Swaziland

Swaziland is a tiny little country, land-locked and very mountainous - and therefore mighty pretty. We crossed the border at Bulembu along a fairly torturous dirt-track road (by this stage the poor Toyota Corolla was well and truly layered in fine dust, inside and out). We stayed the night in a nice restored old building in the town of Piggs Peak, a mostly deserted mining town that used to process asbestos. But the town was tiny and had no shops or restaurants or any life really, so the next morning we moved on to the capital Mbabane (but only stayed there two nights - Abacus Backpacking Lodge, run by a kinda weird, sad, but friendly, English lecturer).

Even though Swaziland is so small, we still managed to spend over a week seeing and doing just about everything there is to see and do. The highlights were in the main touristy place, the Ezulwini Valley where we stayed in a wildlife sanctuary (Sondzela Backpackers), which was a really beautiful spot. We hired bikes one day and rode around quite a bit of the park - stopping for a peek at a lovely private lodge (as usual, nobody thinks to stop you from having a good nose-around), and got a great view of execution rock (where apparently the ancient tribes used to throw sacrificial victims to their gruesome deaths). Another day we rode horses around with just us and the guide, while for the rest of the time I just chilled out in the pool or sitting in the restaurant of the main camp (which had a great location right up against a watering hole with crocs lazing around and birds coming and going).

Another day while just driving from one place to the next we passed some ramshackle signs for rock art. So naturally we followed the signs and arrived at a very simple local setup in the middle of nowhere. As always, everyone there was extremely friendly and welcoming, and a young local girl took us for about a 10 minute walk to an overhanging rock with some faint, but visible, ancient rock art. She didn't hype it up at all, and explained that there quite a few things they didn't know or understand about it, even it's exact age. But it was a lovely little excursion to see genuine African rock art whilst knowing we were genuinely helping a local initiative.

Further south we stayed at Legends backpackers. Again we rented bikes for pottering about, but while passing the parliament buildings (just across from the not-too-impressive national soccer stadium), I just popped in on the off-chance and got a great personalised tour of the Swazi government buildings and a comprehensive explanation of how their system of government works. The government wasn't in session though so we didn't get to witness any debating or anything. After that we had coffee and cake in a lovely place beside a nature reserve (which we didn't have time to visit properly, and looked kinda corny anyway due to the 'traditional village' they had built).

Another Swazi highlight was a scenic drive through the mountains, stopping off to climb the worlds largest granite outcrop, and popping into the five-star Royal Swazi hotel. As usual I just completely ignored any semblance of security and strolled straight over to their swimming pool and dive in. I did order coffee though, so although I wasn't a hotel resident I was a patron. It was a gorgeous sunny day and the hotel setting was magical, so we ended up sitting by the pool for a good while.

Just down the road from the Royal Swazi was a natural hot spring swimming pool which was really for the locals I think. You had to pay a few pence to get in but the water was like a jacuzzi and the atmosphere was much livelier than the hotel - loads of local kids just running around having a great laugh (we were the only white people there), as opposed to the rich crumblies sipping silly cocktails at the Swazi (to be honest though, of course, I liked both settings!).

So all in all we spent about a week in Swaziland, a lovely laid-back place with more of the same lovely African people. We passed through the border control effortlessly again (as we had coming into Swaziland), and headed straight for Sodwana Bay on the East coast of South Africa, which was reputed to have great scuba diving.