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Published: September 22nd 2011
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Our destination in Swaziland was the Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary – a beautiful retreat up in a valley in the mountains where you can sleep in traditional bee hive huts. We really had no idea what to expect in Swaziland as there was no real website for Mlilwane and it was not on trip advisor. So for me I was a bit nervous as I like to know what I am getting into ahead of time. Once again though, this place far exceeded anything we even imagined.
Before reaching our destination, we first stopped at the Swazi Candle Factory – a little place very close to Mlilwane where they make candles by hand. It’s not really a factory like what we think of. It is more of a Candle shop. The man was sitting right there in the back making the candles by hand and you can watch and even touch and play with the warm pliable wax. The candles come in the shapes of all kinds of animals and are so colorful and intricate – it’s amazing. And they are made so that as they burn they burn a hole down through the middle of the candle –
so it creates a luminary effect. Not only was there the candle factory, but this little place tucked away in the mountains also had a market, a restaurant, and an adorable playground for kids full of these beautiful handmade pink butterflies (Riley would have loved it!). I just couldn’t believe how beautiful it was. Part of the disbelief stems from the fact that it seemingly came out of nowhere. It’s just this little pretty spot in the valley where you can sit and look out at the mountains in front of you. The food was amazing as well – I got a biltong salad. Biltong is a Southern African thing… it’s like jerky but not as tough. This was beef biltong with blue cheese and all kinds of other good things – it was amazing. Jeff swears his meal was better though – it was close… he had a chicken curry concoction in a colossal bread thing… I forget what it was called but it was a local thing too and it was gooooood! We enjoyed our meal and after a long period of browsing at the candle factory , I finally picked something (to the relief of the men)
and we then headed over to the Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary – which was not far at all from where we were.
Mlilwane was stunning. You could see the mountains all around you and there was wildlife everywhere: warthogs, zebras, antelope, monkeys… Since they have never been bothered by people you can get amazingly close on foot and they don’t pay you any mind at all. We also got to see the Roan antelope. These animals are beautiful and regal. They are very high on the endangered list and the wildlife sanctuary is participating in a program where they brought a handful of these animals from another country and are trying to breed them and then reintroduce them to the wild in nearby game reserves. So far they have been very successful in breeding them, which was good to hear and they are lovely animals. Hopefully they can be successful in reintroducing them to the game reserves as well. We went to the fence where they have this conservation project and stood there to look at them and take pictures and as we were standing there – this one comes right up to us – like a dog would –
and starts rubbing its horns on the fence as if he wants us to pet him. And we actually were able to pet him… he was so cute! There was also a eucalyptus forest on the property that smelled amazing as you drove by it. They also used that wood for the bonfire so that area had that same sweet smell.
We checked in to our bee hive hut after stopping by a pond to look for hippos and crocs. They were all sleeping I guess as we didn’t find any there. I did however see a huge croc when we checked in to the camp. Our bee hive hut was amazing. From the outside it looks small and inconspicuous. However, upon walking in it is like walking into this spacious and intricate dome. They make these by hand (as they do everything I suppose) and you can just lay in the bed and look up at the pattern of the wood and how it is weaved together so perfectly… it’s like nothing we have ever seen for sure. Swaziland is a very interesting place as it is still a Kingdom run by a King. So at the border
you see that you are entering the Kingdom of Swaziland and there is a picture of the King wearing traditional tribal dress. Per our guide, Pete, the King is very rich with 15 wives and 5 palaces; meanwhile the people of Swaziland live in poverty - a sad and unjust system... As we drove through the countryside we witnessed a lot of this poverty first hand.
We took a sunset walk upon which we came across a herd of zebra with a baby. They were nice enough to take a picture with us 😊 We then headed to dinner where we enjoyed a good meal looking out over another one of the ponds. The sound of the wildlife at night was deafening – it was really amazing.
We did have a little adventure with paying for dinner... Jeff went to the bar to see what was going on and the waiters were all looking at the floor with flashlights. I asked the one guy what was going on and he said “not good”, and then explained that he had dropped our card and it fell into a crack and under the floor boards. They tried all sorts of
things to get it out while we watched and finally had to bring someone to pull up the floor board so we could retrieve it. The funny thing was the difference in the customer service there – although they were nice enough – you would have thought we dropped the card and they were trying to do us a favor by getting it out for us. There was no sense of urgency and no apology. In fact, our guide, who was with us, had to get a little abrupt with the manager and told her that if she didn’t have the maintenance man to pull the floor board up within 15 minutes, he was going to do it himself – Jeff and I could not contain our laughter at the whole mess. The fact that we drank to pass the time while we waited for this whole thing to get resolved I’m sure helped to make it very funny. When they finally got it out they brought us our meal bill and a bar tab – to which I was shocked! We were only drinking at the bar because we were waiting for them to get our card out. When
I brought this up to them they at least did take the bar tab away – but we still paid for the whole meal. We continued to laugh about that the entire night. The manager was so mad at us she didn’t speak to us the rest of the night or the next morning. All we did was say we were not leaving our card and didn’t want to stay up all night as she wanted to bring the maintenance guy early the next morning. What a night…
The next morning we had a good breakfast and then headed out to Mozambique. As we drove out of Swaziland we continued to see a lot of poverty all around us. When we stopped for gas a little boy came by selling necklaces (maybe around 5 years old?) – I think his name was Nesi if I understood him right. Anyway – I practically bought him out.
We crossed through the border at Mozambique successfully (no easy feat) and switched vehicles as we needed a heftier four wheeling truck to get through the “roads” in Mozambique… More to come...
Pics to come later too.
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Sahet Secol
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Love the beehive huts
What a great experience you had. Those beehive huts are especially interesting. http://petsittingbrisbane.com