Day Four - Swaziland

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Geo: -26.1141, 31.0989

Today was our earliest start yet. Breakfast SERVED at 5.15am in anticipation for a 6am departure from Lower Sabi, for our last early game drive of Kruger. Again, it was a relatively uneventful morning, with few extraordinary sightings. A few cool things to mention included a dwarf mongoose, some tree squirrels and a frisky Honey Badger.

Before we knew it, we had left Kruger and were heading towards the landlocked Kingdom of Swaziland. The border crossing was extremely quick and painless. Once the formalities were done, we walked across nomans land and entered Swaziland, the only non-democratic nation remaining in Southern Africa, ruled by a king; Mswati the 3rd. The population here is around about a million people and its currency is called the Illangeni (on par with the South African Rand). Swaziland has the highest AIDS rate in the world at over 25% of adults. It also has the lowest average life expectancy, being 35.

Our destination for the day was the Malalotja Nature Reserve, a game park with cottage accomodation in unspoiled mountain wilderness. We checked in and embarked on a 10 kilometre sunset walk through the mountains, treated to some spectacular scenery and spotting Bresbok antelope and occasional hyena tracks along the way.

Thankfully, there were no leopard or hyena attacks, and we arrived back at camp in time for delicious roast chicken and vegetables for dinner. We were befriended and essentially stalked by the camp resident domestic cat, TC, who followed us everywhere, spending all his time camped on our cottage doorstep. What a beautiful place Swaziland was!

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Photos

Sunrise in Kruger
Sunrise In Kruger

Kruger Lookout
Nat & I at a lookout point in Kruger

Nat Kris
@ Kruger

Sunway Group Shot
From the Left;
Two Russians (?? and Olga?), John and Paulie, Nat and I, Lesley and Margaret, Two Russians (?? and Zoya?) and Bert and Nele

Sunway Tour Guides
Shanli and Jonathan

Arrival in Swaziland
Nat in front of an interesting tree in Swaziland!

Dancing Roadside!
Some random people dancing in Swaziland. Payment was made in bananas, which they were delighted with.

Swaziland Accomodation
4 Person Cottages, whenever we had share accomodation, we shared with the Belgians Bert & Nele.
The Americans and Australian Ladies were always together, and the Russians always together.

Swaziland Lookout Nat
We drove to this point, 8-10km from camp, and then elected to walk back at sunset.

Swaziland Hiking
We start the walk back

Swaziland Sunset Pictures
Some stunning sunset pictures on our Swaziland walk

Comments

[Nat]

The missing names are Val and Isla :) although it did take 16 of the 17 days to find that out.