According to my parents, there’s quite a lot of story
missing with just the photos I’ve shared on Facebook. I hope this fills in some
of the gaps!
The first adventure Mike and I had was a tour of Hlane. All
the big game in Swaziland is held in game parks, so there are no wild lions.
Hlane has 4 of the Big 5 (no Cape Buffalo, sorry), and is located in the
lowveld near a town called Simunye. It’s one of the oldest game parks in
Swaziland.
There are three areas within Hlane: the lion part, the
elephant part, and the middle part with no game. We took a sunrise and a sunset
game drive, and we were able to see almost all of the animals they have in the
park. Lions, white rhinos, hippos, nyala, impala, blue wildebeest (which was
part of our dinner), warthogs, elephants, giraffes, whitebacked vultures, and
many other animals were out roaming around. The nyala were roaming around near
our hut, and an African python was hanging out right next to the restaurant.
Good thing no one stepped on that!
Python |
Giraffe |
Lions on the road |
Elephants in the road |
Nyala |
You’ll notice in some of the photos that there are skeleton
trees. This is because the elephants will scrape the bark off acacia trees to
eat it, and the trees eventually die. After their death, the elephants will
push them over. Elephants convert bushveld to grassland over time. The
conservation officers at Hlane do not remove the dead trees, but leave them for
the elephants to push over in time. The focus of the park is conservation, so
very little is altered beyond what the animals do.
Giraffes among the skeleton trees |
Hlane does not have electricity. Our roundavel where we
stayed was fully equipped with lanterns and a gas-powered hot shower. If it
hadn’t been storming, we would have fallen asleep to the sounds of lions
roaring. It really was a beautiful park, and the absolute darkness was
something to see.
Following Hlane, we hit the road to Durban, which is a city
in South Africa. Although the Peace Corps Volunteers mainly enjoyed Durban for
the chance to eat all the food we can’t get in Swaziland, Mike remarked that it
was just another large city. He was right, although there were some touristy
things to do. We visited The Old Fort, the Botanical Gardens, uShaka Marine
World, and the beaches on the Indian Ocean.
After Durban, we went off the grid for a bit. We drove to
Drakensberg, which is an area of mountains on the border between South Africa
and Lesotho. We stayed at Sani Lodge, which is a backpackers located on its own
farm. Breakfast featured homemade yogurt, jams, and bread that were absolutely
delicious, and they sold some really delicious cheese. It was quite cold in the
area due to the elevation, and there wasn’t really phone service.
The first day in Drakensberg, we took a 4x4 tour up the Sani
Pass, which is at an elevation of 2873m. It’s located in Lesotho, so we had to cross
a very interesting border. The South African side is at the bottom of the
mountain, but the Lesotho side is quite a bit farther on, at the top. Khumbis
(public transport, 16-seater vans) have their own system for this border
crossing. One with 4 wheel drive brings people up and down the mountain, and
one without it waits and takes over on the flatter ground.
Most of the road to Sani Pass is a well maintained dirt road
that isn’t too steep. Close to the pass, however, it does a ridiculous zig-zag
with 14 curves to get up the last steep stretch. In the winter, ice can make
this road either impassable or deadly. The road flattened out at the top, and
we rode into Lesotho.
Although I don’t know the elevation, we kept going up. We
went up as high as we could and ate our sack lunches in freezing cold wind at
the top of a mountain. The view was incredible, and some local shepherds
provided us with company and entertainment. After lunch, we went on a little
cultural tour of a village.
Lesotho and Swaziland are both small countries that are
heavily influenced by South Africa, but their cultures are vastly different.
The Basotho people speak a language similar to Setswana (spoken in Botswana)
while the Swazi people speak siSwati, which is very similar to isiZulu (a
language in South Africa). Basotho people build their houses with the intention
of keeping warm through harsh winters and mild summers, while Swazis build
theirs with the goal of keeping cool through scorching summers and mild
winters. Basotho people cannot do much other than keep sheep and goats due to
the elevation and rocky soil in the area we visited, while the fertile soil of
Swaziland makes fruits and vegetables readily available. Seeing these
differences was incredibly interesting.
There were also similarities, such as children waving down
the car to ask for sweets, men asking you to take their photo and then wanting
money for it, and a sense of hospitality and friendliness. A woman welcomed us
into her home and shared some bread she had baked in a Dutch oven and some beer
(umcombotsi) that she had fermented from sorghum grain. She was shy, but very
kind and willing to answer our questions. If I had been alone and caught in a
storm in either of these two small countries, I know I would have been welcomed
in with strangers and taken care of. The kindness and compassion in this
region, and perhaps in all of rural Africa, never fails to make an impact on
me.
Following our visit to the homestead, we visited the Sani Mountain Lodge, the highest pub in Africa (2874m). We tried one of their specialties, a mulled red wine called Gluvine. The warmth of that coupled with the cold breeze and the incredible view made that a great end to a very cool day.
The view from the top of a mountain in Lesotho |
The inside of a hut in Lesotho. The walls and floor are pressed cow dung and mud, and the roof is low and thatch to keep the hut warm. |
The pub |
Following our visit to the homestead, we visited the Sani Mountain Lodge, the highest pub in Africa (2874m). We tried one of their specialties, a mulled red wine called Gluvine. The warmth of that coupled with the cold breeze and the incredible view made that a great end to a very cool day.
Gluvine, the delicious mulled wine we had at the pub |
Our trail was right along the cloud line |
The paintings don’t tell a story. The bushmen believed that
the spirits of their ancestors lived in the eland (think cow-sized gazelle), so
the paintings were done in their blood as a way of connecting with the
ancestors. Before the paintings could be started, however, there was a ritual
to observe. The bushmen had to dance to enter a trance state, which was very
painful. They wouldn’t eat or drink and could dance for days, and usually
experienced nosebleeds (according to our guide). They could only paint when
then had entered the trance, and the paintings were their way of communicating
with their ancestors. If they painted many men around dead eland, then they
were praying for a successful hunt. Sometimes, although not common, they
painted women, but women were never allowed to paint.
It was an interesting feeling to look at something that had
the potential of being thousands of years old, was painted by an now-extinct
group of people, and that we will never fully understand. It made me aware of
how insignificant each life is in the overall timeline of human history, but
how much each life matters in the years it has on Earth (and even the years
following).
After we saw the paintings, our guide gave us two choices:
go back down the way we came up, or go down a different way to see a waterfall.
We’d have to ford two springs and it would be straight down the mountain, he
informed us. I think not many of us fully grasped what “straight down” meant,
and we chose that path.
It was straight down. I had my hands as well as my feet on
the rocks and grass most of the 300m down, and frequently had to scoot or slide
when it was too steep to do anything else. By the time I got down, I was
shaking and exhausted, but thrilled. We then saw the “stream” we would be
expected to cross. It was up to my thighs and fast moving. I couldn’t stand in
the current without getting swept away, so our very kind guide held my hand
(and only made fun of me a little bit). By the time we were 1K from the
waterfall, we were exhausted. I was expecting to see a little mountain
waterfall, and I just wanted to rest, but we pushed on.
The waterfall was huge and absolutely beautiful. It was
worth the walk and worth the wait. Ultimately, everything we saw in Drakensberg
was incredible, and it was my favorite part of the trip.
After that, we drove back to Swaziland, where I took Mike to
the Cultural Village. That was pretty much a trap to get gullible tourists to
believe things with are no longer relevant to modern Swazi culture, but it was
a great history lesson. Mike also visited my homestead, where he made fast
friends with my cow, Cheese Boy.
My parents asked me to explain a photo, saying that there
were things in there that Americans wouldn’t understand. If you look in the
background of Mike feeding Cheese Boy, you’ll see that there is a big metal
thing. At one point, this was a water tank, but due to its age and plethora of
leaks, it is now defunct. The animals all hide in it when it rains, so it does
serve some purpose, even if it isn’t the intended purpose.
The baskets are where the chickens roost. Normally there’s a
little stick ladder that the chickens use to hop up there, but that ladder
breaks all the time (and you know when it does by the sudden auditory onslaught
of angry clucking that follows the fall of a surprised chicken). Since we have
roosters, we don’t eat the eggs, but right now we have a whole bunch of little
chicks.
That about sums up the trip. If anyone has any questions,
I’d be happy to answer them!
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