Dave and Val's Travel Blog: Grand Africa Cruise

Cruise Day 52

Wednesday, November 30, 2022

"I travel because life is short and the world is huge.” -- Stephanie B.

Never in a million years did we ever think we would be in Angola, but here we are today, docked in the Luanda, Angola. As are most of our ports on this cruise, we are docked in an industrial area with not much to see from the ship except cargo ships, containers sitting on the pier ready to be loaded or hauled away or trucks carrying goods in or out. You can see the city in the background, but that’s about it.

It took us two days to get from Walvis Bay (blue marker near the bottom) to Luanda in Angola (red marker near the top).

The flag of Angola.

Luanda is the largest city and capital of Angola. Located on the west coast of Southern Africa, Angola became an independent nation in 1975. The Civil War that followed was one of the largest, longest, and most prominent armed conflicts of the Cold War, and Angola suffered immensely from self-inflicted wounds. Fortunately, today, Luanda is undergoing a renaissance of epic proportions, driven by the vast natural resources of oil and diamonds. Above all, the people are committed to rebuilding a strong and united Angola. Despite the economic boom, though, Angola remains a poor country as there is a high level corruption associated with the new found wealth. There is also a high level of crime in Luanda and it's not safe to walk around at night.

We are on a ship excursion today called “The Changing Face of Luanda”, which doesn't start until 9:00 AM. We got up at 7:30, and that gave us plenty of time to get ready and eat breakfast before meeting in the ship’s theater at 8:45. When we got up and looked outside, it was very cloudy and raining so we got out our rain gear to take with us on our excursion. We briefly considered cancelling but decided against it since this would be our only opportunity to see Angola.

An overcast morning as we arrive in Luanda.

Once again we are docked in an industrial port.

After breakfast in the Neptune lounge, we headed off to the theater and found it full of people. The ship had not yet been cleared by customs, so they hadn’t been able to board the earlier tours. There are only three tours offered in Luanda (although two of them are offered for both morning and afternoon), but they all must be quite large as there are a lot of people waiting.

Finally, around 9:00 they called the early tours and after about a half hour wait for the crowd leaving the ship to clear, our tour was called. We had a very large group which I believe filled eight mini buses. Val and I were on bus number 12 and soon on our way. With that many buses, we made quite a caravan with a policeman on a motorcycle with lights flashing and siren blaring leading the way followed by an ambulance (don’t ask me why an ambulance) and a car with three or four tour company security people who directed parking and kept everything orderly wherever we stopped, followed by our eight buses. As I said, quite a caravan.

It worked though and we made it to our first stop and we were quickly parked and unloading from the buses. The first place we visited was a large building called The Iron Palace that was designed by the famous architect Gustav Eiffel. It was originally designed as a venue for concerts, meetings and other public events and is still used today.

Downtown Luanda

The Iron Palace

You can see the Portuguese influence by the tiles on this walkway.

More views of the city.

We then made a brief stop at a church that was originally built in the mid sixteen hundreds.

After our brief stop at the church, our next stop was the Angola National Museum of Anthropology and spent about 30 minutes wandering around the museum and the grounds.

Views from an upstairs museum terrace.

With her ailing back, Val didn't spend too much time walking around the museum. I took her picture from an upstairs window.

She was entertained by this man playing a traditional instrument called the mirimba.

After the museum, we were off to visit the Fortress of San Miguel that was built in 1576 to defend the city. It is now a military museum and sits high above the city and has great views of the city and area below. Angola was originally a Portuguese colony and there is a large room used as a museum that has floor to ceiling Portuguese tiling on every wall; that was the best part of the museum for us.

After driving up a hill, you enter the fort by driving through this entryway. This picture is taken from the Fortress of Sam Miguel parking area.

Inside the Fortress of San Miguel.

Val struck up a conversation with one of the guards. As was the case in many of the African countries we visited, you are not supposed to photograph the military or police, but he graciously allowed his picture to be taken.

This Portuguese tiling was very impressive.

A look down at a not so nice area of Luanda.

Our buses lined up to take us to our next stop of the tour.

We only had thirty minutes at the fort and I would have liked to have had more, but this is only a three hour tour and we had to keep moving. Our final stop on the tour was the Agostinho Neto Mausoleum honoring the first president of Angola. It was very impressive with beautiful grounds with a large memorial spire towering over everything.

The entrance to the Agostinho Neto Mausoleum.


There is a large park in front of the Mausoleum.

On our way back we drove past the new Parliament building (very imposing and interesting architecture) and then after a drive up along the coast, we were back at the ship.

The parliament building seen through the front of our bus.

This wasn’t a real interesting tour as there aren’t too many sights to see in Angola and our guide gave us minimal information, but the most interesting and worthwhile tour was again the drive. We saw the modern downtown with high rise building intermixed with very old and very run down building. We also saw some very poor areas where housing looked like nothing more than hovels. We saw Angolans going about their daily lives and got a taste of what life is all about in Luanda.

We also avoided the rain and the sun even started to break through late in the morning, so our rain gear stayed on the bus. The cloud cover kept the temperature comfortable despite the high humidity (80% today). Because our group was so large and they had security people around, we really didn’t have to worry about the things we were warned about so we could have brought our cell phones, cameras and wore our rings, but you never know, and I think it’s always best to error on the cautious side. I did bring a pocket camera along, so I got some pictures.

We were back on the ship before 1:00 and were very hungry so after getting cleaned up we headed off to the Lido for some lunch. Today we both felt like getting a hotdog, so we decided to go to the Dive In (hamburger, hot dogs and taco place) and got ourselves a couple of Dive In Dogs that really hit the spot.

After lunch we both relaxed for a while and then I wrote up the blog (it’s nice to be caught up) and downloaded the pictures and Val headed out on the balcony to read.

I joined Val on the balcony and read for a while and then decided to go up to the Sports Deck (the highest accessible deck on the ship) to see what was going on ashore. I noticed that they were loading pallets of fresh fruit and vegetables onto the ship and had many more to go. About this time the captain made an announcement that due to the amount of time it took the ship to be cleared by customs, we would be leaving later than our scheduled 5:00 PM sail away because of the amount of food supplies still needing to be loaded.

From the Sports Deck I walked down to the rear Lido Pool deck and saw a cargo ship docked at the end of the pier perpendicular to us. The interesting thing was that its holds were all open and they were unloading bags (about the size of bags of cement) onto flatbed trucks waiting down on the dock beside the ship. The interesting (at least to me) thing was that the bags were being lifted by cranes from the ship in a sling to the trucks below where the bags were removed from the sling and stacked on the truck by men doing it by hand. There was a truck in front of each hold and a group of five or six men doing the stacking. It took a long time to load, but when one was full, it drove off and was replaced by an empty one.

Along with quite a few other people, I watched for a while and there was much speculation as to what was in the bags. There were guesses of cement, rice, grain, flour and several others. After watching for a while, I returned to our room and found Val still out on the balcony.

The captain had said that he hoped the sail away would be at 6:00 so Val and I decided to go up and join the sail away party at 5:30. We got a couple of “unleaded” margaritas and enjoyed the balmy evening as the last of the pallets were being loaded onto the ship. Val talked to one of the ship’s officers and asked him if the food was from Angola and he said no, it had been shipped from the US in large containers and kept cold or frozen until it was time to be loaded on the ship. We learned something new today. I don’t think they do that every time they resupply the ship, but we have been to a lot of third world countries on this voyage where the health standards may be suspect so I would guess that’s one of the reasons for shipping the food.

Despite it being a pleasant evening, there weren't many out for the sail away. It was dinnertime for many and the delayed departure may have kept people away.

Our view from the ship of Luanda with rows of warehouses in the foreground.

Watching this ship unload its cargo became a source of curiosity and speculations for those of us out on deck. They still had a lot to go and were still at work when the ship finally sailed.

If you look closely you can see that some of these workers don't even have shoes.

There was a lot of speculation about what was in these bags, but we never did find out. It tried to zoom in and crop the pictures, but it just wasn't sharp enough to identify what they were. If anyone seeing this knows what they are, write a comment and let us all know.

Along with many others, we continued to watch the cargo ship being unloaded and there was more speculation on what was in the bags, but that question was never resolved. I took some pictures and zoomed in on them and others looked at them through binoculars, but no one was ever able to identify what they were.

It was a nice sunset, but the sun was setting on the other side of the port so the skyline was less than desirable. It was getting close to seven and we were still tied up to pier, so we decided we’d better leave and get ready for dinner so no sail away this evening, but it was an enjoyable time out on deck on a balmy evening.