A Loop around Southern Africa – Day 9: Trundling into Eswatini

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.

Once we got to Barberton, however, we had a change of heart. Going directly to Ludzidzini – where we would stay for most of our second day in Eswatini – would mean that we would get to explore very little of the country, and Joel pointed out that Tiana had not yet had a classical lion-filled African safari experience. Instead of going to the Ngwenya Mines, therefore, we decided to visit Hlane Royal National Park and stay the night.

We were surprised that we were the only tourists on the scenic route. We stopped by all eleven sites as well as a few viewpoints and took pictures at every single one of them. I tried to learn a little bit about the geological importance of the area, but it was mostly lost on me; I could simply not focus on the washed-out information boards. However, the general gist of the stops was to illustrate the history of one of the world’s oldest geological structures, dating back as far as 3.6 billion years and containing a physical record of the earth’s changing temperatures and bombardment from space. Interestingly, the landscape we saw from the viewpoints was completely different from much of what we had seen so far: the cloudy hills were being used for logging pine trees.

When we reached the end of the route, we realised that we had missed the road branching off to the south, which we were supposed to take if we were to avoid the horrible road behind the northern border crossing. We reasoned, however, that if the road was so easy to miss, it probably wasn’t a very good road either, so we continued to the Josefsdal Border Post. We crossed the border without any difficulties. Unlike at the border crossing into Lesotho, where the online system was not functioning and the physical list of visa-free countries was incomplete, the other side of the customs official’s door had a full country list fixed at eye-level.

What we had heard about the road from the Swazi border turned out to be completely true. As soon as we left the customs office, the tar road first filled with potholes and then transformed into a dusty and rocky dirt road. For the entire eleven-kilometre drive through the pine forests, we trailed a car belonging to two young Spanish ladies and our car became so thickly covered in dust that when we emerged on the other side in Piggs Peak, the men hanging out on the side of the road gestured at us that we should let them clean it. We were glad that we had made it through without puncturing a tyre or getting stuck, which would have been a real danger had it continued to rain.

We ate our gas station snacks for lunch, which allowed us to continue straight into the savannahs and through the fields of sugarcane to the gate of the royal park. Getting in was easy: we paid the fee and continued along the dirt road to the hotel’s reception area. The fenced compound was filled with animals. The impalas and nyalas seemed unfazed by the presence of people and cars driving into the parking lot, as did the monkeys and bats living in the trees and under the roof of the hotel. Right beyond the fence, we saw several rhinos drinking from the nearby watering hole, which had clearly been established there to bring animals to the tourists.

When we checked in at the hotel, we were told that we would have to drive another forty minutes to our house. Joel found this especially concerning as it was nearing six and we were explicitly told that it was not a good idea to drive through the park at night. There was nothing we could do, though, and we still had to wait for our takeaway dinner to be prepared, during which time the sky became properly dark. Fortunately, all we had to do was follow the road from the main gate, trusting a very rudimentary map we were given and relying on Google Maps to reassure us when we felt the road meandered just a bit too much.