Advertisement
Published: November 3rd 2011
Edit Blog Post
M – Swaziland is one of those exotic place names I can remember from my childhood. Perhaps I heard it on the news or maybe I saw it on a map but I suspect it is more likely that I saw it on a stamp - yes I did collect stamps as a kid!
We needed to get to Durban from the Kruger to visit the Indian Consul and cutting through Swaziland is the quickest route. Swaziland is an odd place. Both it and Lesotho sit like islands within the North East of South Africa. Due to the need to deposit our passports at the Indian Consul in Durban for a week to get our Indian Visas we couldn’t actually go to Lesotho but I wasn’t going to miss out on Swaziland!
Swaziland is a small place, probably 300km North to South by 100km East to West. There isn’t a great deal to do there other than visit one of its two national parks which. Swaziland has a king who has many wives and for each of them he has built a palace. In fact, each year thousands of the countries virgins gather to perform, partially naked, the Reed
Dance where the King has the option of choosing another bride.
Unfortunately we actually arrived in Swaziland a few days after the conclusion of this ceremony which, according to tourists we met, was essentially several thousand semi-naked girls dancing in a very large field in front of the King and several thousand onlookers. A strange but apparently amazing experience. Anyway, because of Swaziland’s mounting debt the King couldn’t afford to build another palace this year so he didn’t choose a new bride. Perhaps we’ll go back another time when he can afford to add to his hareem.
The focus of our trip was a visit to the Royal National Park at Halani. This was set up by the King’s father 40-50 years ago to protect endangered species, in particular Rhino. We intended to stay a night but it was so relaxing, quite and cheap that we stayed for two nights.
My highlight was the arrival of the Rhinos at the watering hole at about 3pm each afternoon to drink and basically lounge around in the mud. The first day we saw a mere handful but the next afternoon I counted 21 Rhino scattered in the mud around
the pool.
My long time friend and our local Africa guru has a saying,
“In Africa, just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” Rhino watching with just a two string barbed wire, supposedly electrified, fence between us and the Rhinos probably falls into this category. Enjoy the photos. And yes there was a stage when 9 of the gathered 21 Rhinos were seriously starring me down as I contemplated what might be my last sip of beer. Kate meanwhile was nonchalantly reading her magazine in the shade!
Once the Rhinos had stopped eyeballing me and either moved on or dropped back into the mud I was able to relax a little bit and had another Discovery Channel moment which made me chuckle. Take a look at my next blog, a series of photos of the male Rhino using a large stone as a scratching post!
Scroll down to enjoy the photos.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.187s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 8; qc: 58; dbt: 0.0912s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb