Swaziland Travelogue

MBABANE

Swaziland was a truly beautiful country for us. Unfortunately I was still rather shaken from our bad experience in Mozambique, but I still found Swaziland to be a magical place, which just goes to attest to its atmosphere and beauty. We arrived in Mbabane Swaziland by bus from Maphuto Mozambique. Once we were off of the bus I just wanted to find somewhere to stay. For our first night in Mbabane we stayed at Hill Street Lodge, which was a short taxi ride out of town. The room was very basic with a shared bathroom. When we laid down on the bed though, we could see the ceiling was completely covered in mold, I didn't care, I was just pleased to be out of Mozambique. After checking in we decided to walk back into town. As we left the lodge a group of about twenty young guys came walking up behind us, I felt a bit uneasy but they chatted to us a little as they caught up with us and then soon walked on. Mbabane is very hilly so walking down to town was no problem but we would definitely get a taxi back up to our hotel! There were two main shopping centres, the Swazi Plaza and the Mall and New Mall which housed department stores, restaurants and banks. Once in town we looked around for somewhere to hire a car, we settled on one and booked a car for about a week, which we would pick up the following morning. I vaguely remember getting something to eat in town at the Continental in Swazi Plaza, a fairly busy pizza and grill place. We sat outside and planned where we were going to drive to the next day. We were very tired from the bus journey and so we went back to our accommodation early. Bright and early the next morning we picked up our hire car as soon as they opened. We headed off to enjoy our first safari in Swaziland.

HLANE ROYAL NATIONAL PARK

We found the park without trouble and after checking in we were handed some keys and given directions to our accommodation. We were impressed, our home for the next couple of nights was fantastic, it was a very large brick built three bedroom cottage. It was well furnished and was complete with everything we needed from bed linen to crockery, all we needed was food which we had bought with us. There were two other properties nearby but as the surrounding area was quite densely populated by various trees and bushes we couldn't see them. Once it grew dark we could just about make out the lights from one of our neighbours houses. Our cottage had a lovely outside seating area and also the biggest BBQ pit I have ever seen. It was absolutely huge, you could easily have cooked a whole buffalo on it, we made do with some steaks that looked completely lost on it. After eating our delicious steak we sat outside chatting and enjoying the peace and quiet, well apart from all the sounds of various creatures going about their business nearby. The next morning we had arranged to go out on a game drive. It was just Richard and myself in an open Land Rover with a driver and another man who looked out for animals for us and held a big gun! Hlane Royal National Park is the largest of Swaziland's parks. It used to be a private royal hunting ground but now boasts the main attraction of big game including Rhinoceros, Elephant, Lion, Leopard and Cheetah. Hlane is a great place to view Elephants and Rhino on foot, if you feel brave enough you will be safe in the company of a guide. Elephants and Rhino are found in the northern area of the park which you can visit in your own vehicle if you wish. The southern area of the park is home to the lion, leopard and cheetah all in various enclosures as well as more elephants and rhinos, you can not walk around this area. We expected the majority of the animals to be completely indifferent to our presence as they must be used to people looking at them all day. But we were obviously of interest to a couple of rhino. We were really close to them and at first they just stood in front of the Land Rover quite still. We were told that they were mother and child, the baby started to come a bit closer which obviously concerned it's mother as suddenly she made a scarily fast move towards our vehicle. Exciting, yes, scary, very! We were both very impressed by the speed at which our driver had us speeding in reverse back up the dusty track away from death! It was really great being just us two being driven around watching and listening so closely for any signs of big game. Apart from the rhino we also saw lots of lions really close up. After our game drive we went back to our accommodation for something to eat. Our cottage was so nice, made from stone and overlooking a dry river, it felt so remote, a great location, and surprisingly reasonably priced. Our two nights there passed quickly and we were on the move again hopefully our next couple of nights at another game reserve would be as good as Hlane Royal National Park.

MLILWANE WILDLIFE SANCTUARY

After having such great time at Hlane Royal National Park we hoped this next place and our accommodation would be just as good. We need not have worried it was also great, it felt very different though which was good. This time our home for the next two nights was a very rustic looking wooden hut. After unloading the car we didn't stop to look around we went out to drive around and hopefully see some animals. We did see lots of game, including some hippos, some of whom were happily wallowing in some water whilst a couple of others lay on the dirt in the sun. Obviously you are not supposed to leave your car in these areas, but that didn't seem to concern one family we saw. They had also seen the hippos and decided to take their children out of the car for a closer look. They soon rushed back to the relative safety of their car when another passing car shouted to them about the danger of hippos and that just below them on the grass bank leading down to the water were a couple of crocodiles! We were more than happy to stay inside our car spotting so many animals and taking photographs. Once we had seen enough we headed back to our log cabin. Inside it was quite compact but had everything we needed. There were exposed wooden beams in the ceiling and there was an open plan kitchen lounge area and then a separate bedroom and bathroom. This place didn't feel so isolated as Hlane we were more in the open and we could see the other wooden huts nearby. We had been warned not to leave any windows open when we went out as there were lots of inquisitive monkeys who would come in and steal our food and generally cause chaos. We did see lots of the little monkeys playing around in the nearby trees and they were not shy about approaching us. The name Mlilwane refers to 'little fire' that occasionally happens when lightning strikes the granite mountains. Mlilwane's wildlife mainly consists of giraffe, zebra, antelope and if you are lucky you may see the odd crocodile. So if we were in luck we would get to see different animals from the ones we saw at Hlane. There is over 100km of road in Mlilwane which makes for some good driving on your search for game. There are guided tours in the forms of drives, walks and even mountain bike tours, we were happy to drive around in our hire car. The car we hired was a very basic saloon and obviously a car with higher ground clearance is an advantage. We managed just fine in our car although there were parts of the road that had large rocks on them so we were extra careful. After all of the driving along the bumpy road we were ready for a drink so we headed back to the main rest camp. There is a restaurant there called the Hippo Haunt which has a large outside seating area where we relaxed on loungers in the sun with a cool drink. The restaurant was very popular and busy and at 3pm every day the hippos are fed which made for a good photographic opportunity. We thoroughly enjoyed staying here, it was very relaxing and easy going and very popular. We had stayed at two great game reserves and seen lots of animals up close, we would be sad to leave Swaziland.

PHOPHONYANE NATURE RESERVE

Before we left Swaziland we wanted to see just a little more of this beautiful country. We drove to the Phophonyane Nature Reserve and once we were there we walked around for hours. It was a gloriously hot day so we headed to the Phopanyane waterfall on the eastern side of the reserve. It seemed like a long drive just to see this waterfall but it was very pleasant just strolling around. There were apparently hundreds of colourful birds who are attracted by the subtropical vegetation but we didn't really see any. Other animals at this nature reserve include mongooses, bushbabies, otters and various snakes, but we didn't get to see any of these either. I think they are a little harder to spot than the somewhat larger elephants and hippo at the other game reserves!

It was nearly time for us to leave Swaziland but we didn't want to leave without some souvenirs. We found a nice shop selling every shape, size and colour of candle you could imagine. It was Swazi Candles on the road to Manzini, I bought my mum some different candles as she loves all sorts of candles. We also wanted to buy something for ourselves so we looked around some of the many other craft shops. We found a really cool shop that sold very different handicrafts, not the usual wooden animals or tourist stuff. Even the building was cool, with many of the walls made from very decorative sheets of metal, and interestingly shaped windows. There was so much cool stuff here I think we could quite happily have bought up the whole shop. Unfortunately most of our favourite pieces were huge so that counted them out. We did find some smaller bits though including a wooden animal! No not your usual type, not a giraffe or an elephant, actually I'm not exactly sure what it is supposed to be! Anyway 'he' is made from a tree branch and all of his limbs are detachable, for packing! Parts of him are scorched to provide contrast and colouring. There were lots of these wooden animals all over the floor and once we picked our favourite and went to pay for our goodies. We saw him dismantled and out into a shoe box which had his name on 'kach', scorched into one end of the box. All of these animals had their own different names, we now use him as a door stop for our front door and he is the 'Star' of his own short film on this site too! Our time in Swaziland was over all to quickly and now it was time to give back our hire car. Once we had handed the car back we caught a bus from Mbabane to Pretoria South Africa.