So I'm trying to see if I can use blogger as my fotoblog. Since Anselm's birth two months ago, we have sent all our friends, families, and and co-workers a total of ONE (1) fotograph of our first-born. At the same time, I keep telling myself that I want to start blogging again.

SO...the natural confluence of these two basic needs lead to blogger as our fotoblog. But before we get to what everybody wants, we have to establish some ground rules. After all, we can't just have what used to be a travel blog suddenly turned into family blog. Il faut pas melanger les choses.

At the same time though, the thought of creaing a new website and/or blog with the accompanying need to create yet another user name, password, and all the related parafernalia is the last thing I need in my hectic lifestyle and would go counter-current to my world view of simplification.

Hence, the new Altropico. In this new encaration it will be where I post text and fotos of our adventures as may relate to family, leisure travel, work, and the things we see around us.

For this test, I chose to post some pics of a recent trip I took to Angola. I was in Luanda for a lightning two-day trip to meet with our local partners and the client for a potential project. I had been to Africa only once before (again for work) and only for a couple of days in Morroco, spending one night in Casablanca and another in Rabat. I was intrigued to find how this mix of French and Arabic cultures worked. The overall feeling I got is that it was a place I would like to spend a good deal of time in to get to know, but in the end, I always felt very much a stranger in a strange land.

In Angola the story was very different. There was an immediate familiarity to the place. Being from Honduras, the chaotic traffic, dirty streets, and happy people made me feel immediately right at home. Luanda is definitely a city that has seen better days. But then again, one gets the same feeling in Lisbon. To its credit, Luanda has the excuse of having endured 30 years of civil war. The peace in Angola is only five years old and you get the sensation everyhere that the entire country wants to wake from that nightmare and start rebuilding itself. Lots of time was lost and they have a lot of catching up to do.

Old Luanda with ships bringing in new Luanda in background

One of the popular SUV models. However, THE most popular one is Toyota's Prado Land Cruiser (not pictured)

Once upon a time, Luanda was known as the "Paris of Africa". Today, it may well be the new frontier. At least, that is the vibe the town gives off. The brutal juxtaposition of desperate poverty against the influx of massive amount of petrodollars can be jarring. The poverty is no worse than what you see in most developing countries, but the oppulence that swims around it is hard to reconcile. The streets are choked with new SUVs and they can't build office towers and hotels fast enough.

BP's new office tower in Luanda, a twin structure is being errected behind to house the colony of foreign oil workers...and execs.