Benguela: Back on the Map

Article by: Brendan Sainsbury, May 2007

Angola - a country more famous for its landmines than its tourist drawcards - is experiencing something of a cultural renaissance. The national football team is competing for the first time in the World Cup Finals in Germany, the economy is looking up, and the chance of having a safe and memorable adventure in this former cauldron of chaos is now a distinct possibility.

Scarred by years of debilitating warfare, Angola is an isolated and oft-misunderstood traveller's destination, with few outsiders privy to its jaw-dropping scenery and vast cultural riches. But the recent cessation of a three-decade-long civil conflict has ushered in a new era of peace and reconciliation. The country's fledgling tourist industry, coupled with the pioneering efforts of its battling national football team, could soon put the country back on the traveller's map.

Places like Restaurante Escondidinho buzz with young locals practicing the kizombe, Angola's romantic and highly sensuous national dance.

Benguela sits 700 km south of the Angolan capital of Luanda. It was founded by the Portuguese in 1617 and is a former slave port and the erstwhile terminus of the cross-continental Benguela Railway. Spared the worst of a bloody civil war that reduced other inland towns to piles of smouldering rubble, Angola's second city and self-appointed cultural capital is a charming muddle of low-rise apartment blocks and sputtering motorcycles that weave deftly between Benguela's famous crimson acacia trees.

African traditions are strong in Benguela, and the sense of history is palpable, but the real highlight of this diminutive regional capital is not its paint-peeled colonial architecture nor its spectacular beaches but, rather, the Benguelans themselves. They are open and gregarious, with an infectious spirit. Their continued survival in the face of crushing adversity is nothing short of remarkable.

I head slowly north from my spontaneous capoeira-fest towards a sprawling and haphazard fishing village that gives out onto the blustery Atlantic. Swinging inland momentarily I encounter the well-tilled Cavaco River valley, an oasis of green in an otherwise parched and arid desert, and the proverbial bread basket upon which this heavily populated coastal strip so desperately relies.

Cavaco is characterised by patchwork banana plantations and mud-bricked homesteads that nestle like chocolate boxes beneath tall palm trees. It is quintessential Africa at its best, an unending cavalcade of waving children, braying goats and sturdy women in floral wraps who walk to market with bowls of maize balanced on their heads.

The recent cessation of a three-decade-long civil conflict has ushered in a new era of peace and reconciliation.

In town, the attractions are notably less bucolic. Benguela is barely set up for tourism in the modern sense, but nevertheless boasts a handful of reasonable guesthouses, some decent Brazilian-run restaurants and a nascent nightlife. Places like Restaurante Escondidinho buzz with young locals practicing the kizombe, Angola's romantic and highly sensuous national dance.

Festivals are common and religious processions are almost weekly occurrences, but one of the best ways to experience the whole kaleidoscopic panorama of this region is to catch the legendary train from Benguela to its twin port town of Lobito. Rusty old cattle trucks have been hollowed out to accommodate a more lucrative human cargo, and the 30-km journey is a living microcosm of the country at large. It's a disorganised scrum of screaming babies, adolescents hanging nonchalantly from the doorways, and posses of impassive gun-wielding guards snaking their way through the passengers like imposters at a wedding.

'You know, the future of this country lies in this railway's reconstruction,' says a local teacher as the train pulls asthmatically into Lobito. 'It's like an artery that has been cut. Reconnect it and the economy will flow once again, and then….well, who knows? Anything is possible.'