My Travel Adventures

Scouring the websites of Eswatini’s Tourism Authority, I learned that Eswatini’s Umhlanga festival generally takes place on the last week of August or the first week of September, and that the exact date is announced about a month in advance. Since this is very little time to put together an international ten-day itinerary for four people, I emailed the authority in July to ask whether they already had some idea of the tentative dates. Much to my surprise, I received an answer within a day. The gentleman wrote that the dates of Umhlanga are determined by a council of elders and that there is no way of saying for certain when the ceremony will occur, but that – given the festival has taken place on the first week of September in the past four or five years – he was fairly sure this year would be the same.

We left our hotel in Amsterdam at a leisurely nine o’clock, as we did not have much to do for the day. Our plan was to drive to Barberton and follow the educational route through the Barberton Makhonjwa Mountains, after which we would drive along the border with Eswatini, cross the border on the road leading to Mbabane, visit the Ngwenya Mines, and check into our hotel at the Ludzidzini Royal Village. We were specifically cautioned not to cross the border at the end of the Barberton Mountain route, where the road was supposed to be awful.

We woke up a little after six in the morning to catch our six-thirty safari tour of iSimangaliso. Having returned from our night safari at ten o’clock, I felt too tired to make conversation with the driver for the first hour, so I was exceedingly glad for Joel’s outgoing personality. What we saw on our safari was much less impressive than the previous night’s yield: a few red duikers, some gnus, warthogs, hippos, lots of monkeys, and various birds. However, we explained to our guide at the very beginning that we were interested in strange little critters, so we were not disappointed, and he did not feel under pressure as the morning slipped by and we came across no big cats or elephants.

We woke up at our slightly dinghy guesthouse in Bergville at half past six. We had gone to sleep thinking that we would make an early start to visit the rock art under Giant’s Castle, but Joel woke up to a message from a guide he contacted the night before saying that they were closed – there had been a fire near Giant’s Castle last year and the tourist amenities had not reopened yet. Since we did not want to squander our time, we quickly figured out an alternative plan and set off to procure a junk food breakfast from a nearby gas station.

The hotel shuttle to the parking lot under Sentinel Peak picked us up at half past seven. For three quarters of an hour, the rocky road rattled our bones while the car trundled its way above precipitous cliffs both left and right, so I was glad when we finally hopped off the car and I stood on my own feet. Our group of four quickly separated into two pairs, with me and Brent speeding towards the waterfalls while Joel and Tiana made a more leisurely walk to the nearer view over the so-called Amphitheatre.

Having booked rooms at the Thaba Bosiu Cultural Village, we began the day by driving just a little way up the road to the Thaba Bosiu Visitor Centre. The Visitor Centre was where we were told we could begin our guided hike up Thaba Bosiu, a plateau that served as Lesotho’s first seat of power in the nineteenth century when King Moshoeshoe I established his royal village there. After uniting several clans, King Moshoeshoe repelled invaders and raiders from Thaba Bosiu, whose name translates to “The Mountain of the Night.” The name allegedly refers to the idea that Thaba Bosiu was protected at night by a magical rope that the Basotho women wove and buried at the trailhead on Moshoeshoe’s command. When invaders crossed the rope, they fell asleep, and after waking up, they could only walk a few steps before falling asleep again. The invaders, in turn, thought that the name Thaba Bosiu referred to the mountain growing at night, as they could never reach the top.

We set off from our quaint guesthouse in Ventersburg and refuelled at the local gas station before continuing directly to the border of Lesotho. We left South Africa easily enough: we queued up to have our passports stamped and passed through the light vehicle inspection booth without anyone trying to stop us. Complications only arose when we arrived at the Lesotho border. The customs official in the drive-through booth had no idea what the Czech Republic was, much less whether it had a visa waiver agreement with Lesotho. One can usually search this information on a computer, but the official said the system was not working and asked me to come to his office while the others waited in the parked car.