On the road to Swaziland

Executive Summary

• A 'short drive' turns out to be 6 hours

• More potholes, chickens, goats, schoolchildren, hawkers, hitchhikers, mothers with babies, cows, and crazy drivers on the roads

• Swaziland is a beautiful country with stunning scenery

• I don't, however, recommend getting lost there after dark.

After a perfect 3 days at Sabi Sands we bid farewell to the lodge bound for a night in Swaziland en route to Phinda, another game lodge near St Lucia wetlands and in Natal province where dad was born. It would be fair to say that this was an extremely stressful day - back in the Audi navigating potholes and 4WD tracks out of Kruger, following seemingly back roads to Nelspruit (the closest major city to Kruger) and then the Swazi border, manoevring around the now usual obstacles on South African highways (with the added fun of a border crossing!), and of course what looks like a 4 hour drive actually being closer to 6.

On top of this I hadn't had much sleep, the family was generally bickering, and dad left his SLR camera at the lodge when we were checking out.

Ok, admittedly the words I uttered when Dad hit a massive rock on the way out of Kruger were amongst the more profane that have come out of my mouth in recent memory, though I do contend there was a semi colon between 'me' and 'Jesus'.

So anyway we arrive at the Swaziland border, all of us in a ripper of a mood, and try to work out just exactly how to exit South Africa and enter Swaziland. It was here that I realised I've never done a land border crossing before (well I think I crossed into Canada once but that hardly counts). When we received our Swaziland stamp and went back to the car to enter the country, we were informed by the border guard that we were to have paid 50 rand 'tax', which he collected off of us and came back with a scrap piece of paper with a stamp acknowledging as much. None of us knew if this was remotely legit (the guy was in plain clothes, by the way) but what were we to do, and in the scheme of things 50 rand isn't much. Plus, if it was a rort it was a well orchestrated one with a stamp and everything.

(turns out this was legit - on exiting Swaziland there was a sign to entrants notifying them of the 50 rand border tax)

I will say this for Swazi roads - they have much fewer potholes, chickens, goats, cows, and other obstacles to avoid whilst driving. The roads and scenery were positively gorgeous on both respects - just too bad it was nearling dusk and we had an hour of driving left in us...

Reaching Mbabane as night has fallen, following the directions given to us by the travel agent plus with the aid of 3 different maps we had purchased ourselves...we got horribly lost and completely confused. All of us were at the end of our rope and it was a ridiculous situation all around. Several laps of the same stretch of highway led us no closer to the hotel, and only when we pulled over to get the Lonely Planet out (which actually had our hotel in there) did we have some kind of specific directions to this joint.

(Did I mention that car jackings and crime in general is rife in Mbabane after dark?)

Somehow we found the Royal Swazi Resort & Spa and went to check in...to find that they had given our room away (apparently Swaziland is popular this time of year) and we were put up in their 'sister hotel' across the way. The bellman/greeter person offered to show us - no way were we getting lost again, even though I thought I knew where it was - so here I am, driving for a few blocks next to a Swazi man in an animal skin loin cloth with a very distressed mom in the back seat and dad taking the complementary shuttle from the main hotel to the sister hotel...

Can we say, Reinertsen family fun time!

Everyone deals with stress in different ways. Dad and I consumed pints of Castle Lager in the downstairs bar whilst Mom went straight to bed...

This also marks the time where we started following directions to the 1/10th of a kilometer and Dad decided to narrate every sign en route to ensure EVERYONE knew whether we were supposed to or not supposed to take it. (This did get somewhat annoying by the end of the trip BTW)

We left Swaziland the next morning, in the car by 9 and desperate to get to our next destination. Swaziland is actually incredibly simple to navigate generally, as there are only 2 highways, a north-south and an east-west. There really aren't any other tricks to it than that! I was enjoying the scenery and would have liked to stop for a bit of a browse around but...it was probably best to get to Phinda as quickly as possible and forget Swaziland existed. The best I saw of Swaziland was the view from the car window over the mountains and sugar cane fields.

Another Swazi not-so-fun fact is that 40% of the population has HIV/AIDS, one of the highest infection rates in Africa I believe. Driving along Thursday/Friday we saw evidence of this in the world health and NGO ads about getting tested and practicing monogamy. There was a billboard appealing to women saying essentially "I have enough self-respect to demand my man only sleeps with me and gets tested". Their king would do well to lead by example, of course, since I think he has about 10 wives and repealed his own "no marrying girls under 16 law" for his own benefit...

By the time we had crossed back into South Africa and were back on the N2 (a proper road, with only a few potholes / hitchikers) I was getting into the whole passing in one lane with oncoming traffic thing and we made short work of the 100kms or so to Phinda Game Reserve.