Swaziland

Our car died at the Jeppes Reef border, no surf. With a beer in my lap and the border guard motioning me forward the car froze. I passed the beer back to Todd and got out of the car. I explained to the officer that the car had died, it didn’t want to go to Swaziland. But we still wanted to. The officer laughed and helped us get our car back onto the South Africa side of the country so that we could figure out what to do next.

We called the rental company and they acted like it was their fault. They were so sorry for our inconvenience and they wanted to get us a car as soon as possible. Never mind the fact that we had just rambled the hell out of this soccer mom car. They promised us a car in 4 hours to our exact location. While we waited the girls and Todd checked out a cultural village show and I searched for a place to stay for the night.

I caught a local taxi with the locals and found us a place. It definitely wasn’t in the Lonley Planet, but it was only a night and we were out of there at first light.

After arranging the hotel for the night I caught the death taxi back to the Cultural Village. I got there just in time to watch the end of the show which was amazing. We stayed around for a bit after to talk with the crew as they were curious as to who we were. As we drank our cocktails we witnessed one of the main things that makes me cringe. The degradation of employess by a boss. In this case it was the owner (a white man) of the cultural village, in front of his guests, completely humilitiating his employee (a black man). It was wrong regardless, even if the employee had fucked up, a reprimand isn’t necessary in front of everyone. We paid our tab and got the hell out of there telling the other employees that the reason were leaving was because of their asshole boss.

The car came shortly thereafter and we didn’t know what to expect. We were talking to the guy over the cellphone to get him to exactly where we were and when he pulled up it was a tiny little red 2 door and we just started cracking up. We would manage but it would be extremely uncomfortable. But luckily a few seconds later the real car showed up, a brand new Nissan X-Trail. The plastic on it and everything. Little did it know what was in for it.

Since there didn’t seem to be anything open we got stuck eating KFC. There are KFC’s everywhere in South Africa! It was the first time we had eaten fast food in a while and we hoped it would be the last. We got there just as they were closing. As we stood in line, we got cut in front of twice and when we got to the front all we got were the leftovers. The locals knew it was closing time and had no qualms with walking right in front of us. We laughed and had our nasty KFC dinner. It would’ve been nasty either way.

Swaziland was amazing, some dude at the game reserve told us it was dirty and only good for the gambling but let me tell you that guy didn’t know shit. We had a great time, hiking, exploring, off-roading, staying at unique backpackers and just having a great time.

We met a son of the King and therefore a potential Prince/King. But he was just a security guard. In Swaziland polygamy is cool, I can imagine all the Kailua guys buying tickets as soon as they read that. The King has a butt load of wives and therefore thousands of kids. The locals do a dance once a year (the Reed Dance) and the King picks out new girls to be his wives. Anyways, the economy seems to be running smoothly. It was good to see Africans running the business that would usually be run by the Whites in South Africa. They were in suits and looked very professional. But there was also the desire to remain true to their culture. We saw many locals in the local garb and sometimes mixing the traditional outfits with modern fashion as well.

This is Todd with one of the Kings thousand kids, children. Guys kinda old.

The Prince worked at another Cultural Village and we wanted to go swim at their waterfall. But we also thought about staying in one of the tent rooms they had as well…..until we saw the asshole! He owned this cultural village as well. So we didn’t stay there on principal although it was pretty nice, but we did go swimming completely ignoring all the signs telling us to stay away from the waterfall. We couldn’t help ourselves. We took naps as the the sound of the crashing waterfall eased our minds. It was a very relaxing afternoon.

Our favorite stay while in Swaziland was at a backpackers that was actually an old barn that had been converted into dorm rooms. Each stall that usually held a horse was now a bedroom. It was open to everything so there wasn’t much privacy but it was still really cool. We had giant bonfires as the wood seemed inextinguishable. We ate very well while there.

In one town we visited the local hot springs. While Todd and Kim had nice massages (turned out to be pretty bad actually) we soaked in the empty pools. But there were these two young boys, say 15, and one of them popped a big boner when Louise got in the water. It was really funny. His buddy was pointing at him and he got really embarrassed. I got really embarrassed too, these African kids are more like grown men! Later we met some African girls that wanted to take a picture with me so we obliged. Sorry I didn’t get a picture of the kid with the hard wanger.

One day while the girls went to shop, Todd and I hit some balls. This guy in the pic below was just picking up balls by hand with no gear. That has to be one of the most dangerous jobs around!