post Xmas

It is long time since last time I wrote. And many things did happen, specially Xmas and coming back to Luanda day to day life.
Xmas were great. We made two trips, one to the south of the country (in Lubango with a two days stop in Benguela), and another traveling along Namibia and Botswana. Both of them were great, we had time to meet people, see other provinces of Angola, other countries of Africa. We also saw all kind of animals and lived many adventures and even got to know the African borders and its procedures. All of it for the reasonable price of 4000 car km in 10 days plus one airplane trip.

Lubango is one of the biggest cities in Angola, situated in the province of Huila, one of the nicest. The city is different to Luanda, you can walk and the streets and big buildings look to be the same the Portuguese left and people treat you in a very good way. You do not fell a white in between blacks. They do not see you just like money, they try to help you just….to help you (almost always). The surroundings of mountains and fields are very nice and you can walk along them without worrying about landmines. It is an area where you need more than the short two days we spent there. So it means we have to come back, but next time by airplane because the 900 km from Luanda takes no less than 13 hours and a third of it by land paths. People says we made a record in our first time.

Namibia and Botswana are different to Angola. Not only for the language (English in this case) but because there, in this two countries, everything looks to have some kind of order and purpose. The attitude of the people is more welcomed to foreigners and to the well done things, prices are lower, services are better , and the quality of peoples life better as well. They have less money, they have no petrol but the standard of life is higher and you just have to look to both sides of the roads to see that, even those who have nothing live well enough (always on their standard of life).
There in this countries, we travel a lot. We rented a car and we made our first stops in Ethosa Park, a huge natural reserve of more than 200 km where we saw our first big animals in Africa. We saw zebras, giraffes, lions, elephants, ostrichs, hipos, etc. Continuing our trip we visit the Capribi area and the Okavango Delta (already in Botwswana). We continue watching incredible animals and incredible places.
We had really good Xmas far from home. But they finished. We look forward to the next trip in Africa.