Luanda - Love it or leave it

As we said, this place is a mass of stark contrasts butting heads.
Filthy rich folk living next door to filthy slums - cutting edge modern architecture and tatty concrete blocks, a hangover from the Cubans - sterile new housing estates, palm trees and granite and bustling mud shanty towns filled with livestock and naked kids - swanky million dollar yachts in the new marina, a ripple away from a rusting hulk, aground on a sand bar - a clean beach with a promenade, health and body conscious joggers and a beach filled with litter, fish heads and feaces - posh new 4X4's, barely a year old, scratched and dented from the traffic jam war in gridlock with un-roadworthy taxis belching black fumes - the night skyline, neon signs and twinkling lights, a window dressing disguising the sewage in the disintegrating streets - smiley, happy people living an economic honeymoon and blank dejected faces, eyes holding the pain and suffering of the past.

A typical hairy African city. Certainly not a place for this dog and 2 chicks! Perhaps a trial run for the capitals to come? Kinshasa, here we come!