African Outfitter is an independent international bimonthly publication promoting
fair hunting and ethical business practices within the hunting industry.
From a hunting perspective, the preservation of biodiversity on the
African continent is the first and foremost priority. The emphasis
is however also on the sustainable utilisation of wildlife.

African Outfitter Back Issues: CONTENTS - February / March 2008 - (Vol 3/2)

Angola, the forgotten Paradise: Part 1 - By Frederik Cocquyt

"Pasporte?" said the man behind the counter. He was wearing casual clothes, shorts and a sleeveless white shirt was the order of the day. Outside the building music was blaring out of a car, which we assumed belonged to him. He finished stamping two of our passports, walked to a small deep freeze and pulled out a beer. He took a couple of swigs and returned the beer to the freezer. If watching someone drink a beer ever made me crave one, this was it!

This whole scene played out at the Ruacana border post in Angola. I was hired to film a fishing DVD on the coast of Angola by Steven "Spyker" Kruger, owner of Henties Bay Angling Tours. Spyker has been travelling to Angola for the last five years and his experience provided us with enough confidence to attempt our own Angolan adventure.

From Ruacana, we headed west towards the coast. We were going to travel 400 km to Foz de Cunene, an old border post between Namibia and Angola that ran a pontoon across the crocodile-infested Cunene River. Nowadays, it looks like a small ghost town with six policemen stationed there, receiving supplies every three months, and with no electricity or running water. The only form of communication is a radio - but seeing that they have no electricity it can only be used in emergencies because they cannot recharge the batteries.

But anyway, let me not get ahead of myself as we still needed to get there. One would think that travelling 400 km by car cannot be that bad. According to our GPS those 400 km took us 19 hours of driving, excluding the stops. We averaged just over 20 km/h - talk about snail’s pace! On the way we went through a town called Chitado. I hadn’t expected to see remnants of the Angolan War, but bullet holes riddled the walls of buildings in the town and many of the buildings were roofless and abandoned. Despite the fact that the town’s infrastructure was damaged, the people were full of smiles and were happy to see us. If everyone there were given an Angolan flag they would surely have waved it high and with pride.

As we moved deeper into Angola on those rugged two-track roads, I noticed that I hadn’t seen any wildlife or birds along the way. As we neared 6 pm at the end of that day there was still no sign of any birds. This worried me and as we crossed a dry river bed with only a puddle of water, I saw a couple of doves flying off at high speed. I asked Spyker why there wasn’t any bird life to be seen and he speculated either the war or the hunger of the people could be blamed.

As night descended we put all our faith into our GPS unit. Tracks in Africa head in many directions. It’s easy to think you’re heading in the right direction, but that is often not the case. Our convoy consisted of four vehicles and ten persons, two Toyotas, a Mazda and a Nissan, all four-wheel drive. I wished we could have driven that particular section of road in daylight because we were surrounded by a forest of baobabs. There is no other way to describe it: baobab trees framed the road around us for at least two kilometres.

Stopping at regular intervals to make sure that everybody was...

(This article has been abbreviated. Read the full article in African Outfitter, Vol 3/2, February / March 2008)