Luanda is the capital and largest city in Angola lactated on the Atlantic Ocean coast of the Country. The Baixa de Luanda is situated next to the port and has narrow streets with old colonial buildings. The city is divided into three distinct areas, the oldest colonial town, the Baixa be Luanda, from the port to the fortress, Citade Alta, which is the upper city where the presidential palace is and the Ilho de Cabo where the beaches and the expensive night clubs, bars and restaurants are. There is also a distinct division in this city between the very rich and the very poor and this is something to take into consideration should you wish to wander around here on your own, not recommended. My write up points out that Luanda’s liveliest attraction is the Roque Market, a sprawling outdoor market that houses some 60,000 vendors. Unfortunately, the market is famous for its armed thieves - so not really a tourist friendly market, I think we will pass.
We were fortunate to be able to jump on a last minute Cruise Critic Tour with Across Africa, two vans, one with nine the other with eleven - we were in van one and shoulder to shoulder tightly packed in. The temperature today reached a wet and sticky 36 degrees forcing the air conditioning to really have to work, and in this older vehicle it just couldn’t keep up. The other alternative for the day was to take the provided shuttle to the port gate where there was a small market, it was highly recommended that you do not wander out of the area unless in a group. So we opted well as we were on a city tour which allowed us to see something of this city.
We had a good group in our van which made the day very enjoyable despite how the day ended but more on that later. One could say this city is starving for points of interest to take guests on a tour but our guide and driver did hit a few spots including, the bank museum, the beach area where all the expensive restaurants and bars are, the mausoleum where the first president is buried or perpetually lying in state, one of the main churches and then a few viewpoints. Things got interesting when we decided to stop for a beer.
I really don’t want to say that we were getting set up for a potential fleecing but all fingers are pointing in that direction. It is either that or our guide failed to communicate with the waitress and / or the waitress was the one attempting to fleece us. In short, through our guide we were looking for cold beers and about four orders of French fries, two couples were looking to add some fish to the fries order, fish and chips as it were. Don’t ask me how many times this was repeated but it seemed pretty straight forward. The cold beers and drinks arrived nice and quick, the food took about 20 minutes, okay normal but, and this is a big but. Two huge baskets show up with meat and chips, along with two containers of rice and two containers of vegetables and another container of some black bean concoction, WTF. We asked our guide what is this, he casually says, don’t worry about it you will only be charged for what you eat, well we don’t want any of this. We asked about our fries and fish, it’s coming he says. Six pieces of fish show up with another two orders of fires - in short there is a huge feast on our table, I’m thinking this is going to be a problem and a huge problem it was. To keep this short, the manager was involved but with very limited English this problem began escalating. We firmly said what we wanted originally and we began drilling into out guide. The manager presented us with a bill for the entire feast, ah no. We did some quick math and informed him that he would be getting $10 USD from each of us, $90.00 which was fair for what we originally asked for and wanted. He then began to refuse the US currency (our guide cleared this with the waitress at the onset), we then got up to make our way to the van leaving our guide, driver and the manager to deal with this. I also told the guide that we need to get back and he had five minutes before we needed to call taxis. We are now at the van and here comes the entire restaurant contingent, the manager, the waitress, the chef, a few other workers and of course the local police - great. The manager is trying to give us the US back, the driver has two big bags containing all the left over food. We say, that’s it, that’s all your getting, everyone in the van, we order the guide and driver to get in the van, that’s it we are done here. The police was just observing but I did see our guides wallet did come and perhaps paid some, a little for me, money to him to keep him out of it. So we are off, we get about five blocks away and I hear a siren, oh oh… I look over my shoulder and the police vehicle goes past us, phew…
So what happened? Well, this was either a major screw up with very poor communication or the guide and driver where looking to feed their families tonight and have us pay for it. Or, this restaurant saw nine cruise ship people come and played us thinking that we would just say fine, and pay the bill in full just to make it all go away. I would support this argument but then why was driver so happy to be carrying that much food to go? I strongly believe it was a combination of all the above and although we paid slightly more than what we should have paid, I think we left “a little something “ for everyone to make this go away - but there was no way we were going to pay the full bill on all this food that we did not order. That said, the fries and fish were pretty darn good. Lesson learned.
Beautiful sail away as the temperature dropped to a very comfortable 22 degrees as the sun went down. What a crazy day with a crazy story.
A few parts today, unfortunately was only able to use my iPhone because of all the warnings. I would have been fine though because we were in a large enough group with our guide and our driver.
Quote of the day, “You do not travel if you are afraid of the unknown. You travel for the unknown, that reveals you within yourself.” - Ella Maillart
A nice warm welcome, the rain stopped just after this.
The main bank, home of the bank museum.
In case you were wondering where the heck we are here in Africa.
The original vault.
Replica offices…
Lifting a gold bar, these things are heavy.
The old money, really old money.
A modern foot bridge.
The expensive and exclusive beach district.
Our guide with Nona, our tour leader. Note, all guides had the tour leader names on the shirts.
The late president’s mausoleum
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