Cabinda, Angola

2019-10-12/14: Angola exclave between both Congo where most of Angola's oil is coming from.

The Church of Cabinda.

 

Saturday, October 12, 2019.

We spent the night north of Pointe-Noire in Congo. 

Bivouac in the forest near Dossio (Pointe Noire / Congo region)

We have to cross the city to reach the border in the small town of Nzassi. 

The old Pointe Noire train station.

 

The border with Cabinda is approaching.

The formalities to cross the border are long and not always transparent. But we are used to it. They'll take us a little over an hour and a half.
We leave Massabi, the small border town on the Angolan side, fairly quickly. The road is of much better quality than its counterpart on the Congolese side, but that doesn't really surprise me because Angola has a little more careful infrastructure than that of the countries we have just crossed in Central Africa.

The road to Cabinda is good.

Considering the environment and the vegetation, it seems that the rainy season has not really started here.
We cross a very marshy area at the height of a lagoon where the road turns into a track for a few hundred meters. But unlike in Congo or Gabon this is a fairly well maintained track that does not present great difficulties. 

At the edge of the lagoon before Landana.

Arrival at Cabinda (the city).

Cabinda, the capital of the province, is approaching. We hesitate between going there or joining a beach a little earlier to spend the night there. We choose the first option. Maybe we'll get there in time to buy car insurance there. The insurance purchased from Banyo when we arrived in Cameroon was only valid for the CEMAC (Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa) which we have just left.

An agency is listed on iOverlander. We get there at 5:00 p.m. just past. I'm lucky to find the manager there who receives me, although the agency is normally closed on Saturdays. I will be able to buy insurance for 3 months there (the other options being 6 months or 1 year) at 27,000 Kwanzas (60 €).
We know from iOverlander that it is possible to camp at the Catholic Mission in Cabinda on the waterfront, next to the church, and even that globetrotters are welcome there. 

Church near the Catholic mission of Cabinda.

We show up there a little after 5:30 p.m. The parish priest is not there but a priest receives us and directs us to settle down under large mango trees with branches that are a little too low between which I manage to navigate anyway.
The parish priest should come and greet us on his return. We will unfortunately not see him. Either he came home late or he didn't dare to disturb us. 

Sunday, October 13, 2019.

Sunday. In the nearby church, mass begins at seven o'clock, we can hear the parish priest's preaching as well as the liturgical songs of the faithful. Christine had considered attending last night, but of course not at such an early hour. 

Gandalf under the mango trees of the mission in Cabinda.

The Church of Cabinda.

View from the seafront.

We go out a little before 10:15 am. We take a short tour towards the church and on the waterfront with a very successful and very realistic statue of Pope John Paul II. The beach could be a beautiful beach if it weren't so littered with garbage. 

Statue of John Paul II on the Cabinda waterfront.

 

We spend over an hour trying to activate our SIM card. Without success. We will need the help of a street vendor in the name of Dorris to find a solution. I will skip the details but it was long and very complicated.
It gave us the opportunity to get to know Dorris a little better. He speaks French because he studied biochemistry in Boma in the DRC, a French-speaking country. Like many young graduates, he has not found a job in his branch and lives on odd jobs like that of reseller of recharge cards. How many well-made heads like his are forced to do this kind of odd jobs to survive in Africa? We understand all these young people who risk their lives to try their luck in Europe. Even if at the end of the day it is after a pipe dream that they run. But what future do they have here?
We leave the mission after having eaten and without having the opportunity to say goodbye to the priest who has already come out. We would have liked to leave a small donation.
The border with the DRC is only about 25 km away by a road that was first well deteriorated out of Cabinda but in good condition thereafter.

Cabinda. On the way to the DRC border. We can guess the ocean on the horizon.

We arrive at 2:30 p.m. at the border post to learn that it is closed on Sundays and that we will have to wait until tomorrow morning to pass.
I ask the head of the immigration post if we can spend the night in the large paved parking lot about fifty yards before the barrier. He suggests that we sit on the lawn next to the buildings inside the station instead. It is of course quieter and more pleasant and we accept.

We are camping on the grounds of the immigration buildings in Iema.

 

In a wooden hut across the street is a sort of little, very African bar restaurant. I'll take a look. Half a dozen customers took their seats there, a mix of travelers waiting for transport to the capital and border post officials taking advantage of their free day to play cards and drink beer. I order our meal tonight from a French-speaking woman who seems to be the patron of it. It will be fish accompanied by foufou or plantain. I ask her to reserve two portions for us for this evening.
We will wait patiently on our lawn for the afternoon to pass.
We show up at the little restaurant a little before 7 p.m. We are made to take our seats in what I will call the back room of the restaurant, much quieter than the bar room where the music is always on maximum. It seems that all the policemen at the border post have gathered here to spend the evening dousing a sizeable quantity of beers. And although the bottles they consume are ridiculously small with their 25cl compared to ours of 66cl, they do eventually take effect. We sympathize with them a little while keeping a certain distance, always beware of the effects of alcohol.