Swaziland

---

About 1100 k’s we have been driving in 5 days so far when we leave Kruger Park

Crossing the mountainous border of Swaziland at Jeppes Reef , paid our dues (a mere 5 euro for 2 ), registered our camera’s, notebooks & iPad. The customs officer made a joke about

him fetching a drink for us for money, which is a blatant attempt to ask for money,

But we kept our heads cool and thanked him friendly while pointing to our bottles filled with water. He smiled (wow, what a row of nice white teeth!) and we smiled back (with smoke stained teeth I’m afraid…)

We got almost dizzy of the steep mountain road, like a roller coster up and down. The Toyota has 6 drives instead of the customary 5 in Europe, so we try to figure out how this works. Petrol is fairly cheap (1,10 euro p.l) and the car uses 6 lt a 100 k,so no worries at all

riding on the left side & on top of it with all instrument mirrored was daunting but we

Got used to it within 2 days. We did not hit curbs or people so far. Today I drove into Mbana

The capital city of Swaziland, trying to get hold of a bottle of wine.

Yesterday the restaurant/bar of our Lodge closed at 16.00 hrs and today is Sunday: supermarkets are open but for the alcoholic beverages.

Swaziland is a Kingdom by the way, the king seems to have 13 wives (a fortuitous number ?)

The people are smiling a lot and seem fun loving; to our amazement the capital city is fairly

modern, in contrast to the villages. Thanks to an error we got a recreational home for a mere 10,50 euro pp (this is one of the advantages of prebooking), eating out or buying food is cheap; for 5 euro you’ve a fairly decent plate with beef, rice and some salad on it; the supermarkets offer lot of choices and they do definitely not suffer of famish or lack of food.

The standard of living seem higher than I would have expected it to: it is easy to get influenced by media (like movies) with Soweto pictures as a mindset or stereotype.

Still there are lots of people walking aside the roads, with goods on their head, the shacks with veggies and fruits are unstable at least not to say unhygienic to Dutch standards.

After buying something a man asked for coins: for his kid (with the usual big brown eyes…)

Begging in disclosure, but it’s hard to resist since it was obvious this man and kid will never

reach the status of millionaires in this way.

We spend 2 days in this Kingdom before leaving for SA again, takes another 5 hrs drive to the border… this is definitely another kind of backpacking than my usual trips!

Although we’ve met some backpackers, but without any exception they stay for work, like peace corps and NGO e.g. Guess what : even an Aussie from Brisbane !

An discussion with an American spins into a ‘international cultural occurrence’: he calls me ‘snotty’ when I remark that a common pitfall is reasoning from our cultural background and biases; but he refuses to listen to other point of views, and leaves for the kitchen. My commend about his short fuse is applauded by the Brits and Swazilanders.

OK, so far for this chapter

---