We left South Africa again yesterday and are now in the kingdom of Swaziland, our third southern African nation. The huts here are square not round but still have thatched roofs. The people seem to live off the land and we passed lots of sugarcane, cattle and goats. We’re camping at a great quiet campsite in the Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary for the next few nights. Already we have seen a monitor lizard, a giant crocodile, impala, warthogs, wildebeest, and nyala We had a wonderfully quiet night. There are only two other campsites occupied and we hardly saw the people. Other than some grunts by the impala buck to gather his harem (it’s their rutting season) all was still until the birds started.
We procured a map of Mlilwane and tried to drive all the roads prior to selecting a hike. The gate is covered with 40,000 wire snares that have been confiscated from the sanctuary. The results are obvious. We saw impala, kudu, bleisbok, wildebeest, zebras, and warthogs.We hiked around the Hippo Lake where we saw many hippos, or rather their ears and noses. They spend most of the day submerged to protect their delicate skin from the sun. We also managed to get the truck stuck when we tried to turn around on a remote, single lane, muddy hill. Some rocking and pushing got us on our way.
After lunch we stopped at Pik n Pay for some essentials then drove to the government sponsored craft center. There must have been 100 craft stalls covering 250 yards. After a few minutes, though, everything started to look the same. And because we were ‘special friends’ and had traveled ‘so far’ everyone had a ‘very good price’ for us. We passed on the carved animals and everything carved form ‘ebony’. It’s either not genuine or it must be bad for the environment. We did some early Christmas shopping and picked up some soapstone sculptures for ourselves. You might think that making decisions when the total purchase for eight items is less than $70 would be easy. But you would be wrong. These people spend an entire day working on a piece that might sell for $20 and we are reluctant to bargain. Some of the craftspeople are quite gifted and those who aren’t say the pieces were made by ‘their brother’.
