Elenka and I got up in the middle of the night and drove through a near-freezing forest atop a safari/jeep, then bounced across an African veldt until way past the sun came up in search of lions and rhinoceros. And boy, did we find them - three female lions and a pair of young males - walking within a short jump and a bite from us. We were so frightened. Then ten minutes later we stumbled upon three massive rhinos. Elenka was in her glory.  


Aside from the lions, the rhinos and all the other usual suspects, the Swazi highlight for me was the supermarket/shopping mall in the town of Simunye, not far from where we stayed in Hlane National Park. This grocery store could not match Toronto's hi-end Loblaws chain, but it's a giant step above No Frills. Think Freshco, with style. Each grocery aisle is colour coordinated. In the refreshment section, for example, you find the clear soda waters, followed by greenish ginger ales, then orangey orange pop, followed by the blackish colas. The entire store is artfully designed in this way. The guys working at the meat counter were so taken with my need to photograph the shelves that they wanted their photos taken too.    


Buying Power:


The average yearly income in Swaziland, a country with approximately 50 per cent unemployment, is around $5,000 per year. Yet the cost of grocery items is considerably higher than it is in Toronto. Couple that with a society that has more than 25 per cent of its population infected with HIV/AIDS, and they have what you might think would be a panic situation of immense proportion. But it's not that way at all. All of the people we encountered at the supermarket/outdoor mall were friendly, and their smiles said they were happy too - way happier it seemed than the googlers we see at similar places in Toronto.


Leaving Swaziland was an adventure. Jim was driving when we came to the first of our half dozen or so check-points. The border guard jumped in front of the car and raised his arms. Then he rushed quickly around to the driver's side, shoved his hand through the window for Jim to shake and asked how he was doing, with an ear-to-ear smile. 


After a document check, the next border guard had Jim get out and open the trunk. Then he wanted to know how some red droplet stains, that we'd neglected to wash away, had gotten on the side of our car. Jim being questioned about the blood-like droplets made me nervous. But Jim handled the situation with mastery. His arms went out from his sides as he attempted to describe something of great size, then he made a loud pooping sound with his mouth, to indicate that a very big bird had taken a massive in-flight dump on our car. Shocked looks were immediately followed by an abundance of smiles and guffaws.


The final Swazi border guard was female. She looked at us apprehensively, as though we might have abducted a member of their Royal Family, and then asked why we were leaving Swaziland. It took a few moments before we caught the woman's subtle tongue-in-cheek. What she really meant was, why the hell would you want to go into South Africa when you could stay here in Swaziland? She was just playing silly b*****s with us.