Clash of Kings

So it’s been a little while since I wrote a post. These past two weeks have been action packed. I spent 8 days in the Kingdom of Swaziland with my buddy Patrick, exploring the last absolute monarchy in the world. We did the works. We got in on a Friday, staying with a friend of a friend for the weekend. Our initial plan had been to hit a couple places and stay in each place a couple nights. But our newfound friends decided we should base out of Mbabane, borrow a car, and do day trips. So of course, we did! While we didn’t manage to see all of Swaziland by any means, we did get to see and do a lot. We mountain biked in Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary, ziplined in Malolotja National Park, and went on a game drive in Hlane Royal National Park. We visited Swazi Candles (http://swazicandles.com/about/), House on Fire (home of the Bushfire music festival), and Ngwenya Glass (http://www.ngwenyaglass.co.sz/history.html). We hiked to Lion Cavern, the oldest known mine in the world. We ate some incredible food, including various forms of beef, lamb, pork, chicken, and warthog (you did read that correctly). The several nights that we stayed in hostels, we met and hung out with some incredible people from Australia, Germany, Holland, and Swaziland.

I have lots of stories from Swaziland. But since I don’t have the attention span to write them all down, much less expect you to sift through all of them, I will write down only one, and if you want more, just ask. As I stated previously, we went on a game drive in Hlane RNP. Patrick had never big cats before, so that was objective number 1.  But it is difficult to find big cats, and we had to keep this in mind so as not to get our hopes too high. The drive started out slow, seeing only the scattered impala, nyala and blesbok. We were starting to lose hope as sunset arrived, having glimpsed several giraffe, including a baby, another larger group of nyala, and several ground hornbill. Just past sunset, we came upon an elephant at a watering hole, which gave us a wonderful viewing place! By the time we left the watering hole, I had all but given up on seeing lions. But our driver had one more trick up his sleeve; he circled back to a place we had passed earlier, and after some careful looking, he spotted a large male lion. Immediately he turned off the road and pulled up within 20 feet of our feline friend. The lion was just chilling under a small tree, but after a few mintues decided to get vocal. He stood, started walking away, then stopped and proceeded to roar about half a dozen times directly in front of the car. If there was a better way to finish our game drive on our last day in Swaziland, I don’t know what it might have been.

Patrick and I at Lion Cavern (camera slung from a tree using the camera strap)

Vervet Monkey in Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary

Sunset in Hlane

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