Blogs from Swaziland, Africa - page 12

Hello from Swaziland! The trip here was loooong, but I finally made it on Wednesday night. I first stayed at a hostel called Sondzelas in a game reserve that had been recommended to me, but it was AWFUL (a lot of potential, but the staff were grumpy and it had no atmosphere). After a day myself and a Dutch girl named Saane moved to Swaziland Backpackers, which is nearby and so much better. It's been cloudy here but hot, and the first day we were pretty tired and didn't get up to much. We went for a walk though and saw some wildlife, including a mom and baby warthog which were pretty cute. On the bus drive here we also saw a whole bunch of giraffes, one of which ran across the road---their legs are so ... read more

Out of the 47 countries in the world which I have visited, the tiny Kingdom of Swaziland has to rate in my top 5. It is a fascinating mix of relatively wealthy whites and a few middle class blacks, and many fairly poor blacks and feels very friendly and relaxed. It is green and very beautiful and has influences from South Africa in its lifestyle and supermarket culture. It feels quite wealthy after countries such as Malawi. Unfortunately up to 40% of its population is reported to be HIV positive but in spite of this horrendous statistic and a very low average life expectancy, most Swazilanders seems cheerful, optimistic and friendly. Tom and I stayed at a great backpacker hostel called Legends which was very friendly and welcoming. We hired bicycles and cycled a fair old ... read more

Swaziland was nothing like I expected. I had bought a brand new travel guide and read about Alpine peaks, cheese, chocolate, Heidi, and a national obsession with local hero Roger Federer. Nothing of the sort - the chocolate tastes of cardboard the cheese of plastic. Swaziland is a tiny, under-developed kingdom mostly surrounded by South Africa like a nut in a spanner, with Mozambique sharing a small border on the other side. It was held as a British colony long after we handed South Africa it's independence. It was then afforded its own independence in 1968 and is now one of the only absolute monarchist states in the world. In Swazi tradition the king rules alongside his mother. The current king being King Mswati III. The Swazi's openly idolise their King, even though it seems to ... read more

Swaziland is great to drive through....but better to stop. We made our stop in Hlane Nat. Park...nice campspot where we were surprised by a nice culture show in the evening around the campfire. Next days Game Drive was even better.....Eye to eye with some Lions at just a couple of meters was great!! Trying with your rental car to drive through te parks 4wd tracks was also a nice adventure!! After Swaziland we went through St. Lucia Wetlands and made it to Durban! Just a city, awfull hostel but luckily some good food, nice movie a bit of shopping and Ushaka Marineland made our stay an good one after all!! Finally some time to lay on the beach do some surfing and relaxing we thought but the weather thought different. Because of bad weather we decided ... read more

Blog Update You may have been wondering why we haven't published any blogs for the last couple of weeks. Unfortunately, the Travel Blog website crashed and resulted in the loss of thousands of people's entries, including ours. We are trying to retrieve our old entries, without a huge amount of success, but in the meantime our priority is to get the new entries published so you can see what we've been upto. Hopefully we will be able to recover our old entries, but for the time being, you won't be able to see them on our blog. Journey to Swaziland Set off for Swaziland, which Paul (our friendly host at the backpackers) said would take around 3.5 hours on good roads. Yeah, maybe if you go the easy way! Lesson One: always familiarise yourself with the ... read more