Morro do Moco, Angola Highpoint

Morro do Moco, Angola Highpoint

Aug 2, 2025

Elevation 2622.52m +/-0.11m EGM2008

(location -12.462873, 15.173591)

Eric Gilbertson

Aug 1 – Fly to Luanda, drive to Quibala

Aug 2 – drive to Cangoma, moto taxi to Kajonde, hike summit, return to Waku Kungo

Aug 3 – drive to Luanda, flight out

I was in central Asia climbing country highpoints in July, and continued to Southern Africa where I had a few countries remaining. I was invited to Botswana to survey the top two contender highpoints there to determine the true country highpoint. I decided to tag on Angola and Namibia while I was in the area.

I would first start with Angola. There are several strategies for climbing this highpoint, Morro do Moco. One option is to fly to a nearby city, such as huambo or cutembala, then rent a car to drive around 1-2 hrs to the trailhead. Another option is to fly to Luanda, rent a car, and drive 9-12 hours to the trailhead. Finally, it is possible to hire a driver to drive from Luanda.

It is currently complicated to fly to cutembala or Huambo. Luanda now has two airports, one domestic and one international, and you must get between them to transfer from an international location. They are about a one hour drive apart, but this could take longer if traffic is bad.

More problematic is that the domestic airline TAAG does not accept online payments from US or Canadian credit cards. Middleman websites also appear to not work. It’s unclear how to buy this flight now without paying cash in person in Angola.

So I decided to drive from Luanda, as Travis G and Markus had previously done. Based on their beta I gave myself 45 hours on the ground from landing to departure. In hindsight it would have been wise to build in a buffer day.

I flew from Tbilisi to Luanda, landing at 330pm Friday. Inside the airport I saw a big lineup at an ATM before customs, and this made me nervous about ATMs running out of money within the country. That is a reason why locals would stock up as soon as possible. So I withdrew double the amount of cash I usually would. This turned out to be a good idea, because none of my credit cards worked in the country, and I noticed in general ATMs were not reliable.

I crossed the parking lot outside and found Europcar, where I reserved a rental. I was warned by reports from markus and Travis that they would try to cheat me, so I came mentally prepared. When I reserved the car online the documentation stated I was allowed 200km per day, then charged per km after that. The round trip drive to the trailhead would be 1200km, which would be a lot of extra cost.

However, my email confirmation said “unlimited mileage”. I think this was more of a general company policy that wasn’t supposed to apply in Angola. But I was determined to make it apply to me.

There was a customer in front of me, and somehow it took a full hour to process their paperwork. When it came to my turn, it somehow took another hour. I’m not sure why there were so many documents that needed signed.

At one point I needed to send a PDF of my email confirmation to the WhatsApp of the employee and he printed it out. I asked about unlimited mileage, and the employee said no, and pulled out a document that said 200km per day before extra fees. He then wrote 2 days, 400km on a piece of paper.

I found the PDF print out of my email, took out a pen and underlined the “unlimited mileage” section. I said unlimited mileage, then translated it to Portuguese on my phone and showed him.

The employee said ok, but I wanted to make certain there wasn’t some translation error.  I started to write that down on the document I was about to sign. He said no, then called his boss. Then he said ok again to the unlimited mileage. I eventually got him to confirm four times and I took his name down. With the written words on the email printout and his name, I figured I could argue my way out of charges on the return if they tried to scam me.

Since my credit cards didn’t work I had to pay in cash and leave 150USD cash deposit. Everything was complicated because we were using Google translate on my phone to communicate since I didn’t speak Portuguese. But finally by 6pm I was on the road driving.

Luckily I’d heard there are no real security concerns with driving at night, since I would be driving almost exclusively at night. In other countries like Guinea you have to be careful at night because people will dress up like police and have fake checkpoints, then rob you when you stop. But not in Angola I’ve heard. There are still the general risks of many people walking on the sides of the roads, poor lighting, potholes that are barely visible, and slow moving semis to pass.

I started in heavy rush hour traffic, and soon realized traffic laws are more like guidelines in Angola. Cars kind of flow like water along the road, drifting into open areas with no turn signals, ignoring lanes, passing on the shoulder, with motorcycles zipping between cars with no warning. The best strategy is to keep a constant slow speed and heading and allow traffic to flow around, always anticipating a motorcycle to swerve in front of you.

Outside of town I hit construction, and the road turned to rough dirt. My low clearance car scraped a few times and I was happy to have bought the highest tier of insurance.

My original plan was to get to Waku Kungo that night to stay at a hotel. That way I could store my extra bag of climbing gear at the hotel the next day while I climbed the peak, so i wouldn’t worry about it getting stolen from my car while I was hiking. Then I would return on the way back to pick it up.

But by 1230am after driving for 6.5 hours I was still far away. I found a small side road so pulled over and slept in the driver’s seat for a few hours.

At 430am I continued driving, and decided to fill up gas in Quibala at 630am when I had about ⅓ left. However, none of the stations in town had any gas. That seemed weird, but I saw Waku Kungo was a much bigger town and I could make it to there, so figured I could fill up there.

By 8am I reached Waku Kungo and started testing the gas stations. They all told me they were out of gas, but one said the Total station had some. That sounded promising, but when I went there I saw a line of 100 motorcycles to get gas, and the line wasn’t budging. There were a dozen women with gas tanks standing near the pump yelling at the attendants. There were two trucks in a different line, but they were getting gasoleo, while the motorcycles were in line for gasolina. Unfortunately I needed gasolina, which is regular unleaded fuel. Gasoleo is diesel.

I didn’t want to pull up behind the trucks since it would look like I was cutting the line. I parked on the side of the road and walked over and asked the attendant which line I should get in. He told me to wait there, and he went over to the main fuel tank. He put some sort of big dip stick inside and pulled it up. Then he shook his head and didn’t look happy.

More motorcycles were slowly pulling up making the line longer, but none were getting filled up. If I waited in that line I could be there for hours, only for the gas station to run out before I made it there. I thought I could offer the attendant a higher price if he’d fill my car up first, but then it would be obvious to the 100+ motorcycle riders that I’d cut the line and they would be furious at me. I was the only white guy around so wouldn’t be hard to find.

Someone told me another fuel truck was supposed to come tomorrow, but I didn’t have enough buffer time to wait a full day. If I didn’t continue driving south that morning I wouldn’t have time for the highpoint.

I figured in a town that big there had to be people hoarding gas and selling it on some sort of black market for higher prices. But I would need to make friends with a very well-connected person to get access to that.

I decided if I booked a night at a hotel, then maybe the receptionist could help me out, or get me in contact with the owner to help me out. It turned out there was a Ritz hotel just a few blocks from the Total station. That seemed like about the fanciest hotel in town, meaning the owner might be very well connected. I don’t think it’s officially affiliated with other Ritz hotels, but is instead just using the name. I saw it had a website and rooms were only $27 per night, but they were all booked out. I decided to go in person anyways.

I parked out front and went inside, and it was all empty. The receptionist said they had plenty of rooms, and I selected the cheapest one for $27 cash. Once I loaded my gear in the room and was officially a guest I started asking about gas.

The receptionist told me to wait for another person to come that spoke better English. The next person called up his boss, the owner of the hotel, and said they could help. He said his boss is friends with the owner of the Puma station, and that station secretly is holding on to some gas. If the hotel owner drove my car to the station, then they would fill it up. Bingo!

I had previously gone to that station and they told me the were out of gas, but that was clearly incorrect. The owner soon came down, and we all three loaded into my car. The owner drove it over to the Puma station and they filled up the car no problem. I then offered the owner some money for his help, but he refused since I was a guest at his hotel. As we drove back past the Total station the line had now grown to about 150 motorcycles and didn’t appear to be moving.

The receptionist had heard of Morro do Moco and was interested in joining me, but he couldn’t find anyone to cover his shift.

So finally by 930am I continued south with a full tank of gas. I estimated that would get me to the trailhead and back, and worst case I could probably ask the owner to get the car filled up again that night. Then I knew I had enough range to get back to Luanda and if I couldn’t find gas there I could just return it unfilled and pay a fee.

I drove south to Alto Hama and noticed the one station in town appeared to have gas, with a long line of motorcycles. I kept that in mind for the return.

By 1130am I reached Cangoma village and pulled off to check my map. A road continues from there but I’d heard it is too rough for a regular car. It is much better to take a motorcycle taxi up there. I think Morro do Moco has become popular enough with foreigners that any time a white person shows up in Cangoma it is assumed they are there to climb the mountain.

Indeed, a few locals soon approached my car and I just said moto taxi, Kajonde. They offered to take me to climb the mountain, and the price was about $15US round trip.

I parked my car next to the police station and continued on the motorcycle. By noon we were at the village, and indeed you would need a high clearance vehicle to get there. The motorcycle driver brought me to the chief of the village and I paid him $10 to climb the mountain. Then he insisted I was required to have local guide for $5. He yelled over to a teenager and told him to guide me up.

The motorcycle driver decided to join too. He was in flip flops carrying nothing, but I had enough water and snacks for all three of us.

The guide set a very fast pace, and I think he was hoping I would ask to slow down. He was breathing pretty heavy, but I didn’t want to give in, so I just kept up. The motorcycle driver had trouble keeping up in flip flops.

We traversed right around the base of the mountain, dropped down to cross a stream, then curved up. There were freshly burned fields down low, and I think they burn off the dead grass at the end of winter so spring growth can take over.

Higher up the trail got steeper and we entered some sparse trees. At one point we took an intersection to a pass, and the guide looked a little confused. I pulled up the map on my phone and directed him up the correct trail. That must have been his first time actually hiking up the peak.

After about 1.5 hours we reached the summit, marked by a big sign saying Morro do Moco. There was also a Dutch flag on top for some reason.

I quickly mounted the DA2 differential GPS unit on the highest boulder, which was a meter north of the summit cairn. I then gave the other guys some cookies and water and they were very appreciative.

After an hour we headed back down. Interestingly, there was a group of 20 hikers coming up, and they all had on the same orange shirt. They said they were a hiking club from Luanda there for the weekend. They’d driven hard core vehicles all the way to Kajonde.

By 430pm we were back to Kajonde, and then we rode back to Cangoma. My vehicle was in good condition, and I was happy to have parked it at the police station.

On the way back I stopped in Alto Hama, which still had gas, and managed to fill up. I then made it back to Waku Kungo by 930pm. I made the rounds of gas stations and by then they were all empty, but one attendant said a fuel truck was arriving at 1030pm and I could come back then.

I went back to my hotel and had dinner in the restaurant. I was happy to give the owner extra business for helping me out.

To get back to Luanda i estimated it would take around 8 hours from Waku Kungo based on my timing the previous day. So to give myself enough buffer time for my flight I decided to leave at 1am.

That meant I was able to just take a 2 hour nap in the hotel, then I headed out. I waited in a short motorcycle line at 1am at the gas station, then started driving north.

I managed to not get any flat tires weaving through all the potholes, and made it to the rental station by 930am on schedule. It was the same guy, and he indeed did not charge me for the extra mileage. However, he did say I needed to pay an extra $25 cleaning fee since the car was dirty. This seemed bogus, but I looked over the paperwork and it actually authorized him to charge up to $150 for a cleaning fee. So instead of arguing and havng him maybe increase it, I just paid.

I finally made it to the airport, ready for my next highpoint in Namibia.

Survey results:

I processed the summit data with TrimbleRTX and got an elevation 2622.52m +/-0.11m EGM2008. This is 2.5m taller than the official height of 2620m. I think this is the first ever elevation survey using a differential GPS unit, so it’s not too surprising the older survey would have some error.

 

 

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