Robert's Travels

The sixth day of our tour was my birthday! As a nice change of pace we did not have to get up particularly early - our wake up call came at 7:00 and the bus was not scheduled to leave the hotel until 8:30. We were up shortly before 7:00, had breakfast at the hotel restaurant, and had everything packed up by about 8:15. The bus left the hotel on schedule and drove us through the capital of Eswatini - Mbabane. This gave us the opportunity to learn a bit more about the Eswatini people as Belinda narrated our tour through the city. This was a lucky day for us - it was our turn at the front of the bus! This gave us a great view of Mbabane and the Eswatini countryside as we drove inwards.

The first stop of the day was at Ngwenya Glass, a short drive from the capital. This glass factory was established in the early 1980’s by a Swedish aid organization to help establish a new industry in the country - several master glassblowers came from Europe to train the first group of Swazi’s in the art of glass blowing. Several years later the plant was run by and employs Swazis and has been producing hand-made glassware ever since. They use locally sourced, recycled glass as the base of all of their work, making it both good for the economy and the environment. We were able to watch the crew creating glasses, vases and small figurines from a catwalk on the second story of the factory. The factory reminded Todd and I a lot of the glassblowing class we had taken a couple years earlier. They were obviously much better than us.

After watching a number of glasses and vases be made in the factory, we went into the attached shop and took a look at the finished works of art. While we were exploring the store a hanging glass vase caught Todd’s eye, and we ended up purchasing it as a souvenir of the trip. We spoke about converting it into a terrarium when we’re back in Canada, but that’s a problem for us once we’re back home. The vase was not small, roughly 30 cm tall and 20 cm in diameter, but the sales staff did a good job wrapping it tightly in newsprint and packing it into a box for transport. We are hopeful that it survives the trip home in one piece.

Once we left the factory the bus started driving to the Jeppes Reef border crossing with South Africa. The drive lasted for about an hour and a half, and we arrived at the border around 12:00. We cleared the border without issue, then disembarked from the bus. The next stop on the tour was the Matsamo cultural village, right beside the border. We started by having a traditional Swazi meal for lunch, which included pumpkin, maize, and a goat curry. Once lunch was over we toured through a traditional Swazi village. We were accompanied by a guide who took us into several of the main buildings, and described how different Swazi traditions influenced life in the village. As we went through the village our guide did a good job giving us a view into what life in an Eswatini village would have looked like. The last part of our visit to the Matsamo cultural village was watching a musical and dance performance put on by members of the cultural village. The performing group had about a dozen males and about two dozen females dressed in traditional Swazi outfits, and they did a very impressive job singing and dancing.

We left the border area shortly after 15:00, and spent the next two hours driving to Hazyview. This town is quite close to Kruger National Park, making it a convenient place to stay before visiting the park. Our hotel, the Protea Hazyview, was on the outskirts of the town. I spent most of the drive reading “Death’s End”, while Todd alternated between napping and enjoying the view. We arrived to the hotel just after 17:00, and checked in. Once in our room I spent the hour before dinner working on this blog. The hotel had a nice buffet that we enjoyed with some Australian’s on the tour (in fact, the people we had shared the jeep with the previous day). We had a nightcap with them after dinner, then retired to an early bed at 20:30. We were informed that we would be receiving a 4:45 wake up call ahead of our game park drive through Kruger National Park and we wanted to make sure we were well rested.