Justin and Hazel Around the World

Swaziland Countryside

The first day in Swaziland we mostly spent inside, recovering from travel and making plans for our time in the country. Our exceedingly generous hosts Phil and Joanna made us great food – they typically eat raw vegetarian food, so we had really delicious salads covered in nuts and fruits and other goodies, along with some cooked dishes made just for us. We felt completely relaxed and really well taken care of! So we were productive in our planning and made an ambitious schedule where we’d get to see 3 Swazi sights – the Mlilwane Game Reserve, the famous Reed Dance, and the beautiful Malalotja Nature Reserve.

Lurking Croc

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After the end of our tour we pretty much just crashed out at the Ritz backpackers. We ordered take out Indian food, did laundry, and slept basically as long as possible. But our rest was not super long because we had booked a shuttle – the only one we could find – to Mbabane, the capital of Swaziland.

The shuttle (website link) was all-in-all a good experience, but it was a lot of hassle trying to get the reservation. We were wary of all the transport options between Johannesburg and Swaziland; the bus station in Joburg is said to be really dangerous, there were no trains as far as we could tell, and no coaches would go past the border. We had heard that Baz Bus, a popular backpacker’s bus, used to go there but alas it had been removed from the route selection. So we were pretty stuck until I found another option – TransMagnific minivan service. This was a company with a 15-seater van that had daily departures, a reasonable website and online bookings, but I couldn’t find any recommendations or reviews online. Needless to say, we were reluctant to pay $70 USD a piece ahead of time for a company that didn’t exist. When it became clear that they were the only option, we gave in and booked online.

Then the difficulties began because they wanted a prepayment to their Swazi bank account. We booked the day before our Acacia safari, and were unable to get to a bank before we left. There were a few banks along the course of our safari that looked as though we could use them, but since apparently banking hours are 9:30 to 3:30 with a lunchbreak in the middle we didn’t manage to get to any bank until Maun, just before we left for the Okovango Delta. That was when the big kicker came: you can’t transfer money to a Swazi account from Botswana unless you have an account! We got agitated at this because we would be unable to pay until maybe the day before our journey.

Fortunately TransMagnific came through – they let us just pay the driver after the trip! We were really happy that we could keep our seats for the van (which turned out to be completely full) and showed up the day of with our luggage.

Besides our payment issues, we had no trouble at all with the service! We had a smooth, comfortable ride with complementary snacks. I think our request for no mayonnaise on our sandwiches caused them to omit the sandwiches completely, but we were prepared with our own food anyway. I can highly recommend this shuttle service. The only caveat is that our van got in to Mbabane more than 1.5 hours later than the website stated, and we didn’t run into any traffic. So our generous hosts in Swaziland ended up waiting at a gas station for a really long time! We made it to Mbabane after dark, a little tired, but happy to be there!

Highlights

1. Elephant herd crossing the water - Chobe Natl Park, Botswana
2. Feeling CLOSE to the animals on our Walking Safari - Mosi-oa-tunya, Zambia
3. Finally getting the hang of mokoro driving – Okovango Delta, Botswana
4. Camping out really made us feel like we were on an adventure!
5. Lots of really cool people and animals accompanied us the whole time!

Lowlights

1. Four whole days doing nothing but travel.
2. Poor communication between our guide and Acacia Small Groups – this directly caused delays and low group morale.
3. Getting lost on the way to the first night’s lodge — after 12 hours on the road
4. Constant equipment issues.  We constantly had issues with tent zippers breaking and other people had to sleep in fleece blankets one night before sleeping bags were found!
5. Livingstone sales pitch video for overpriced activities.  This sales pitch lasted for an hour and caused other members of the group to miss out on things – The Waterfront, Zambia

We were sad to leave the campsite when we did – 2 nights just didn’t seem enough to fully appreciate where we were.  However, Maggie and I got to have a completely different experience of the delta once we got out: a 45 minute flight above it!  We were stoked because it had been said that it’s hard to fully appreciate the size of the delta from the ground.  Whoever said that was right!  It was wild to see animals, scenery, and the odd fire from 500-1000 feet up. I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

Our Plane

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Once we had the camp set up we got to start relaxing.  I found this to be a very laid back part of the trip.  Mornings and evenings we got to go on walks on our beautiful island.  We saw some animals (although nothing as spectacular as in Chobe) and enjoyed the landscape.  It was so nice to get some solid hiking in after spending a lot of time in vehicles!  We saw zebra, lots of kinds of antelope, elephants, hippo, lots of birds, and a snake in the big tree IN OUR CAMPSITE.

Island Scenery

We hiked around a giant baobab tree near the camp

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We were so thrilled to see so much at Chobe that we were really sad to leave.  Fortunately the next part of our safari was to be a similarly awesome (though quite different) experience.  We were headed into the Okovango Delta (after another day’s worth of driving) – a place that is unique in the world for both its ecology and its culture.

En Route - Early and Cold

The Okovango Delta is the world’s largest inland delta – it is a huge area whose geography changes with the seasons.  In the low season, it behaves much like a normal river plain would – grasses and a few river channels (along with wild animals) can be found then.  But in high-water seasons (We were there in August which has a high water level) the islands sink under water and become marshes separated by hundreds of small islands. (more…)

“What is your favorite country of the trip so far?”

• Justin’s response: “South America”
• Hazel’s response: “Istanbul”

This post has been a while coming partly because the amazing awesomeness of Chobe National Park is so huge that it’s a pretty intimidating post to write.  This, for me, was a completely magical day.  I wanted elephants and I got ELEPHANTS.  Tiny baby elephants, elephants having mud baths, a huge herd of elephants crossing a river, and even sunset elephants.  This park has the highest concentration of elephants in the world.  In fact, they like it so much that if they try to take the elephants elsewhere to redistribute the population the elephants will walk back over 700 kms to get back to this park.

We got up in the morning in Livingstone, in Zambia and had to wait for some new people to join the tour.  There was a bit of a miscommunication between the head office and our tour leader (the didn’t tell him that some people were not going to show up!) which resulted in a bit of a mad dash to get the ferry across the border.  Fortunately, our guide was looking out for us and arranged for our game drive vehicles to meet us straight off the boat and take us directly to see the animals.

We had a really nice game drive vehicle and driver and had about 2.5 hours of driving up and down the Chobe river looking for wildlife.  There were so many amazing sightings, so if you want to see all the pictures click on any of these and it will take you through to the gallery.  But here are some of my favorite things!  (EDIT: ok, there are about a million pictures below.  But it really was that great!)

First view of the Chobe River

Hippo!

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In the afternoon after our walking safari we headed out to see the famous Victoria Falls.  They were on the low side since it is the dry time of year, but still impressive.  We had about three hours of walking around and taking photos, so I’ll just share a few here.

The spray was pretty intense!

Mom and I hiking around

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We got up early again – around 6am – to depart for our walking safari which started at 7:15 and was to last 3 hours.  Fortunately the chefs at the Waterfront opened the restaurant early (sweet!) and we were able to eat before loading up on the safari vehicle.  It was our first safari 4×4 – seemingly a converted pickup truck with 4 rows of 3 seats in the back.  They very considerately provided poncho-like blankets for the drive to the park, which was fairly cold in an open-air vehicle early in the morning.

En Route to Safari

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