Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner
5th December 2013
Up at 4:30am, breakfast at 5am, off on the early morning game drive at 6am. And let me say it was all worth while when Owen & Rimson spotted a leopard sitting in the grass right by the side of the road. Otis came to a screaming halt as Owen broadcast the news over the intercom, unfortunately all the commotion (screams of delight, the sound of the windows being bashed open) scared the leopard away at high speed. So there was no opportunity to get the photo of the century, however we did get a great look at a leopard up close.
The rest of the drive out of Kruger was as per normal lots of animals, which is always exciting. Owen told us the history of Paul Kruger, the guy who created The Kruger National Park. In short he was a big game hunter that noticed there wasn't as many animals around...(really), so he decided to create a park where he could breed animals and control the amount of game hunting. the Park was eventually taken over by the government.
We had a brief stop for coffee and supplies and then onto the Swaziland border crossing. We were lead to believe that the crossing could take 5 minutes or 5 hours depending on the mood of the immigration officers. My South African immigration officer was great, he wanted to talk about the decline in Australian sport (cricket, rugby, swimming) and I have to say I agree with him. Ever since Little Johnny declared himself a cricket tragic and number one sports fan we have been crap...
I then ventured into the public toilets, (and most of you know how much I hate them) I firstly prepared myself by covering my nose and mouth with any spare material I had, took a deep breath and entered the danger zone. The smell was over powering,even my Jedi powers were useless against this unseen enemy, my eyes felt like caustic soda had been thrown in them and I hadn't even passed the doorway, but I bravely soldiered on!!! When I finally did enter the dead zone I gazed upon a sight so horrific, that would have made weaker men fall to their knees in despair and cry "ohh, the humanity" - the toilet didn't flush. I closed my eyes, unzipped and prayed for the best. I began to run out of air, panic was starting to set in, to breath or not to breath was the question. I foolishly chose to breath, I decided to breath through my mouth, that way I would only have to taste it and I could avoid smelling the inner sanctum of the beast, I'm not sure it was a great option because as I breathed in I could taste the putrid and rancid inner workings of the beast. With the gasp of what was left of my internal intestinal fortitude, I slayed the beast and left the danger zone. After the battle I found myself dry reaching for about 5 minutes, thankfully we had two doctors on the trip, Eva and Lena not that Eva would have been much help, apparently if I threw up, she would have too. Just so you know I went through all this for a pee, that's what 2 cups of coffee will do to you.
The Swaziland Immigration was slightly more interesting, had started to have a conversation with Matthew (the New Zealander) and his partner Bill (the American from Dutch descent now living in New Zealand). it was a discussion around how unfair Australia is by not giving New Zealanders all the welfare privileges Australia offers unless they become Australian citizens. Eventually Lisa lost the plot (raised her voice and put the hand up) and told Bill she had, had enough of the debate and did not want to talk to him anymore. It's not as scary as watching Nakita's finger waving, but it did do the job.(Lisa - I don't enjoy heated debates/arguments very much, and as this one was going around and around getting nowhere I decided enough was enough.)
The Swaziland Immigration Officer was somewhat more cranky because Owen hadn't filled out a form with the correct details on it. As a result we had to fill in individual immigration forms, I missed the box which said Nationality so got the "why didn't you fill this space in" my reply "I don't know, just missed it I guess" even my winning smile personality charm and wit didn't work. So as a last resort I tried my Jedi mind control, alas, I think the force had been drained form the toilet drama.
From there it was a simple bumpy ride to the campsite for some free time. Now I had a 5 Rand bet with Lucas (Swedish Mechanical Engineering student who had spent the last two months studying in Cape Town) about the likely hood that Lisa would want to upgrade. I won, as soon as I knew what the accommodation looked like it was a done deal. Think of a thatched hobbit house, the entrance is really low, so low in fact I had to kneel and bow to enter. (South African tradition of bowing to enter a house) The houses were called Bee-Hives and they are set out like a village in a big circle, when all the ladies saw them there was the collective awww. It's becoming a common theme, they were cute I have to give them that.
6th December 2013
Now as cute as the B-Hives are, the novelty of crawling through the low doorway has worn off, I keep bashing my head on things because they are so low, stupid Hobbit Houses.
Today is a free day so you can choose from a range of activities Mliliwane Wildlife Sanctuary has to offer, we chose the Guided Early Morning Bird Walk with Sichsclo. It was a pleasant 2 an a half hour walk through the Sanctuary, with lots of information about birds, which animal print was on the ground. Diane and Christina also did the walk with us, they are both really nice and we got to have alot of fun with them. Whilst we were out on our walk it started to drizzle so unbeknown to us Sichsclo called the reception centre and asked them to bring out some ponchos, we turned around to see one of the brothers running down the trail carrying 4 ponchos. Service you would never get in Australia, I made some comment about "hey Poncho" Lisa replied "hey Cisco" and then Christina joked about being a hobbit in a Poncho whilst posing, very funny.
The downside to today was that when we got back from the Bird walk we heard the sad news that Nelson Mandela had died overnight, it did put a dampener on things.
After that I got to have some quality "Andrew Time" as Lisa and "The Mean Girls Posssy" went horse riding. They left Lucas behind to ride on his own because he wasn't good enough to ride with them. Lucas was devastated and left crying and upset
"The Mean Girls Possy" consists of
Lisa, Eva and Mika the German translator also a student teacher.
Ohh and by the way, it's not what your thinking!!! I went for a run around the park, updated the blog and uploaded photo's and chatted to big Kev (Kevin is an American who rides a Ultra Classic - Granny Glide and works in IT doing Mainframe Solutions) about Harley's, IT in general and the "Cloud".
During the evening meal we chatted to Shauna about her work in South Africa. (Big Kev's daughter, she is an NGO for the Peace Corps here in South Africa)
The funny thing about where we were staying was that it could have been any south west rural countryside in Australia,you have not seen so many gumtrees in your life. They were brought here to be a fast growing timber for local industry and now you will see massive plantations everywhere. I've seen them in Rwanda, South Africa and now Swaziland.
The great thing about this adventure into Swaziland was we not only got to see and learn lots about the various birds in Swaziland we also got to see flatdogs (crocodiles) a hippo (at least one eyeball and possibly his 2 ears) zebras, impalas and nadocs.
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