Swaziland
We woke up super early to get a head start to the Swaziland border. We drove through Kruger one more time with Marvin. I was hoping we would see a lion since we missed it the day before, but sadly we didnt. We did see tons of rhino, which we only saw one the day before. After we made it out of Kruger we drove about 2 more hours to the border. We had to get out of the bus to literally walk through. We got our passports stamped by leaving S. Africa and then had to wait to get them stamped at the Swaziland border. It took a while at the Swaziland border. One thing I noticed was the plentiful condom machines. They are a 50% HIV positive in Swaziland so it is an attempt to try to lower that number in the future and to raise awareness. Immediately after crossing the border I could tell Swaziland was not a very well off place. Cardi informed us that people here live on less than $1USD a day. That is very hard to imagine. We drove around and the houses were all sheds, but the people were still smiling despite this. We saw lots of banana trees and sugar cane. It was very scenic. At one point we stopped off the take some photos.
While we were taking the photos some tiny children were just running across the street without an adult in sight. We ran up to them and they were so friendly. They werent scared of strangers at all… which is kind of frightening. I feel like if these were American children, adults would be in sight and they wouldn’t have been open to us. We hugged them and they hugged us back without hesitation. I picked one of them up and they just loved photos. Cardi told us a lot of them don’t know what they look like because they rarely look at themselves in the mirror. So we would take selfies with them and then show them the photos. Eventually their mom came to them, but she was very trusting with us.
We continued our drive to get to camp and I noticed a pattern. There were tons of kids, like little little kids who were walking right along the side of a busy road with no adult. But they would be so happy, waving and smiling to our bus. We eventually arrived at camp, which was a wildlife sanctuary. We entered and saw many animals like impala, warthogs, wildebeest, and zebras. Once we set up camp I was told there wasnt going to be any gate separating us from the animals. It was a bit freaky. So.. Crysten, Kaede Ray, and I went to the lodge’s bar. We tried to order our first drink, but it was hard cause the guy didnt quite understand us. Crysten and I ordered some pinnaple mango juice with coconut rum… but he came back and just gave us the juice. So we sent it back for the rum. He was an odd ball. After taking our orders he would just stand there. He asked us which one of us he was going to take.. uhh. no one. It was creepy. Then just to get even creepier, the lights just went out and he had a lantern ready for us immediately like he knew that would happen. Not to mention we were kind of in our own corner with noone else in the room. We payed and got the hell out of there. Then we almost walked into a pack of warthogs! Goodness. From there we had dinner, a yummy chicken in a stew like substance. I was so happy to have chicken. We played a game of apples to apples with pretty much everyone following dinner. Then we were off to a traditional Swaziland dance. It was pretty intense. They would bang on the drums and the men dressed in grass looking uggs around their legs and grass skirt would kick their leg up to what looked like kicking their head. Crazy! After this we sat by a huge fire, which I learned has been burning since 1961 and the lodge was named after it. We sat around with Boyd, the driver, and our little warthog friend (she just walked up and plopped herself down by the fire to warm up) We talked to Boyd for a long time before we went to bed. We learned about how Swaziland has a King that is about 50 years old who was around 15 wives! He holds a ball where the virgins dance around and he picks the one. His “main” wife watches him as he does so.. Sounds like a part in a movie ah?
xoxo,
Em