Swaziland & Mpumalanga


Advertisement
Swaziland's flag
Africa » Swaziland
July 8th 2005
Published: May 16th 2011
Edit Blog Post

Driving into Swaziland in the late afternoon the scenery seemed rather forlorn. Dusty fields of brown stubble, sparce mud-brick homesteads and little sign of life.

We drove through Manzini, the country's largest town, and were dropped off at the Legends backpacker hostel which we could see immediately was of the more basic variety.

On the upside, our friend Dorian with whom we had spent much time at Eshowe and St. Lucia, was unexpectedly sitting on the sofa.

Legends was a low grade backpackers in a prime location. We stayed there for a couple of days while we checked out that section of the Ezulwini Valley. Just down the road was the Swazi Cultural Village in which a guide explained the layout of the huts and Swazi customs. For example, when a man dies his oldest brother gets to inherit his wife. It occurred to me that this could be a mixed blessing.

We took a taxi to the famous Sondzela backpackers which we were relieved to find was very excellent.

This hostel has the distinction of being located within the boundaries of the Milwane National Park.

We stayed in a rondavel traditionally built with mud walls and a thatched roof but it was actually quite luxurious on the inside. Here we were visited by an ostrich, a family of warthogs and the biggest lizard we have seen so far, about 12 inches nose to tail. Fortunately none of these made it into the room.

There are no big cats in this reserve so we just followed the walking trails looking at the abundant wildlife. On one day we were lucky enough to see all the hippos out of the water.

This was the first place on our travels which is affiliated to the YHA so we finally got a discount from our membership.

Whilst we were enjoying all this nature stuff there was a continuing need for Linda to see a dentist. We ascertained that there are only 2 dentists in Swaziland, both based in the capital Mbabane, our next destination.

We arrived at the hostel fairly early in the morning and phoned up the dentist first thing. No appointments available, but "turn up and we'll fit you in".

The dentist was a very jovial Russian man who seemed to really care about Linda's buccal plight. He took impressions that morning,she returned once for a fitting, and everything was sorted by 4pm the next day. A quick way to spend 160 quid but can't complain about the service. In between times we acquainted ourselves with cloudy Mbabane, a nice but unremarkable town.

I had expected to spend the beast part of a month in Swaziland but in the event 7 days were sufficient.

We changed our plans slightly and decided to go back into South Africa to take advantage of the ideal weather conditions and the low season - and we still had a few weeks left on our visas.



We used Nelspriut in Mpumalanga (formerly Transvaal) as the jumping off point for other nearby towns.

This are is suppose to be the largest commercial forestry in the world and indeed it seems that all the land between the towns is occupied by row upon row of pine trees, probably covering thousands of square km.

In Sabie we went to the Forestry Museum and I found out that there is a lot more involved in cultivating trees that I had imagined.

We moved further north to the town of Graskop where we stayed at the Green Castle Backpackers. The people at Sabie had strongly advised us "Don't go there. The guy is a wierdo-creep" and they courted our disfavour by making us miss a lift that this guy had arranged.

Of course, this made me intrigued to find out what it was like so we went anyway and found the owner, Andre, to be friendly and enthusiastic and only mildly wierd and creepy.

His hostel was lovely and clean and had the distinction of having four massive African glockenspiels in the main room on which I tapped out a few tunes.

His son took us on a tour to Blyde Canyon (the worlds third biggest) and a bunch of impressive waterfalls, making for a good day out.

There is an area called Bourke's Luck Potholes where 2 merging rivers have created lots of mini whirlpools which have cut potholes into the rock over unimaginable geological time. These whirlpool/pothole combinations have acted as centrifuges, separating out gold from the silt and accumulating it in the bottom of the pots. This fellow, Bourke, was first on the scene and scooped the lot for himself. Bourke's luck.

The tour cost 15 pounds each and was the first paying tour we have done after almost 6 months in Africa.

Graskop is a very nice town and is probably one of the last place in South Africa where you can still get a decent house for £20K.

At the end of our stay "wierdo-creep" Andre gave us a very generous discount and a free lift back to Nelspruit so we were certainly glad to have met him.

We then headed south of Nelspriut to Kaapsche Hoop a hamlet known for its wild horses, perched near the edge of the escarpment overlooking the Lowfelt. Walking along the edge of the escarpment the tops of the trees in the Lowfelt are about 1km below and the view stretches back to Swaziland on a good day.

Tomorrow we are crossing into Mozambique. This should prove interesting.


Additional photos below
Photos: 23, Displayed: 23


Advertisement



Tot: 0.127s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 12; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0623s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1; ; mem: 1.2mb