe Noire chuckling at Ross’s cheek. “What if he’d answered the phone?” I ask him over the radio. “They never do,” he replies.
The only place to camp in town is the yacht club. The toilet stinks and the shower produces a trickle, so Kingsley says we must look for a beach further north. We’re all travelweary and want to stop, but nobody moans, trusting his intuition.
Sure enough, at a village named Pointe Indienne we find the ultimate site – a cottage under palms right on the beach. After a prolonged negotiation with the watchman and a written contract, we buy three days’ occupancy for US$100 – undoubtedly without the owner’s knowledge. The beach is lined with beautiful cottages, all deserted and probably visited by their French owners once a year.
The evening before heading back home, I sit under the palms with Kingsley, who’s poring over a map of Gabon and Cameroon, the next leg of his trip. I ask him if he ever doubts his ability to complete what must rate as one of the most hazardous trips of the 21st century.
“Of course I have hugely anxious moments when things seem absolutely impossible,” he says. “But you can’t lead if you’re fearful or feel beaten or don’t find Africa fascinating. When people say: ‘Don’t go there,’ it just gets us going.
“As I get older, I’ve gathered tolerance and a smattering of wisdom. Instead of getting frantic, I let the situation unravel itself – if you push too hard, you get resistance. Too many deadlines can kill an expedition. I let the situation dictate what to do. Spontaneity is exciting – it’s the Zen of travel.”
He grins at me, then gets up and walks to the sea’s edge, staring northwards up the coast, thinking about the next stage of the adventure.
Will they get through the dense Gabonese jungle okay? How will they cross all the waterways? Is Nigeria safe? Spontaneity takes a lot of preparation.
The next day I’m in the luxury of an aircraft seat looking down on the rainforest unspooling below. Tracing a silvery line through it is the second biggest river on earth.
Three days later, back home, I get a satphone e-mail from Kingsley: “Lost in the Gabonese jungle. Lots of mud. We’re hacking a road through with machetes. Having an absolutely wonderful time. You’d love it.”
Read Don’s blogs from his trip on Getaway.co.za. [Link]
- GETAWAY ADVISER -
WHAT YOU NEED
The African west coast through Angola to Congo Brazzaville, the route of this story, is tough-travelling country. You need to plan well, be self-sufficient, prepare for terrible roads, take all the advice you can find and travel in a group. Expect long stretches without access to food, fuel or fresh water, as well as shock-absorbersmashing roads. The trip is unthinkable without a tough 4×4, two spare tyres, extra fuel and water tanks, and a GPS. Take all your own camping equipment. On this trip, we used heavily loaded Land Rover Tdi Defenders and they took the hammering with minimum complaint.
PAPERWORK
You need to obtain visas well in advance and check them to see if the dates are the ones you asked for (the embassies make errors and may then ask you to reapply with another US$76 – the average visa cost). You should also obtain a carnet de passage for the vehicle. Getaway did all visa negotiations through Visa Solutions, tel 021-425-5896, e-mail info@visasolutions.co.za or web http://www.visasolutions.co.za. All this preparation does not ensure that your passage through borders and roadblocks will be smooth. It’s advisable (make that essential) that you have someone who can speak Portuguese in Angola and Cabinda, and French in both Congos. Just be patient, don’t look anxious, don’t hand out bribes and just hang in until officials realise you’re unlikely to pay them. Gifts, however, are useful. T-shirts, caps, magazines, packets of biscuits and anything the official is unlikely to be able to easily obtain can considerably reduce the time of transactions.
WHERE TO STAY
You need to be self-sufficient. What little accommodation you can find will be expensive and, in Luanda and smaller towns, exorbitant. There are two exceptions, both run by Angolan Adventure Safaris (web http://www.aasafaris.com). One is Flamingo Bay Lodge, north of Tombua, run by Neil and Ursula Gouws, which offers great fishing, parasailing and guided excursions along the beaches and into the desert. Tel +244-92-390-5522 or e-mail flamingo@aasafaris.com.
The second is Cuanza River Lodge about 70 km south of Luanda run by Bruce Bennett and Marion Milner. There’s first-class fishing on the river (up to 150 kg tarpon) and a sea-going skiboat for coastal adventures. Tel +244-912-44-0052 or e-mail bruce@aasafaris.com.
You can also contact Colletta Fritz at Angolan Adventure Safaris in Cape Town on tel 021- 462-6104, e-mail c.fritz@holidayaviation.co.za.
USEFUL CONTACTS
These countries are not geared for tourism, so it’s a good idea to have a back-up plan if things fall apart. A satellite phone is a good idea, as are some contacts in the various countries. Knowing the phone number of your embassy is a sensible precaution. South African embassies that can be contacted are: Angola: tel +242-530-1388, e-mail saemb.ang@netangola.com. Democratic Republic of the Congo: tel +243-884-8287 or V-SAT 012-351-1811, e-mail ambasud@ckt.cd. Congo Brazzaville: tel +242-81-0849, e-mail brazzaville@foreign.gov.za.
