The 10th of February 2013 – it was a fine morning with good weather and sunny day. We would be driving down to the Swaziland for a 3-days and 2-nights getaway at the Hlane Royal National Park. According to Chen, this adventure would be our Valentine day celebration. In actual fact, the truth was to get his Visa extension for a couple more days before he travelled to Gabon for a proper 3-months Visa extension. If you were an expatriate at South Africa, you will soon get used to the many obstacles and lengthy processes along the way for Work Visa application. We could whine endless about this but looking at the bright side, we got to visit Swaziland in exchange of the visa complication issue, which was just brilliant!
Kingdom of Swaziland is a small independent country situated in the land of Greater South Africa. It has very low population and depends largely on agricultural for revenue and employment. It is considered as one of the poorer Africa countries and has faced with bankruptcy threat. In general, many Africa countries suffer from high HIV infection rate which lead to low adults life expectancy, high infant mortality and death rates. And Swaziland suffered the same if not the worst. The catastrophic HIV widespread has greatly hindered the overall Swaziland development and growth. Despite the many banes, Swaziland itself is blessed with many beautiful landscapes and terrains. Along the way of our drive, the mountainous landscape just took our breath away. Entering the land of Swazi, the people were friendly and the streets were clean, even in the town area. I had foolishly assumed that it would be worse than South Africa but it proved to be the opposite.
It was an outbound journey of approximately five and a half hours drive from Johannesburg to Hlane Royal National Park. As usual, we always travel with our tough buddy “the black GWM Hover” whenever we visit the National Parks. The Hlane Royal National Park is the largest protected area and national park in Swaziland. It is home to the usual animals we see in many National Parks in South Africa except for the Cape Buffaloes. When one is a frequent visitor to the National Park, one will soon realise that spotting the Big Fives especially the predators via self-driving require enormous luck. Soon after many trips to the wild, it was not only the Big Fives that thrilled me. But I began to appreciate many other occurrences. A mug of hot coffee, cool breeze blowing to my face and some yummy food in the car during drive; the huge savannah and the different landscapes and sceneries; and spotting rare animals like the spiders, the tortoises and the jackals in the National Park; all of these excited me. Just recently I was telling Chen that how blessed we are to be able to experience the life in South Africa. Where else in the world would have the Safaris and animals as real as in the Africa continent!
Hlane Royal National Park is approximately five and a half hour drive away from Johannesburg.
By the time when we arrived at the Hlane National Park, it was already nearing 5pm. It means no game drive today and rest early. After all, we were planning for an easy breezy trip. On the first day, we were allocated a cottage somewhere further north part of the park. They were the newer cottages with electricity access. They were clean, cosy and fully equipped. But there were only six of them and seemed to be rather remote. While on the second day, we moved to the little hut near to the reception area but there was no electricity access in the hut.
Arriving at the Hlane National Park Gate for registration.
The routes in the Hlane National Park were all gravel roads and rather narrow. Hence you would really need a good 4×4 vehicle to explore the park. On the second day, we went out for our self-driving game drive in the morning. The roads were so bumpy that even our tough buddy had a hard time. Thus, later that afternoon we decided to go on the park sunset game drive programme to give our tough buddy a rest. The sunset game drive was awesome. The guide was experienced and we got to have our complimentary drink while admiring the beautiful sunset. Furthermore, this was the ever first time in our experience that we were allowed to descend from the game vehicle and approached the animals for a closer distance.
The small little hut on the right picture is the park reception hut which is located in the NdLovu Camp area.
The restaurant area with the bar.
The Little Hut for our second day stay. There was no electricity for these huts but the National Park provided all the candle lights and the oil lamps.
Chen was preparing the dinner which was bought from the Chinese New Year celebration at Nan Hua Temple earlier on.
The Wildebeests
The Impalas
The Warthdog
The White Rhinos
The Giraffe
The Elephants
The Lioness
Huge Spider
Animals lazying around the water point in front of the restaurant.
Walking in the bush to a closer distance to the animals.
Head skeleton of different animals.
We later realised that many animals that we tried to spot through the game drive would gather at the water point just in front of the restaurant. The elephants, the rhinos, the hippos and the antelopes would normally spend their leisure time here. So even without doing the game drive, one would still able to watch many animals by sitting in front of the restaurant.
All in all, it was a slightly different experience compared to the well-known Kruger National Park with its less visitors-packed and quiet atmosphere.
Life of ME 