Swaziland

28th May

We headed into Swaziland with little or no idea what was there.  We turned up at the border paid a very reasonable R50 for the car and chatted to the Immigration guy.  The building itself looks like it should have had Bob Marley playing - all relaxed thatched 'n stuff.  Fortunately it didn't have Bob playing as half the backpackers passing through probably would have bunked down.  There's something very different to the atmosphere of Swazi - the Kingdom as they call it.  It's clean and seems organised, ordered.  The land looks very differerent from that of Mpumalanga that we'd just left.  It's tiny too, you drive across it in an hour and a bit.  The capital Mbabane is tiny even by African capital standards.  Turns out its not the largest city in the country.  Originally Manzini was but they moved it because of the more temperate climate at slightly higher altitude in Mbabane.  That and Manzini was razed to the ground during a war around this time.

We bumbled around Mbabane for a bit and then headed out towards Manzini and a small game reserve where we stayed the night in a little rondavel themed backpackers.

I got to try out my new lamp with some success followed by much, much more failure.

 She's a beaut...

So my new pressure lamp - also known as a Tilly or a Colman.  Basically you pressurise paraffin/kerosene and heat up the mantle (the white thingy by burning some alcohol then allow the paraffin to burn through the hot (charred) silk mantle emitting loads of light.  One of the sounds of African adventurers over the ages was the gently clicking sound of their Tilly lamp.  So I set it all up and ignition! It worled great.  One problem, the inside base plate was skew so I switched it off and let it cool to level it.  Once levelled I lit it again and it burst into flames.  Cool, re pressurise - ball of flame.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Jo started getting very annoyed with me at this point and the rest of the lodge became convinced I was going to burn it down so I stopped for the evening.

29th May

We woke up to this view.

and drove across Swaziland.  Stopping in Manzini for some supplies and another little town for replacement mantles for my lamp and lunch we went on to Hlane - a 'big 5' game reserve.  When we got to the camp site it was basically a grassy car park next to the offices for the park so we asked for something a bit more remote.  20km away along dirt roads we found the small unserviced campsite, below...

We camped and since the wood was free had a massive fire to keep us warm...

...then I tried the lamp again... 

Having given up on the lamp for the night we went to bed and listened to the nasty baboons fighting all night.  We didn't seen much big game - just zebra, antelopes and baboons but they keep the big stuff in a separate enclosures away from poachers.  It's not a very wilderness type reserve like the Kalahari but at least the animals are safe I suppose.

We drove out through a massive sugar plantation and headed for Mozambique..