Swaziland

To round off our time in Africa, we spent 3 nights in Swaziland. All border posts were in full working order & we managed to get a full set of stamps on our passports, after they were carefully inspected & we had paid the requisite taxes. On our way out of the country, we were much irritated by a huge Boer & his busload of Austrian tourists who tried to aggressively queue jump, while we were negotiating the bureaucracy - but we had sharper elbows!

Our 1st stopping place was the Big Bend Inn (can't verify how big the bend was, or even what was bent!) which was actually a motel in the classic U.S. style of the 1950s & yet managed to make us feel as if we had been transported back to colonial Africa. The only sign of the 21st C was a huge state-of-the-art TV. The Inn was spookily empty & the staff, including the cleaner showed us just about every room in the place before we insisted that Room 10 would be fine - we'd seen enough, really.........

The following day we headed for Mkhaya Game Park - hitting a suicidal dog on the way. We were the only car for miles but a large bumper-denting dog decided that was the moment to dash across the road. It cost over 200 pounds in repairs, but at least the car was still driveable. Not sure what state the dog was in - it wasn't a good idea to stop & suspect it would have been beyond help anyway.

We left our battered car behind, to be driven around the Game Park in an open top Landrover. The wildlife thankfully proved less troublesome than the local dogs, although an elephant got restive at one point. There were only 4 of us on the drive & it was a much more intimate encounter with wildlife than had generally been the case at Kruger. We saw elands at last ( apart from in Koisan rock art, where they featured heavily), elephants at very close quarters, a family of warthogs, white rhinos wallowing & farting in the mud, pregnant hippos, nyalas, antelopes, gnus (hows do yous dos?), giraffes, dung beetles rolling a ball of dung across the road. We were ridiculously excited about this last sighting!! We had a lovely lunch in an enormous open hut under a magnificently high thatched roof.

After a stop for supplies in Manzini, where we were unnervingly the only white people in town (but didn't feel threatened in any way, as we might have in S Africa), we drove on to the Swaziland Backpackers. We spent most of our time there in conversation with David Applebaum, a Montreal Jew who'd worked in Edinburgh for 6 months, has relatives in Glasgow & has lived in Quito for a year - he's going to e-mail us tips for our forthcoming stay in Ecuador. Hello David!

Our final stop was at Mantenga Nature Reserve - where it turned out that we had saved the best for last. It was one of the most wonderful places that we had ever stayed. Our "room" was a tent erected on a high wooden platform, under a thatched roof deep in the forest. We had a balcony, complete with loungers, looking out to the Mantenga Falls. There was a fridge & a kettle & an outdoor shower room, with vervet monkeys in residence in the treetops around us - it was just idyllic!! We spent most of our time on the balcony in complete tranquility soaking up the views. The only time we stirred out was for dinner & to wander round the cultural village that is part of the reserve, where we were treated to an ebullient display of traditional Swazi dance & singing.