First free flight in Angola

We cannot believe just how lucky we are. Leaving Luanda on Monday
morning we headed south. A local motorcyclist had advised us that this
area near the Quicama National Park is open countryside with few
people and we had previous recommendations that the place to stay free
for Overlanders is Carpe Diem. The very name was promising. Before
arriving here we did a survey of the countryside and discovered a huge
military special forces base. We gave up on the idea of making a
flight here. We had been given a balloon contact but he proved
unhelpful.

What luck, when we arrived at Carpe Diem as the owner, Paulo, was here
from Luanda and said he had someone high up in the military he could
ask. By the evening he had taken Chris to visit the base, received
permission, organised 2 vehicles to load the balloon and follow and
arranged 4 crew and the possibility of a passenger. We were late to
bed after preparing the balloon and up early to be at the base by 6am.
All our new friends speak perfect English. Paulo had returned to
Luanda but Luis the Manager and associate Daniel who are both from
Portugal were keen to assist. Daniel decided he would like to fly with
Chris. At the base Tuesday morning, the Colonel came to watch the
launch and they provided a medical team to stand by. We attached a
banner for Carpe Diem to the basket and it also advertised the area
which the government are developing for tourism. This morning Chris
was interviewed for TV by the Cabo Ledo 'minister' as the first
balloon to have made a free flight in Angola. Apparently Antonio, the
local balloonist, has only tethered a balloon here and is preparing to
start flying in Namibe, Angola close to the Namibian border.

Tuesday morning the wind was in the perfect direction out of the base
and slowly to the main road after a gentle take off. Daniel is tall
and was able to rig the balloon for me because I cannot reach the top
of the burner frame without a stool! Everyone present took lots of
photos including the landing which was faster than expected and they
bounced over 2 big lumps of ground. Daniel was ecstatic. We all
returned to Carpe Diem for a full egg, bacon, sausage plus breakfast.
We were offered free use of an air conditioned cabin for hot shower
and sleeping and we have eaten some wonderful Portuguese meals of
lobster, immense prawns, locally caught fish and octopus rice stew. We
were fortunate with the weather yesterday morning. In the afternoon we
had a very fierce storm with thunder directly overhead and flooding
rain which brought down branches. The clearing up was ongoing this
morning. Our two big bags of laundry were in the tumble drier as I was
writing this as it was still too wet to hang outside as usual. Storms
like that only happen here about 3 times a year.

We have had a message from Werner that diesel is difficult to find
further south so we are catching him up. We left Carpe Diem at 10.15
and have been driving all day in heavy rain. Some of the road has been
full of potholes. We had hoped to be in Lobito for the night but the
rain and road conditions slowed us up. Coming upon a traffic jam due
to a jack-knifed truck, Chris walked forward to see what the problem
was and found the Oasis truck 10 vehicles ahead of us. Once on the
move again we followed them and tonight we are together at a bush camp
down a track off the main road. We had been very worried about getting
enough diesel for the next part of the journey as all the filling
stations were out of fuel. We did at last find one selling diesel at
Porto Amboim, so now we are filled and have enough for another 1,000
kilometres. Werner was in Lobito but has moved on to Lubango so he
must have found diesel to carry on. We are now in contact with 2 other
couples who are not that far behind us as they are in Luanda. We are
looking forward to Lubango as Paulo, Daniel and Luis have shown us
many photos and said what a fabulous area it is. Now we have a Sim
card working, thanks to Daniel this morning, we should be able to keep
everyone up to date with our progress, then it's Namibia here we come.