I’m typing this sitting in a hotel business centre in Luanda, Angola! First visit and not somewhere I’m likely to hurry back to, but it has been interesting. Flying over the Sahara at night is always interesting, though the thunderstorms as we got near to Luanda weren’t fun. The amount of lightning around was quite impressive and from a distance it gave an impressive show.

The hotel is almoste xactly what you’d expect, but the architecture is very 1960’s soviet, as is much of the rest of the town – what little we saw driving here from the airport. The view from my room is out over the docks, so not much of interest to see excpet a lot of containers, some cranes and a few rusting hulks moored in the bay.

This connection is, however, quite impressive as it’s faster than the one I had in Kuwait! Heading home in a few hours and so yet another night over the sahara in prospect!

By far the worst thing about being here is the constant fear of mosquito’s. They are so prevelant that we were given mosquito spray to bring with us. This is fine but does mean that in order to feel safe you end up smelling rather badly and worrying about what effect it will have on anything that comes into contact with your skin! Notices on the bottles warning of plastics melting don’t really do much to allay these fears. Of course smelling bad is a lot less of a problem than contracting malaria, so time for the clothes pegs on the nose!