Friday: I have been up all night with a touch of food poisening and thus miss the early morning (4:00am) safari we had scheduled. Peter and the girls make it, with Anna sleeping on the safari truck in between each animal siting. They, luckily, get to see a cheetah calling for his mate. During the drive out of Kruger Park, a troop of elephants cross the road in front of us and then proceed to take a mud bath right next to the car. Very exciting. We cross into Swaziland today, which is a separate country. Long border crossing procedures and long drive to our lodge tonight in Mhlambanyati. The lodge is beautiful, but I still can't eat yet.
Saturday: Coffee and hot chocolates brought to our rooms this morning. Beautiful day and I wish we could stay longer in Swaziland. As it is, we have a long drive today and we decide not to stay and visit the Cultural Village. I really regret this then, and now I really think we should have stayed. As it was, we saw very little of Swaziland aside from the countryside while we drove. Driving through a section called Piggs Peak, there are lots of little stalls with children dressed in costume coming out into the road dancing, trying to get you to stop. A little dangerous. Though we are often driving on major highways, these roads are usually well travelled by pedestrians, cattle, goats, monkeys and etc. It is a real challenge to drive carefully, always anticipating that around the next corner, there may be a mother and child in the road. We wonder what this land will look like 10 years from now. There are still some traditional round huts made from thatching and dung. But more and more of the houses are small cinderblock squares with tin roofs. As we left the lodge this morning, our car was once again washed. We have had the cleanest car ever driving around South Africa. We soon learned to keep spare rand around for tipping just about everyone.
We spend tonight in Kwazulu-Natal, a state within South Africa, Zulu country. We stay in a private game reserve (Ubizane Safari Lodge) near Hluhluwe (pronounced Shoo-Shoo-ee) a public game reserve. Our lodging is round huts, very nice inside. Because we are in a game reserve, as dusk falls, we have warthogs and impalas coming right among the huts that we watch from the little back patios and pool area. Tonight is an open barbecue dinner with Zulu singers. Really a nice lodge.
In all of the lodges, we have had a plugin device to keep mosquitos away with high frequency noise. We have wondered if it really works, but our power goes out tonight due to a storm and we are suddenly invaded by mosquitos. I guess they really do work! We are all taking malaria pills, hopefully they work too!
A Week in the North
