07-03-2025
This African nation was off-limits for decades – now it's finally opening up
How much should you trust a country that has a machete on its flag? The sight of a long boarded-up cinema and the chain-link fence encircling the local government headquarters didn't fill me with ease. But just when you think Angola isn't a nation capable of beguiling tourists, something always comes along that stops you in your tracks.
On this particular morning, after a drive of eight hours from the coastal capital city of Luanda, it was the majesty of Kalandula Falls.
I'd travelled to Malanje province in the north-east of the country that morning, passing distant, mist-smeared hills and fat baobab trees. Chickens and children competed as to who could make the most noise as we passed villages of cinder block and thatch, or stopped at roadside stalls selling passion fruit and stubby bananas that tasted like sugary milkshakes.
At the outskirts of Kalandula, I left my tour bus and walked across the slippery charcoal-coloured stones that led to a hexagonal concrete look-out point; its red surfaces long since bleached to a salmon hue by the sun. In front of me the falls looked like an array of giant pistons forcing a creamy curtain of water into the churning caldera. And as the falls sprayed and pulsed, I wondered how many other European tourists had seen Kalandula, the only serious rival to Victoria Falls in southern Africa, in the last 50 years.
The numbers will be vanishingly small, because until recently Angola was seen as the last nation in southern Africa still considered 'out of bounds' to travellers.
The country's isolation is due to a decades long conflict that boiled over into a malevolent furnace of violence, pitting the MPLA (supported by the then Soviet Union and Cuba) against the rebel forces of Unita (at the time supported by the US and apartheid-era South Africa). The result was one of the most entrenched and devastating post-colonial civil wars in Africa, which lasted from the moment Portuguese rule ended in 1975 until 2002, when Unita leader Jonas Savimbi was killed in battle.
That was nearly a quarter of a century ago. Yet Angola then developed a reputation as a kleptocracy. The late MPLA leader Jose Eduardo dos Santos and his daughter Isabel enriched themselves from the country's plentiful oil reserves, while citizens went without sanitation or anything approaching a competent rebuilding plan.
Now, though, Angola is changing. The FCDO still advises against all but essential travel to some parts of the country, but the formerly byzantine visa requirements were dropped last year, meaning visitors can enter for free with no prior wrangling with consulates.
The current President Joao Lourenço has, according to my guide Martial, made some surprising moves by firing (and in some cases imprisoning) high-ranking officials from the dos Santos era (the former President died in 2022) while using Chinese investment to rebuild many of the nation's roads, including the one I took to Kalandula.
'Angola's wealth is not well distributed,' Martial tells me that evening over a typically fiery Angolan dish of grilled mufete fish served with plantain and chilli sauce.
'Dos Santos treated the country like a kingdom. Reconstruction of the country can only happen by completely restarting everything and stopping the stealing. In the next 15 years if the current government continues like it is, then the country will improve. Roads are already better. We now need to start changing the mentality. You should know that the journey from Luanda to Kalandula used to take over 12 hours!'
Getting to Angola in the first place is no longer particularly hard. There are daily flights on Portuguese national airline TAP from Heathrow via Lisbon; there's only a one-hour time difference from the UK when you land in Luanda.
And Luanda is a capital city that has the potential to be beautiful one day. The Ilha, a spit of land that spools just off the curved, palm-lined lagoon that leads out into the Atlantic, has a slew of beach bars such as Café del Mar that serve caipirinhas and poké bowls to the local elite and the itinerant oil executives who are posted here from London, South Africa and the US.
The crinkly yellow sands are populated on weekends by locals drinking cans of Cuca beer and taking tentative dips into the waters that lick the shore. There are still a few roaming policeman aiming stares at tourists like me, but that's hardly surprising given Angola's near half century as a nation little visited by outsiders.
The state of Angola's national parks was one of utter desolation until recently; the wildlife poached and eaten by a desperate populous during the dark decades of war. Yet 'Operation Noah's Ark' has repopulated some of the parks by transporting elephants, zebras and many other mammals from Botswana and South Africa.
Only an hour's drive from Luanda, I travelled through the northern region of Kissama National Park on a rattling, tarpaulin-roofed truck, spotting wildebeest galore as well as zebras, bushbuck and even an elephant showering itself with water.
If your idea of a holiday in Africa is wine-tasting in the Western Cape or reclining with cocktails in a chi-chi resort in Zanzibar, then Angola is categorically not for you. However, if you've already explored Malawi and Zambia and don't mind dealing with the vicissitudes of an infrastructure that is far from seamless then Angola won't feel too far out of your comfort zone.
It's true that Luanda contains more than its fair share of squalor, yet moments of hope are never far away.
Around 15 miles from Kalandula flows another waterfall, smaller but still hugely impressive, called Musseleje. In late afternoon, I clambered into the warm pool and soaked myself in my own version of a Timotei or Bounty bar advert.
I was joined by a group of teenage boys from the nearby village who use the waterfall and pool as a laundry, scrubbing their T-shirts with tiny bars of marmalade-coloured soap. It seemed the falls were a social club, too. With my Lisbon-gutter levels of Portuguese, I attempted to talk to them while they clambered up the perilous rocks before diving off in kamikaze style.
'We need to provide for ourselves, not wait for government to help us,' one young man of around 16 told me. 'I don't mind farming early in morning and walking to work. Angola will be better soon. It will be a place where people would like to come I think.'
I agreed, and then we both submerged ourselves again in the warm, clear waters.
Essentials
Lupine Travel runs six-day escorted tours to Luanda, moving on to Kalandula Falls and the Kissama National Park. Prices start from £2,195 per person excluding international flights
TAP flies from London to Luanda via Lisbon daily, with return flights costing from £730.
