Fw: Ons Angola trip report.

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Fw: Ons Angola trip report. 8 of 14 2009/04/06 01:03 PM Day 9 We leave at 7h30 with low morals after not finding Forado and looking forward to some nice ablusions and some decent camping sites for a change. Our aim is to reach Cabo Lebo with two camp sites marked on T4A. The road leads through some beautiful mountain passes and with new tar roads under our wheels time flied by. We passed the lush green town of Bentiaba and other villages, here we also met up with some other Namibians who where on a fishing trip. The villages are all small but pictures, with mangos and bananas in abundance. The road started to deteriate up to Lusira and then suddenly the tar ended and changed to a gravel road under construction. We were in the mountains and I mentioned that it seems that the warning from the other travelers about a “van Zyls” pass waiting for us was unfounded. We then passed a road construction camp and suddenly found ourselves in first gear low range. We were averaging 4 km per hour for about four hours; my wife went from crying cracking to hysterical about the road situations. We set up camp next to the road at 17h00 E1321450 EO1253524. We traveled about 250 km for the whole day. At least the surroundings were beautiful and no more tweety birds. Everybody was tired but having loads of fun. Day 10 Today I lost all inabisions to take part in any more 4 x 4 competitions, trails or what else, I had my
Fw: Ons Angola trip report. 9 of 14 2009/04/06 01:03 PM share for the year to come. We left camp at 7h30 and were met with oil drips in the roads where some diff or sump where repaired and a lot of rock to pass. We continued safely due to experience, slow low range driving and relying on a navigator for the best part of the morning. From Dumbe Grande the road improved through to Lobito. We topped up our water at a village borehole pump next to the road and passed some awesome seenary with valleys and mountains everywhere and dramatic sandstone formations. We where back on a new tar road from Benguela and now pushed for the camp site at Cabo Lebo, we arrived at 21h00 with the first indicated camp site leading to a road construction site, we set off for camp no 2 and descended down towards sea level. I was driving behind our companions and when I felt my car starting to slip I stopped to see if all was well with the road ahead. Then a call came over our radio “I’m stuck”. We were in a high tide plain and could hear the waves breaking not to far away. I walked over to the other car and was met by the sight of a bellied down to the earth 4x4, this was it! My wife wanted to go for help but my opinion was that we had the knowledge and know how and had to do this and get out ourselves. We had a winch on the stuck vehicle which we hooked up to my vehicle, dug some trenches in front of the four wheels and tried to winch out, no go. My vehicle was pulled in over the slippery mud so I re positioned to a small grassed area, we tried pulling him out with my vehicle but he was not moving an inch, I was only spinning on the spot. Hands in our hair mud in our shoes we re-assessed the situation and I remembered the LA sport video of lifting the vehicle with a high lift jack and pushing it out of the spoor. This gave me a new idea and off came the air jack. We dug into the clay below the spare wheel and inserted the jack, our vehicles were heavily loaded but we succeeded in achieving a lift of plus minus 2 cm just enough to brake the suction, we dug again in front of the wheels and used what we could to insert in front of the wheels, not much was around to be used. We winched again and this time had some progress forward – about 1 meter. We had about 15 meters to cover, we did this over and over and eventually we had one side of the car on the clay but the other side was still cutting thru the clay and into the water under the clay. We repeated the jacking digging and winching process for 3 hours and by now were covered in mud from head to toe! The surface we got stuck in was about 3 cm sand on top of a layer of clay of 30 cm thick followed by water embedded sand. Well we where unstuck and so proud of our accomplishment. Totally charged up we headed to a lodge indicated on the T4A and after waking everybody at about 1h30 we were informed that there was no camping available and were given directions to Shalongo village about 10 minutes away. We set of to the village but could not find the turn of and after about 30 min drive we turned around. I pulled into the village that was 10 min away and saw that a truck standing next to the road was blocking the entire gravel entrance road. We followed this road down to the beach and behold there was a new development with chalets and restaurant. The owner came down to meat us at 02h30 and it was good to hear and communicate in broken English for a change. We could camp there on the beach and at 03h00 the kids where in bed.
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Fw: Ons Angola trip report.

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