Firstly, sorry for such a late post about our final weeks in South Africa. In-between actually doing the things I'm now writing about, prepping for and travelling back to the UK after 10 months away and then settling back home we rather lost track of our responsibility to keep everyone up to date.
As you may already know, or have cleverly worked out from reading the above paragraph, Melissa and I returned home to the UK after an epic 10 month adventure just over 2 weeks ago. We are now taking some time to adjust back to life here, but are full of experiences and memories that will stay with us for a lifetime. Now however, let me take you back a couple of months where we found ourselves again in Mtubatuba with my cousins and family and with time on our hands to work out what to do with.
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| One of the many breathtaking views we took in |
Keen to visit as many countries as we could on our travels we made plans to visit Swaziland, and then venture into Kruger National Park, a national park the size of Wales that we had not yet managed to see during our extensive time away. The next 10 days would prove to hold many amazing experiences and sightings, stunning photograph opportunities and views but were also tinged with frustrations, wrong turns, mistakes and lessons learnt all along the way.
After a few days of deliberation and planning we had a car booked, several nights accommodation lined up and a vague idea of what we wanted to do and when.The first thing to do was collect the hire car, which turned into a nightmare owing to the fact my credit card was very close to its limit and with the hire company wanting to hold a rather annoyingly large deposit on it, it would not process.
This was one of those really annoying situations where the 'systems' of this world just seemed set to work against me. To cut a very long and incredibly frustrating story short, I had to hire a different car through another agent, who didn't require a large deposit, but charged an extortionate amount to hire the car instead! You learn some things the hard way, and I certainly was feeling pretty low as I sat outside the airport waiting for things to get sorted.
However there was some positive as I found myself chatting openly with God, first in anger at why this had happened, but then slowly turning to thanks and praise as I began to reflect on actually how little had gone wrong in my whole time away, and how safe and protected Melissa and I had been all the way through our trip. Although it was an expensive morning, I realised how reliant I was on God when things got a little bit tough, and became even more grateful for all that I have, and put in to perspective how little some of my problems really are.
With the car sorted, and only 6 hours later than planned we were whizzing up the N2 to stay a night at Tembe Elephant Park, a private reserve close to Mozambique and famous for its 'Tuskers', which are basically elephants with massive tusks. Unfortunately we only saw one of the acclaimed big boys which was a shame, and in fact, due to the wind and rain, the whole safari was a bit of a no show from most of the animal kingdom, but it did put in to perspective how privileged we had been on our previous ventures into the bush.
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| One of the few animals we did manage to spot at Tembe |
We next headed to Swaziland, following directions that Melissa had printed from the internet. These directions took us quite literally 'to' Swaziland however they failed to get us 'into' the country. Unfortunately where google maps had rather fallen short was that just because there was a physical border between the countries, there was no actual border post to cross through. The looks we were receiving from the increasingly puzzled locals should probably have given us some clue that we were headed in the wrong direction, or more to the point, were in completely the wrong place but we had continued on our way for rather too long when the tarmac road ran out and the large groups of communities and villages became the odd house or hut every few hundred metres.
After turning around, inquiring at a local police station (where the officer seemed VERY surprised to see me) and realising we had done over 100 kilometres the wrong way we eventually headed off the way to the actual border post! Keen to make up for lost time I exploited the information I had been given from Dylan that the maximum fine for speeding in Swaziland was 60 rand (approx £3) and so we managed to get to our destination before nightfall (and not a penny worse off thankfully).
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| The landscape was very much part of our room! |
We stayed for two nights in Mbabane, the capital city of Swaziland, which we very much enjoyed. Staying at a nice air bnb tucked quite literally into the rocks we enjoyed the local area which provided walking opportunities as well as seeing some of the projects that have been established to employ many workers.
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| Our hosts dog joined us for our entire 3 hour walk! |
These included the quite famous Swazi Candles, where we saw some of the most amazing designed and colourful wax creations, and then the Ngwenya glass factory where we watched as tonnes of recycled bottles were turned into many different and stunning designs.
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| Some of the incredible candles |
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| Glass blowers hard at work |
We left Swaziland and entered back into South Africa, although we were continuing north due to the nature of how the countries surround each other. We enjoyed a couple of days of very scenic driving through the Mpumalanga province, where tree plantations stretched as far as the eye could see and rolling mountains and valleys were laid out before us.
We stopped for a night in Nelspruit, where we visited the stadium which was used in the FIFA 2010 world cup and just sort of showed ourselves around and then made a stop at the amazing Sudwala Caves which were not only absolutely massive, but also rich in history from where the Swazi people used to hide during the many tribal wars.
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| We just turned up and wandered around and nobody said anything |
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| Inside the imposing Sudwala Caves... |
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| ..which are absolutely massive! |
Next up was Hazyview on the outskirts of Kruger Park where we enjoyed the best steak of our entire trip and drove out to 'God's Window', a famous viewpoint as seen below.
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| God's Window |
The excitement that had been building for the last few days was soon to be realised as we got ever closer to our visit to Kruger. Before entering the main park we spent a night at the rather posh and fancy 'Sabi Sands' next door. Essentially the same bush, it is just an area owned privately instead of by the government, and is therefore much more private and exclusive, but however as you can probably guess, also very expensive!
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| You get what you pay for! |
However I owed Melissa a proper birthday present and the impressive romantic that I am, had agreed to pay for a night after subjecting her to choosing and booking the entire stay. I am so glad that I did though as we were blessed with the most amazing sightings over the next 24 hours.
Shortly after arriving for lunch and I kid you not, with plate in my hand and burger inches away from being put in front of me, a ranger ran into the dining area and shouted "Put down your plates!"...Well that's a bit harsh I thought mate, I know I've put on a bit of weight travelling, but I've paid an awful lot of money to be here right now and quite frankly I'd like nothing less than to devour that burger sitting across from me. However the word that next came from his mouth changed all of that very quickly....
..."Leopard!"
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| We were so awestruck we left it pretty late to take photos |
I lost interest in that burger faster than England got knocked out of Euro 2016! When something gets a ranger that excited you know it must be good. A minute later and we were in the safari vehicle and no more than 100 metres from where I had been ready and waiting to tuck into my lunch, a female leopard was walking majestically through the bush, but in the open enough that we were able to watch her move along and track her into a dry river bed. We both couldn't believe it. We had hardly had time to check in and here we were watching a leopard, which is an incredibly rare sighting anywhere, just calmly strolling along in front of us.
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| The female heads towards thicker bush and out of site |
Returning to camp and finally able to tuck into my now cold lunch I reflected on just how much I enjoyed the environment I was in, and how blessed I was to be here.The next 24 hours just went on to reaffirm that as we enjoyed two amazing game drives, one at dusk into the evening where we sat with a pride of lions and witnessed them roaring, a sight we had seen before, but not in the wild!
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| A Rhino family |
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| The pride doing what Lions do best |
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| A typical African evening skyline |
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| A cub tries for attention from its mother |
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| One of the males roaring...the sounds can carry 10kms |
The drive the next morning took us to the kill site of the same pride who had taken down a 'dagger boy', which is a term used for an outcast old male buffalo, during the night. It was a joy to watch the pride tucking into their breakfast, and especially to see the two young cubs so full they could barely stand up.
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| He certainly had his fill! |
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| One of the cubs refusing to give up eating! (Cub on the left of the picture - tucking into the rear of the buffalo) |
Our time in Sabi Sands really spoiled us. Our camp was on the river bank, and although virtually empty due to the drought, it still attracted many animals to it and we were able to watch herds of elephants cross the now trickle of a stream, and later at night watched and listened as a noisy group of 12 hyenas pass by.
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| A family of elephants cross the 'river' |
Melissa was the rather unfortunate recipient of what I can only guess is some sort of local tradition as after dinner a cake was brought to our table alight with candles. This was brilliant I thought, I can tell Melissa I put in a special request for this owing to the fact we were there to celebrate her birthday. However what happened next quickly changed my mind as two of the girls serving us proceeded to throw handfuls of both water and flour into Melissa's face and hair. My reaction was of course to laugh and find it hilarious, which apparently was not the right one. I guess I'm still learning each day how to be a better partner but I was sympathetic at least when she went to take a shower only to find there was no hot water due to a broken geezer.
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| Fairly bewildered! |
Next up was our turn to drive ourselves around in the world famous Kruger Park. Kruger is just crazy. It is so big you could take a day driving from one end to the other. It is also incredibly busy and a tourist attraction that brings in people from all over the world. The game sightings are amazing, however there are drawbacks to the popularity of the park.
The park was particularly busy during our time there because it was a public holiday before the weekend. This had meant that all the rest camps within the park were fully booked so we ended up staying outside of the park in a private lodge run by a lovely South African couple. However this was not a disadvantage at all as we enjoyed great fellowship with the owners and also sat and watched their resident bush baby hopping about in the trees, coming down to the garden rail to eat banana left out for him.
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| The bushbaby takes refuge in the tree from the incoming fruit bat |
All that was left now was the long (by UK standards) drive home to Mtuba via Swaziland again, crossing two border patrols and trying not to go anywhere in the wrong direction. We managed this thankfully and arrived home safely after a wonderful 10 days away. Despite the slightly false start and the odd hiccup along the way we had had an amazing adventure into new territory for us and had reaffirmed our love of adventure and exploration, as well as for me personally learned again how reliant I am on God and how grateful I am for all the blessings he pours out on us.
Up next you can read about our next little adventure where we took a road trip into the famous Drakensberg Mountains and visited yet another new country...
Thanks for reading!
Ben
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