Angola - Day 4 & 5 (Blue)
Day 166 (20 March) – Angola day 4
We leave Benguela on a great tar road. We are advised that there is another bad stretch coming up. Niels will stay with Ruben and Renee as they drive slowly still with their broken suspension and Julia and Stanley will get as far as possible with the kids.
We decided while driving slowly with the broken Korando, but we would push on till sunset. We drove and drove and drove. Well actually, Niels and Renee made some stops and Ruben just had to drive on… Slowly…
It was a long day and luckily the road was good. But by nightfall we got up to the point where the second Angolan bad stretch started. It would still be many more long hours with the Korando over this road, with many of the potholes bigger than the car, but we just cannot do it at night.
We found a spot besides the road near an abandoned hut. Because the road we were on is the main road for trucks coming from Namibia, we ‘hided’ our cars behind some bushes, made a quick meal and went to bed.
Day 167 (21 March) – Angola day 5
A fresh start in the morning; pothole after pothole, although you couldn’t really call it potholes anymore. There are just some tarmac leftovers every now and then. But in the end we can say we did Angola in 5 days! Even with the broken down Korando. But the Ssang Yong still doesn’t look good.
At the border coming into Namibia the procedure was straight forward. The only thing is that you needed to buy some kind of road tax thing, which you could only do with local currency. Stanley and Julia were ahead of Niels and Julia did not managed to change some US$$ for Namibian $$ at the supermarket. They only accepted the latest US bills and she only had 2001 bills, which are all the same except the year printed on it. So now Niels and Renee went with the customs guy of the border control post, you could only leave with an escort so they said, and Stanley and Julia would wait for the money. Renee managed to get some N$ but for Niels they didn’t want to change anymore… But all together we would have enough.
Walking back to the border post Stanley came driving out of it. I quickly asked them if they paid and he replied some guy asked them what they were still doing here? ‘All is in order and you can leave!’ And so they did.
Walking further to our cars Renee asked Niels what Stanley said but Niels didn’t want to answer, for the customs guys where still with us and they speak English and Afrikaans! We could not anymore just talk Dutch and nobody would understand… And so, Niels and R&R lingered around the border post a bit and then just left. (In the end R&R had to pay their road tax on departure, Niels did not have to)
