Days 83-84... Swaziland

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We passed into the border of Swaziland and were astonished to see that virtually all road signage stopped immediatly! I don't know how people get around, as the maps are pretty primitive and inaccurate too! Still we did manage to get to our campsite within the Royal Hlane Game Reserve without too much drama. Our cabin was a very styley little thatch hut, with no electricity! But was very clean and comfortable. The campsite is right beside a watering hole, so we could sit on our deck and watch the hippos and crocs swimming around, which was fun, but a tad foreboding!

We were the only guests in the camp and decided not to eat at the restaurant, as they would have had to open it just for us! We made our own dinner and played monopoly by candle/lantern light! (very romantic if not a bit geeky!). We went on several game drives in the mighty Getz, there were dozens of well worn trails leading straight from the gate to our camp. We had a blast, the roads were terrible - full of pot-holes, which then filled with water due to the sporadic rain - the front-wheel-drive getz was having a hell of time! We should have been stuck at least 10 times, but the Getz just kept managing to get out of mortal danger(I didn't say it was mighty for nothing!) We slid and spun and had to drive through virtual lakes, but was great fun and we saw heaps of animals to boot, especially a massive amount of rhinos. Was quite scary as the rhinos tended to be larger than the car and we would only see them once we were right on top of them! The grass was extremely high and prevented much forward vision. Had a few close encounters with groups of rhinos, which was great (because we survived!)

The next morning we left early to fit in another game drive before the end of our brief visit to Swaziland (still, it's a small country!) We had another exciting blat around the park, which was doubly dodgey as the rain had made everything so slippery! Not much wildlife around so we left the park, passed through endless fields of sugar cane on route to the northern border.

Once we passed through the border (a very painless experience!) we had only about a 2hr drive before arriving in the fantastic Kruger Park in South Africa - a park of similar size to Wales!

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