I wandered everywhere, through cities and countries wide. And everywhere I went, the world was on my side. - Roman Payne

18 May 2019, Chibia to Lubango, 45,1km
Residencial Dumas 11,000Kz (R487)

It was to be a short ride to Lubango, our first sizeable African city, but it was hot and hilly, making for a long, slow morning. Lubango was “founded” in the 1880s by Portuguese hailing from Madeira. The city nestles in a bowl of mountains at a high elevation, so we looked down on much of it after climbing our last hill.
Though the traffic in town was, of course, considerably more than we have experienced since entering Angola, two things conspired to make it manageable: (1) Drivers are accustomed to two-wheelers, keeping an eye open for them, and taking care near them. (2) We are accustomed to cycling into manic cities, knowing, for example, that communal taxis will pull to the side of the road whenever hailed, and pull out again once their passenger is loaded. With a little patience and politeness from all parties, more useful than road rules, one can safely negotiate streets packed with vehicles of one description or another.
We had not booked accommodation, but had an option in mind, mainly because Residencial Dumas had advertised wifi and aircon. According to Google Maps, finding our way to Dumas from the Chibia side of town would be fairly easy, and whenever we came to a major intersection, we checked our directions with a local, just to be sure. Unfortunately, Dumas was wrongly located on Google Maps, so although we found our way into the city centre with relative ease, finding “our” hotel proved a long, painful process. There was a very attractive “residencial” at the spot indicated by Google Maps and we would have set down roots there had they had room for us. They called Dumas to confirm there was a room available and directed us up the road. I will not bore you with details, but we somehow managed to endlessly circle Dumas without actually finding it. At some point, tired and disheartened, we found ourselves in a park and there found someone who spoke to Dumas on my phone and offered to walk us to the hotel.
The problem with being tired, is that one takes one’s eye off the ball. While engaged with the young man who was assisting us, both Charl and I took our eyes off the bikes for a minute, during which our Garmin was ripped from its holder and ripped off. So distressing…
We dined on pizza across the road from Residencial Dumas, and rested, saddened by our loss, but determined not to let it overshadow the kindnesses we have experienced since leaving Cape Town on March 1.
After breakfast in Chibia this morning, we walked briefly though this pretty little town, admiring the faded, jaded charm of multi-hued Portuguese buildings along the main street. Pretty as it is, it does not seem to warrant the upmarket and sizeable Lodge Obama being upgraded on its outer edge.

For today's route see below photos
For overview route, click on ROUTE tab above…