Grand Africa Cruise Trip Day 27/96 - Lobito, Angola - Turtles and Trees
This morning, we were sailing. The plan was to arrive in Lobito, Angola around 11:00 making for a relaxing morning.
The Christmas elves were busy again last night as all the Christmas displays were augmented with trays of cookies this morning.
Chef Ainsley added a second breakfast today on the pool deck for our sail-in featuring what he called banana fritters and apple beignets.
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| They were neither fritters nor beignets but they sure were tasty |
Our arrival went smoothly and we were docked by 11:00.
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| The Church of Our Lady of Arrábida |
To get a sense of where we are, I placed a red star on the map where Lobito, Angola is located.
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| We are on the southwest coast of Africa, north of Namibia |
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| Lobito is a coastal town with a population of around 487,000 |
Our day was spent on the peninsula where I placed a red star.
As final preparations for going ashore were made, dancers greeted us with a high-energy dance.
Getting clearance in these African countries is an interesting process. It typically involves multiple "officials" coming onto the ship for inspection. What "inspection" usually means is enjoying some of the excellent cuisine we have onboard. After they finish their second or third breakfast, the ship is cleared.
Today, we had a new wrinkle. Keep in mind that we were in Angola yesterday. Today, still in Angola, an immigration officer needed to conduct a face-to-face inspection with all passengers who would step off the ship. What that actually meant was that as we left the ship, a Seabourn officer handed us our passports, we handed them to the immigration officer, he looked at the pictures and us, and handed our passports to another Seabourn officer who replaced the passports in the file. Seriously. I'm sure Seabourn had to foot the bill (meaning we had to) for this "service". In addition, there was a room full of "officials", dining and "inspecting" along with multiple other official observers on the pier. It's all about the Angolan government getting their piece of the tourism pie. And it isn't unique to Angola - it seems to be an African thing. Don't get me wrong, some of this happens everywhere, but not to the extent we have seen here. It's actually humorous.
We didn't book anything today. We hopped the shuttle to a beach bar/restaurant to check out the beach.
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| Court of Lobito |
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| The Church of Our Lady of Arrábida |
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| Our beach stop |
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| Where there's water... |
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| Arlona spotted this tiny sand crab and its hole/home - you can get a sense of how small it is by comparing it to the grains of sand |
An unexpected treat was the release of a bunch of baby sea turtles into the sea. We just happened to be in the right place at the right time and got to see it all.
The Cambeú Project has released more than 68,000 olive and leatherback turtle hatchlings from Lobito's beaches.
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| These little guys and gals were no more than two to three inches long |
It was a lot of fun to see them make their way through the sand to the sea and head off to start their aquatic lives.
By the time they all were swimming, we were hot and hungry. We took the shuttle back to the ship to grab lunch and continue our low-key day.
After dinner tonight, we checked out the crew's Christmas decoration contest. Each group had to build a tree/decoration out of recycled materials. They were creative and cool and we were quite impressed.
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| A clever choir |
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| This was lovely |
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| This was nearly life-sized and amazing |
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| This one was amazing as the lower level was motorized, the carousel rotated and the horses actually went up and down |
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| Really clever use of egg cartons |
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| This one also had a can choir, plus it included several small cruising ducks |
It was nice seeing the effort the crew put into making these. They all did an amazing job.
Tonight's show was a solo show by the band singer, Amber Duimstra. We've had three dinners with her and found her to be a very nice person. She sang everything from Joni Mitchell to Etta James to Tina Turner and tore up the stage.
It was a fun show and the 45 minutes flew by.
Tomorrow is the first of four consecutive sea days as we sail to Cape Town South Africa.
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