Driving 'The Beast' through Africa
Angola
by Isabelle Demaeght, August 20th, 2025
When we set off for our next destination—a coffee plantation—the route is initially straightforward: a smooth, paved road that makes us feel like it's going to be a piece of cake. And it is... for the first 200 kilometers. After that, the ride turns into a real ordeal: a rough track to reach Mario and Odette's Fazenda Rio Uiri.
The last thirty kilometers make up for a lot. The landscape opens up into wide panoramas as we drive over hills, then closes again like a tunnel of green as we descend. We drive past settlements where children wave at us. Varied. Surprising. Picturesque. We catch sight of the black rocks of the Serra Cumbira.
The plantation itself is a world unto itself in one of the lower-lying areas. Hectares full of coffee plants in neat rows under palm trees, banana trees with heavy bunches and budding flowers, avocados glistening in the sunlight, papayas. Areas of untouched forest full of birds and insects. The harvested Robustica coffee beans are laid out here to dry. The hulling and roasting takes place in Luanda, where they are blended with other varieties. Our assigned guide speaks very little English, but with a mixture of Spanish, lots of gestures, and smiles, we manage to find a common language.
The campsite is still under construction: extremely simple, but functional. A quiet, remote place, completely cut off from the outside world: no cell phone reception, no Wi-Fi internet. Most visitors opt for a room; we prefer to sleep in our own bed. At the moment, there is an international group of twenty birdwatchers staying here, who are on a 23-day tour of Angola. In the large restaurant, they are poring over their impressive film footage and encyclopedias. We gratefully benefit from the knowledge of their experienced guide Bruno. He tells us about the turbulent history and political situation and recommends our next destination: Pedras Negras. He also knows someone who can check out The Beast. It is in the capital, which we actually wanted to avoid.
Because the distance to Pedras Negras (Portuguese for black rocks) is too great to cover in one day, we look for a place to spend the night along the way. We find a simple but pleasant resting place on a sandy path where friendly people regularly pass by, returning from their fields or on their way to a water source. The next morning, we are checked by three police officers, with machine guns of course, but after a brief explanation, they nod kindly and let us go.
Remarkably, we were never stopped by the police during our entire trip through Angola – even though Belgian tourists in an Angolan rental car (whom we met in the south) predicted the opposite. As soon as they saw our European license plate, we were always given a sign that we could drive on. A famous Brazilian YouTuber has complained about the many unnecessary checkpoints with endless begging for money, or the fines (without a written report) that she never pays. It's just a waste of time and annoying. The government has instructed the police to leave foreign tourists alone. And it works.
The black rock formations of the Serra Cumbira were beautiful, especially at sunset, but they pale in comparison to the Pedras Negras de Pungo Andongo, a million-year-old rock formation that towers proudly over the endless savannah. The Beast is parked all alone on one of the rocks, and we prepare our dinner with a view of the plain. The morning is cloudy, foggy, and cool. During breakfast, the silence is broken by a colony of monkeys. They swing, run, screech, and disappear again nimbly along the almost vertical wall of black rocks.
Meanwhile, our last traces of Europe are also disappearing: Adriaan eats the last (smuggled) piece of Dutch raw milk cheese, I measure out my 19 grams of Maes coffee and 200 grams of water with surgical precision. (Maes is a coffee roaster and blender in Hasselt.) One more week, maybe a little longer. The search for pure Arabica continues (in this coffee-producing country where mainly disgusting instant coffee is sold). Coffee roasters (in Luanda and Hasselt) are far away and sell their wares in more affluent countries...
From here, we head to the Kalandula Falls, where we can camp at a hotel and enjoy a view of the impressive waterfall from our beds. In the morning, we walk with a guide to the top of the falls along slippery paths through the jungle (we both fall once), but we finally reach the top of the waterfall. We decide that this view is more than enough, although the guide had more in mind.
Then we set course for Luanda, because Adriaan has a list of repairs for the Beast. On the way, we encounter what Adriaan so aptly calls “the psychology of the road.” Using our iOverlander app, we find a suitable place to sleep and the kilometers fly by, until twenty kilometers before arrival and an hour before sunset: a half-hour traffic jam, blocked road, detours, roadworks. We are now only doing 10 kilometers per hour. Arriving in pitch darkness means that in the morning you are surprised by where you have ended up. Especially in Africa, every road is a bit of a surprise.
On Friday, we visit 4WD and Land Cruiser specialist Viprangola on the southern edge of Luanda. Adriaan has confidence in their skills, but they can't make time for us until Monday. We spend the weekend at a wild camping spot on the coast between baobab trees and a hotel on the outskirts of the city. We meet our neighbor Prato and once again the conversation turns to Angola. The country strikes me as the poorest we have traveled through so far. We read that the average monthly wage here is € 60. Worst of all, the median wage is € 16! That means half the country has an income of less than € 16. Three-quarters of the population lives below the poverty line.
We also see a lot of Chinese soft power here: roads, bridges, dams, power stations paid for with (borrowed) Chinese money. On the way to Luanda, we see many billboards with Chinese characters (next to ‘our’ script) advertising essential companies. We talk about the ‘new colonizer’, but Prato doesn't want to hear any of it. He believes that the Chinese are helping the economy, whereas the former colonizers left the country plundered and impoverished. After visiting a small slave museum and seeing so much ‘China’, we already have enough food for thought about ‘our’ role in history.
On Saturday, we drive across the entire city to a peninsula. It is the location of the beach houses of those who have much more than € 60 per month to spend. We visit a restaurant of exceptional class – for a moment, we imagine ourselves in Europe with fine wines and exquisite food. Angola is a country of contrasts. Rich in oil and diamonds but poor in basic amenities. We see it along the way: unpaved roads full of potholes, dilapidated huts, and villages where children run barefoot across the sand, playing with completely bald motorcycle tires. They make the same gesture every time we drive by: rubbing their stomachs and holding out their hands.
For those wondering what needed repairing this time: the drive shafts have increasing play—probably because they were not lubricated sufficiently during previous trips (the nipples are inaccessible due to the paneling under the car). The experts think this is not a problem. What we did do: replaced the leaking oil seal on the rear differential, eliminated play in the front wheel bearings, installed new rear springs (the old ones were buckling under the weight), new rear shock absorbers, replaced the torn rubber in the stabilizer bars with polypropylene bushings, and finally realigned the car. The rear is now 8 centimeters higher and the handling has improved significantly. – Adriaan.
Yesterday, an Angolan told us with a wry smile: “We Angolans are especially good at making babies: every year, there are one million more Angolans.” And indeed, there are children everywhere – playing, laughing, sometimes shy, sometimes cheekily curious. Every girl over the age of fifteen here seems to be pregnant or carrying a baby on her back.
In many places, we still see traces of the civil war: shot-up buildings, abandoned villages, rusty wrecks along the road. The past never seems far away here, even though the country is trying to move forward. Angola has stunning beauty—vast savannas, dense forests, rivers glistening in the sun—and great potential for tourism. But before that can happen, there is still much to be done, starting with the infrastructure.
Queues of mopeds and minibuses for fuel We only have five days left (out of the thirty we were allowed) to reach the border with Zambia. Luanda is located in the north of the country – we could follow the Congo River inland to Zambia. Our two paper maps, Tracks4Africa and OpenStreetMap, contradict each other about how that route would run and whether fuel is available.
Speaking of fuel: a liter of diesel now costs 400 kwanzas (about €0.40), but not long ago it was 200 kwanzas. The government wants to phase out subsidies and bring the price to the “normal” African level (about €1.00 per liter). That will take some getting used to, because while people in Guinea drive old 4-cylinder Peugeots, here an old Land Cruiser with 6 or 8 cylinders is the norm. Fuel supplies are regularly disrupted – we see many empty gas stations. Or we see long lines of mopeds while the tanker truck is still unloading. We decide to drive south for three days, back to Namibia. Because we no longer have the time to trudge 1,000 kilometers along dirt roads and maybe have to wait a few days for diesel.
Driving back is really not our thing, so we seize the opportunity to cover the last 125 kilometers straight across the savannah. This takes us to the same remote corner of Angola where we started. We hardly encounter anyone on this sandy route, at most a single moped or hiker. We only manage 25 km/h, but in this scenery that is OK. And of course, we spend a night in this deserted area.
And so we return to Namibia, to the Okapika campsite run by Bruno from France, where we conclude the Angola chapter.
See more pictures and the route traveled.