The Rest of Yesterday | LUBANGO

25th June 2016

Day 76 of ± 189

Part 2:

LUBANGO — the Hollywood sign of Africa. Left to right: ?, Elizabeth, Kiwi, me, Martina, Guðbjörg & Ryan. Photo by Martina Bright

Lubango’s ‘Cristo Rei’ (Christ the King) stands tall overlooking Lubango from its platform 2130m above sea level. Photo by Martina Bright

Guðbjörg and I overlooking the beautiful, hazy sprawl of Lubango — the only area/city/town of Angola not to be affected by the civil war and its mines. Photo by Martina Bright

This Cristo Rei stands at 30 metres tall, making it the 4th largest in the world installed by the Portuguese. Photo by Martina Bright

The sign from behind, nestled on the edge of the crackling, crunching, hot, still heat of the dry bush. Photo by Martina Bright

The ‘Cristo Rei‘ from below, in the cloudless blue sky. Photo by Jussi Eskola

The sprawl from above, to the left... Photo by Martina Bright

…and to the right. Photo by Martina Bright

Some silliness on the sign — the view was incredible. From left to right: Jørn, Christian, Canada, me, Guðbjörg, Travis. Photo by Travis Groh (left) & Jussi Eskola (right)

A childhood friend of mine, Belinda, said it perfectly in her blog — Belinda, Berlin and Beyond — recently (ish) in the post headed, ‘THE LAST 3 MONTHS, FT. THE BEST 21ST PRESENT EVER!’:

“You know what they say, life is what happens when you are busy failing to blog about it…”

→ This is so true and applies to all areas of “doing” in life, i.e. anything you set yourself up for, discipline yourself to do, goals you set in blog, fitness, whatever, insert *blank*. But, life gets in the way, often, and sometimes gratefully — I think you should allow it to run its course and not place too much stress on stopping the rest of living in place of achieving every little aim, because you might miss out on the adventures of the random course of ‘chaos’. That’s where we’re all headed anyway. The ever expanding universe tells us so.

Basically, this is just my excuse for being two days late with yesterday’s blog post (check it out here → https://medium.com/@ShAaNi/blue-sunrise-the-serpentine-mountain-pass-21f5fe158a62), and for being behind with any past and future posts I have done/will do.

Part 1 of yesterday in 3 photos, by Jussi Eskola:

The hazy blue plains.

The multicoloured wall of the ‘Serra da Leba’.

The ‘Serra da Leba mountain pass.

Anyway, for the lack of anything written on the rest of today, what you can take from this is to go check Belinda’s blog from her last few years of adventuring, since she left ‘that small island off the coast of Australia’ back in 2014. Linked here: https://belindaberlinandbeyond.wordpress.com/blog/

Entering Lubango, back on ground level. Photo by Martina Bright

The streets of Lubango — always beautiful, painted wall-grafiti. Photo by Jussi Eskola

Some of the buidlings. Photos by Jussi Eskola

Himba girls in central Lubango — Namibia is close by, but ‘invisible’, man-made borders don’t mean much to native tribes people who live in harmony with the land and whose ancestors have lived here since long before separate countries’ borders were created as we know them today. Photo by Travis Groh

A school wall in the town — kids and colours. Photo by Jussis Eskola

Lubango’s sign and ‘Cristo Rei’ seen from its base, in the distance — saying goodbye. Photo by Martina Bright

I don’t remember when day turned into evening, what we did tomorrow and what the day looked like as we continued on the road to the Namibian border. But here are a couple of photos from the evening of the 25th (or maybe this was on the 26th…):

Goodnight from the thorny, dry, soft, sandy sea of the Angolan bush. Left to right: me, Travis — sitting in contemplation back from the hot fire, as dusk turns to dark. Photos by Martina Bright

I’ll see you again just outside Namibia.

Tomorrow → Day 77: 27th.June.2016 — 🌍 Country No. 16: NAMIBIA | ‘The Vast Dry Plain’ 🇳🇦

*Check out Jørn and Lukas’ 3 videos created from the first couple of months of videography from the trip down below, before further footage was either lost or stolen:

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— Thank you for reading! —

♥,

Shani