We know now that this trip takes place in stages or legs. We hit the road, film, shoot, and fill up with gig and gig of digital imagery discovering some of this hidden marvels in Africa. But after a dozen or so days in the “bush”, we need to stop. Not to rest, but to work on our laptops. We need to write the posts for Lights of Africa in English, for Viajologia in Portuguese, edit video for the short pieces to be broadcast on Brazilian television (Canal Futura), and of course we need to edit and process the photos and video. It’s a lot of work and during these couple of days, and an internet connection is key.

Like this, we completed one more stage of our expedition, the 3^rd stage from Lubando (Angola) to Victoria Falls (Zambia). Counting these days of writing, the stage took 19 days and we traveled 1,650 miles. Although still far from completing the expedition we have decided to announce some awards. First, the award for the “worst road” – unless otherwise challenged further north–goes to the 100-kilometer stretch between Humbe and Cahama in Southern Angola.  During the last 50 years there has been no maintenance, transforming potholes into gigantic car-swallowing craters. At about 15 miles an hour, we had to drive this dreadful road twice – poor Nandi.

The road from the Lubango to the boarder of Namibia still harbors signs of the 40-year civil war that occupied the country until 2002.

The next award is for the most “inhospitable person”, which indisputably goes to the owner and stressful manager of Casper Lodge, in Lubango. Treating her employees with no hint of respect, even in front of guests, her foul mood was consistent during the week we spent in the charming southern capital of Angola. In respect of the impeccable African hospitality we received, it should be noted that this unpleasant lodge owner, Dona Irene, is not African but rather from Portugal.

In the posts to come we will reveal some more positive highlights. Things along the lines of the most amazing views, most exciting animal encounters, spectacular moments, and the wonderful people we have met. To compensate meeting the sour Dona Irene, this stage also brought us very enlightened people. Miguel Gullander, who lives in Angola’s coastal city of Namibe, is a fantastic writer who gets his inspiration from a respectable day job: working for a Portuguese Aid organization teaching future teachers in Angola. He has published a book in Brazil, Perdido de Volta  (Lost on Return), through Lingual Geral editor. He is a first class travelologist.

At the end of every stage is a good moment to evaluate our status. We continue in good health, we are eating very well (much better than expected – far from loosing any weight) and we are sleeping some 7 to 8 hours a day – basically doing great. On the other hand our machines…not so much. Our fridge in the car, after having two issues that we were able to resolve with some duck tape and a screwdriver, one day just decided to die on us. We almost spoiled the soy meat inside before finally figuring out that the fridge had blown a fuse in the battery compartment of the car. Back in Namibia, having noticed that this was the third issue with our fridge, we decided that she needed a little more attention from us, much like a high-maintenance girlfriend. Said and done.  We not only bought an expensive new battery to continuously give her love when we are not with her, we also decided to baptized her with a new name.

After passing the test on the new battery and cooling one of our lingering South African sparkling wines, we had a special toast in honor of Ocaia with our friends from Lianshulu Lodge in Namibia. Ocaia means ‘companion’ in Swahili and apparently also mean ‘beautiful’ in some of the local languages.

Maybe Haroldo should also baptize his lenses. A totally careless mistake – dropping the camera from a few inches high – caused a serious issue, breaking the both the automatic and manual focus on his 12-200mm lens. But thanks to the extraordinary efficiency of the lodge managers of Wilderness Safaris (where we stayed in the Caprivi and now in Zambia) they were able to facilitate the purchase of a new lens in New York hat will arrive here in Zambia, after some VIP routing through South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. All this in only a just 6 days. Kudos to Wilderness Safaris.

At this stage, if all continues as planned we have bid farewell to at least two countries: Angola and Namibia. While our original plan was to bee-line it to Windhoek from Cape Town, Namibia offered many exciting detours including Sossusvlei, Skeleton coast and Damaraland. The final detour in Namibia was near Grootfontein, to see the world’s largest meteor. As experienced travelologist, we did not hesitate to walk right on through even if the place was clearly closed for the day. What can I say, the gate was wide open and welcoming – we took only photos and hardly left any footprints as evidence. The block of iron and nickel (which looks like stainless steel) weighs some 50 tons and supposedly landed there about 80 thousand years ago.

The Hoba meteor was only found in 1920. Its about 10 feet wide and 3 and half feet think. Pretty inanimate compared to the wildlife we have been shooting.

During this stage we traveled, with Nandi, through three countries: Angola, Namibia, and Zambia. But on foot we also crossed into Botswana (when docked on other side of the Kwando River to film the hippos) and into Zimbabwe (when we visited the other side of Victoria Falls). In total, we have driven 5,511 miles during 47 days and through 6 countries.

Thanks to our GPS Ode, we have recorded all of our tracks. The entire trajectory can be seen on the map below – Stage 1 in Blue, Stage 2 in Green, and Stage 3 in Purple.
View Lights of Africa III in a larger map

While we head north through Zambia we will post the stories form this third stage every Monday and Thursday, beginning with the amazing places discovered in Angola.

Finally, we would like to give a special shout-out to our fellow travelologist who are also in the middle of respectable multi-country expeditions. We are following the Indochina expeditions of Valeria Zopello who is somehwere between thailand and Cambodia. We are also following Toco Lenzi on his expedition called “Saara a Pe”. Good luck and may Omega Megog be with all of us as we travel.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 12:59 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.