Skeleton coast The Skeleton Coast is a windswept strip of desert covering almost 500km/310mi of Atlantic coast. This spooky park is often shrouded in fog. Its name comes from the numerous shipwrecks lying on the shore. A big draw for visitors is the fascinating Cape fur seal colonies. The most visited colony being at Cape Cross, located south of the park. Across Angola’s southern border to the town Swakopmund, ‘Skeleton’ is also echoed in the hollowed-out shipwrecks stranded on shifting sand-dunes, with no human settlement in sight. <<<Plan a Trip>>> The Malanje highlands Malanje is the capital city of Malanje Province in Angola, with a population of 455,000, and a municipality, with a population of 506,847. It is located 380 kilometres east of Angola’s capital Luanda. Near it are the spectacular Calandula waterfalls, the rock formations of Pungo Andongo, and the Capanda Dam. <<<Plan a Trip>>> Kwango RiverKwango River Is a transboundary river of Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is the largest left bank tributary of the Kasai River in the Congo River basin.[1][2] It flows through Malanje town in Angola. The Kwango River basin has large resources of diamonds in the Chitamba-Lulo Kimberlite Cluster in Lunda Norte Province, discovered in the main river channel and on flats and terraces in its flood plains. <<<Plan a Trip>>> Okavango Swamps The Okavango River in southern Africa is an international river flowing through three African countries. It originates in Angola and flows into Namibia, and then into Botswana‘s Okavango Delta. It supports the livelihoods of around 600,000 people living near its basin, as well as a diversity of wildlife species. Due to water scarcity, which is especially rife in Namibia and Botswana which have arid to semi-arid climates, diplomatic conflicts often flare-up over the river’s usage. <<<Plan a Trip>>> Tumboa (Weltwitschia Mirabilis) Plant The tumboa is a large desert plant. It grows in the Namib Desert in Namibia and southern Angola. The plant can live as long as 2,000 years. The tumboa is considered a “living fossil” because no other plant that still exists is closely related to it. The tumboa plant has a strong, woody stem, which can be as large as 13 feet (4 meters) around. Two leathery leaves grow on opposite sides of the plant from the base of the stem. They are never shed, and they can reach a length of nearly 10 feet (3 meters). <<<Plan a Trip>>> Historic Town of Benguela Benguela is a city in central Angola, but the term often refers to its immediate interior and regions in the central highlands of Angola, which were part of the so-called Kingdom of Benguela. From Benguela, over 760,000 African slaves were sent to the Americas, mainly to ports in Brazil. Only the ports of Luanda and Ouidah have seen more people exported from their shores than Benguela. Called Ombaka by the local Ndombe population, the port was an import hub of trade, and caravans visited the coast in search of dried fish and salt. <<<Plan a Trip>>> Luanda Railway This line connects Luanda, the capital of Angola, to Malanje, capital of the province of the same name, over a total length of 445 km. Luanda to Malanje, 424 km, with a 55 km branch from Zenza (135 km from Luanda) to Dondo. A 17km branch to the New International Airport of Luanda, connecting with the existing main line at Baia, in the suburbs of Luanda, is under construction. <<<Plan a Trip>>> The wooden sculptures of the Chokwe people One of the greatest accomplishments of African art, and indeed of world sculpture, are the magnificent figure sculptures of the Chokwe people, created in their Uchokwe homeland in 18th and 19th century Angola. The surviving corpus is small in number, with about a dozen major male figures extant which depict the ancestral culture hero Chibinda Ilunga (Petridis, Art and Power in the Central African Savanna, 2008, p. 93); these are among the most highly esteemed of all African figural sculptures, and are icons of African art. Much rarer are the equally impressive female figures, which formed the essential female half of the primordial couple. <<<Plan a Trip>>> The Carved Ivories This carved elephant’s tusk with a spiral design is a beautiful example of early tourist art from the Congo area. The tusk, one of ten that the Tropenmuseum possesses, is one of the so-called ‘Loango Ivories’, named after the old Loango Kingdom (15th to 19th century), which stretched out over the current coastal area of the DR Congo and Cabinda (Angola). Most of the tusks were produced between 1830 and 1900, with the second half of the 19th century being the heyday of this art. <<<Plan a Trip>>> Rugged Highlands The cold current from Benguela running along the southern part of the coast. The highlands in the interior. The influence of the Namibe desert, situated southwest. As a result, Angola has its own specific climate, with two distinct seasons, the rains, from October to April and the mist or “Cacimbo” from May to September, a much dryer season with lower temperatures. <<<Plan a Trip>>> Huíla plateau The surface of the plateau is typically flat or rolling, but parts of the Benguela Plateau and the Humpata Highland area of the Huíla Plateau in the south reach heights of 2,500 meters and more. The Malanje Plateau to the north rarely exceeds 1,000 meters in height. and a small section of the Huíla Plateau near the town of Lubango has long been among the most densely settled areas in Angola. <<<Plan a Trip>>> Cunene River (Kunene) Spelled Kunene, river rising in west-central Angola, southwestern Africa. Its total length is 587 miles (945 km). The Cunene rises about 20 miles (32 km) northeast of Huambo. At Chiamelu, to the south, the river flows in a steep granite bed, but it leaves the granite uplands at Matala, falling about 42 feet (13 metres) before entering the northern portion of the Kalahari Desert, wherein the wet season it floods the sands. <<<Plan a Trip>>> Namib desert One of the oldest and largest deserts, the Namib stretches inland from the Atlantic Ocean, covering large swathes of Namibia and parts of Angola and South Africa. This arid hotspot surprisingly supports a diverse number of plants and animals, some of which are found nowhere else in the world. The Namib Desert extends more than 2,000km from southern Angola through Namibia and into northern South Africa. <<<Plan a Trip>>> Iona National Park Iona National Park in south west Angola forms the northern tip of the Namib Desert. At 15,000 km2, it receives an average rainfall between just 1 to 4 inches per year. Despite this extreme aridity and year of civil war, Iona still supports a wealth of biodiversity. Reptiles are particularly well-adapted to this environment with at least eight strictly endemic to the area and around 250 bird species have been recorded in the park. Iona also supports unique desert adapted plants like the endemic Welwitschia mirabilis, commonly referred to as a ‘living fossil’. <<<Plan a Trip>>> Industrial Centre of Lobito Lobito is a town in Angola, situated to the north of the Catumbela Estuary on the Atlantic Coast. It’s a town that is built in a relatively new location, a location that was created by its Portuguese rulers in the nineteenth century by reclaiming a sandbank from the sea. It is known as being one of the finest and most beautiful harbours in Africa. It also has the advantage of protection from the elements, surrounded as it is by a three mile long sandbank. <<<Plan a Trip>>> Congo River Estuary The Congo River is a long, arcing river with a basin that spans nine countries in West-Central Africa. This extensive body of water provides food, water, medicine and transport to about 75 million people in the surrounding basin. The Congo River zigzags across the equator twice as it flows from eastern Africa, through the Congo rainforest, all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, according to Mongabay, a nonprofit environmental science and conservation news site. From its tributaries to where it meets the Atlantic Ocean, the massive river includes rapids, wetlands, floodplains, lakes and swamps. <<<Plan a Trip>>> Hairstyles of the NkhumbiMwila people are part of the Nyaneka-Khumbi group and live mainly in south-western Angola in the Huila region. They are known for their impressive vikeka necklaces, made of mud and beads. Girls start wearing the necklaces from the onset of puberty and almost never take them off. Hairstyles differ widely from group to group and often indicate status and position within the community. The Mwilas shape their hair like a horn with a mixture of oil and clay, decorated with shells and beads. Wearing an ostrich feather in your hair indicates that you are married. <<<Plan a Trip>>> Dande Rivers The Dande is a river in northern Angola with a source in the Crystal Mountains. Its mouth is at the Atlantic Ocean at Barra do Dande in Bengo Province. It also flows through the city of Caxito, and Uige Province. The river is 285 kilometres long. <<<Plan a Trip>>> The Bié Plateau The Bié Plateau or Central Plateau of Angola is a plateau that occupies most of central Angola. The elevation of the plateau is from 1,520 m to 1,830 m. The Bié Plateau to the east of Benguela forms a rough quadrilateral of land above the 5,000-foot (1,500-metre) mark, culminating at about 8,600 feet (2,600 metres) and covering about one-tenth of the country’s surface. <<<Plan a Trip>>> Mount Moco Famous for its rich, varied birdlife – that’s pretty much all I knew about Mount Moco, or Morro do Moco as Angola’s highest mountain is called. At an official elevation of 2620 m, it sits right in the middle of the Central Highlands northwest of Angola’s second-largest city Huambo. <<<Plan a Trip>>> Ruacana Falls The Ruacana Falls have their origin, like the Epupa Falls in the Kunene River, the border River between Namibia and Angola. Close to the village Ruacana the Kunene, coming from Angola makes a sharp bend to the west to form the border between Namibia and Angola until it flows into Atlantic Ocean at the Skeleton Coast. <<<Plan a Trip>>> Maiombe forest The Maiombe Forest is part of the Kakongo Forest Reserve – a large protected area located in the northern border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. This great tropical forest is one of the largest in the African continent, covering an area of 290,000 hectares. Visitors are always impressed by the lush green landscape, the thick woodlands and the diverse and thriving ecosystem. The forest is in turn home to Congo river which is the second largest river in the world by volume. The forest covers 1,780,000 km2 of land in Africa covering parts of Angola, Congo, DRC, Gabon. <<<Plan a Trip>>> Kissama National Park Kissama National Park is located in the northwestern part of Angola along the coast. The park covers an area of 3,845.57 square miles (9,960sq km). Kissama is also known as Quicama National Park. Locally, it is also referred to as parquet Nacional do Quicama or Parque Nacional da Quissama. Because of years of civil war across Angola, most of the national parks have decimated from poaching and hunting. The park is situated between the Atlantic Coast to the east, the Cuznza River to the north, and the Longa River to the south. The majority of the park is comprised of savannah grasslands, dense vegetation, and Baobab forests. <<<Plan a Trip>>> Namib Port Namibe port is one of Angola’s most important ports. It is very close to a terminus of the Moçâmedes Railway, which transports import and export products to and from inland states in the south of Angola. While Namibe port is the third largest port in Angola in terms of cargo handling volumes, it has no ancillary quay facilities for container transportation; The Port of Namibe is the third largest in Angola after Luanda and Lobito, and is connected by rail to iron ore mines. However, its capacity has been restricted by pier capacity and a lack of cranes. <<<Plan a Trip>>> Catumbela Catumbela is a natural paradise located on the coast of Central Angola. beaches with crystal clear water, animals in their natural habitat, and people who love culture and the arts. Its wide streets are decorated with huge red acacia trees, and for this reason, it has become known as “The City of Red Acacias”. Angola is home to countless treasures, and these include its wildlife, which you definitely must-see. Catumbela’s contribution to this treasure includes the Búfalo Park where you can observe the African buffalo, the area’s dominant species, but you can also find leopards, jackals, hyenas, lions, and many others. <<<Plan a Trip>>> M’banza Kongo M’banza-Kongo Is a city of 175,000 in Northern Angola, near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. The small town of M’banza Congo sits high in the hills in the middle of nowhere, a tiny place that can be walked across in a mere 10 minutes. It’s steeped in the history of both central Africa and the Congo, and has played an important role in the region for centuries. The town is one of the best places in Angola to visit just as a ‘tourist’. It could easily be mistaken for any in the Congo – some streetside bars even sell Primus beer, a staple of the two Congos immediately north of Angola. <<<Plan a Trip>>>