25th May 08

Date: May 25^th 2008

Location: Luanda, Angola

Weather: Cloudy in the morning then the sun shone through brightly for the afternoon, Bloomin gorgeous but temperatures dropping all the way. 27°c

Status: Delighted with the progress made today!

I truly feel like I’ve entered Southern Africa today. The scenery has changed totally and is now what I feel very familiar with. The straightness of the roads, the vast distances to the horizon, even the weather and clouds feel as though I recognize them from previous travels here!

Set off at 5.00am to give us a quick passage out of the city and onto the highway south which had a good few cars and trucks on it already. Made good headway and left the outskirts of the city within an hour and managed to keep the good roads at the same time, we were expecting the tarmac to run out at km 60 but it continued all the way through to 120 and then only briefly stopped as we entered the town of Dondo.

Found a shop selling bread and liver sausage and mashed some together with avocado for breakfast. Hit the road and continued the drive with the scenery changing more than it has done for the last 3 weeks in the space of a few hours.

We were treated to steep hills and cliffs, open savannah and baobab forests lining the road, my ‘top tree’ in Africa and there were loads everywhere! Huge rocky outcrops spilled right onto the edges of the road and made the drive one of the best yet.

The Chinese have been doing so much work here in the last few years that the roads which we thought would be gravel and dirt roads turned out to be freshly laid tarmac and new white lines for almost all of the journey some 600kms. Didn’t think we’d cover 200kms today so everyone was feeling really good at the end of the day.

Bed

End of day location: Huambo, Angola

Distance covered: 638kms