In a group of fifteen people there will always be different opinions. My opinion was that it would be better to stay shorter at the beaches to be able to see more of cultural and natural sights, but already after a few days in Lobito I appreciated the majority of the group voting for staying a full week.
Lobito was probably the most comfortable place we had stayed on our whole Trans Africa trip as everything was so available in the huge supermarkets and the beaches were so clean and quiet. Lobito is an expat city as it has Angola’s deepest port where lots of European companies are operating and where there are rich people there are also fancy restaurants. We camped on the beach next to one of them called the Zulu Restaurant where they set up an outdoor screen every evening to show the European Football Cup. Watching the games on the beach with a cold “Cuca” beer, fast WiFi and some beautiful sunsets in the background was not wrong after the weeks of roughing it in the Congolese bush.
One of the days most of the group also went out fishing with hired boats and got lots of fish. The restaurant then offered to prepare the fish for us with some good sides and white wine. One of the days I also bought live chicken from the market that we slaughtered on the beach and cooked for lunch. With lots of blood to play around with, I showered myself and pretended I was a real viking before running dry heavingly into the ocean to clean the stinking blood off my face. Some kilometers north of the city we also drove through some pretty awesome landscape called the moon Valley. Had it been in any other country then there would have been lots of other tourists, but here there were none. We had it all to ourselves and watched it for an hours time before driving onwards.
The Moon Valley 60kms outside of Luanda