South Africa: Day 13

Some of the valleys that you can find through the garden route

We left Port Elisabeth early in the morning and headed towards The Crags, on our way there we were going to pass by Tsitsikamma, a massive nature park which is often called “The garden of the garden route” (The garden route was the route we were following from Port Elisabeth to Wilderness and even further).

We decided to take a little stop in the Stormsriver village, a little town at one of the entrances to the Tsitsikamma forest.

We knew that there was a canopy tour through the forest and we wanted to join one of these tours; 600 metres longs (all together that is) 10 platforms and up to 30 metres high.

 In the queue to book the tour we got informed that there was no availability today or tomorrow (other than at 5 in the morning) so we wandered around the town for a bit. We eventually went back to the canopy tour to see if they knew any other canopy tours around the area, one of the desk workers was about to give us a number when another one excitedly told us that a family of 6 hadn't shown up to the tour, meaning that we could go on the tour that was about to leave.

We rushed ourselves to get ready and hopped on the van towards the starting point. 

We had two awesome guides who encouraged us to do crazy things while on the canopy tour, he told me to jump of a few platforms instead of the regular sit and go down. It was amazing!

The BnB's lake

After the canopy tour we continued our way to the BnB, once there we got a little tour around the house, it was massive and had an incredible infinity pool, looking over an impressive lake.

The BnB was a bit in the middle of nowhere though and they didn't do dinner nor lunch, so for dinner she suggested a BnB/Guesthouse no too far from where we were. So we went to this BnB for dinner and it looked amazing, one of the nicest places to stay that I had sen during the trip, but the manager there told us that they had been completely full booked since a few months ago, anyhow we proceeded to the restaurant part and had a menu with "steenbok" meat or hake as a main course.

Back at our own BnB we didn't really do much more, so we had a look at some flyers about things we could do the following day.

South Africa: Day 8 and Christmas morning

With the little disappointment from the last lodge we ended up booking a different stay half way to our next booking. To get there we had to go through the border again, we where staying at a game lodge close to the Pongola game reserve (The first game reserve we visited to have a big lake nearby).

Mantenga''s craft's centre 

On our way there we stopped at a local craftsman's town in Swazieland called Mantenga craft's centre, where locals make different kinds of woodcuttings to sell them as souvenirs.

Tent lodges

As we arrived we got greeted very kindly and guided to our rooms; the rooms where a curious combination of tents and buildings: the roof, doors and windows where part of a tent, but the walls and the floor where built.

After lunch we decided to go on a game drive, because my mum heard that it was one of the best parks to see black Rhinos.

This boy named Joel joined us during the game ride, he was the son of the lodge's manager. He was 19 years old and already running his own business, amazing in my opinion, and it made me think about what to do in the short future myself, once I'm done with my first bit of travelling of course.

During the game we where suffering, the temperatures were probably around the 40º and the wind that was blowing felt like an hot fan on your face. We did see lots of warthogs which are so cute! And after a while we even encountered black rhinos!! They are really a lot more aggressive than their relatives the white rhinos, as well as a bit smaller.

For dinner all the guests were supposed to be gathered around a very nice camp fire for a drink before heading to the table, but it was so windy that everyone just went inside; once we got guided to the tables we saw that Joel was going to be sitting on his own, which we found sad and invited him over to our table to have dinner! It ended up being a very interesting night, we learnt a lot about growing up in the local area and as a main course we had kudu!! which was surprisingly tender for a wild animal.

If you look closely you can see a crocodile

On Christmas day's morning we left our beds quite early because we had planned something, something different than the by now usual game drives. We were heading to the lake, to do a sort of lake safari.
The first animal that we spotted on the lake was a crocodile, but not too much later we saw a big group of hippopotamus, at first we only managed to catch a few glimpses of their noses and ears going up and down but later on we saw the almost completely out of the water. At the coast of the lake you could observe a big variety of wildlife as well, from rhinos and zebras to more warthogs and of course impalas.
When the weather started changing the ranger decided that we could go back to get some breakfast. And so we did, after breakfast we started packing to head to our next destination.

South Africa: Days 6 & 7

Day 6:

With the end of a relaxed morning at the pool in Nelspruit we look for things to do around: My dad suggested going to visit some gold mines, but after seeing how they ignored our phone calls (and how my mum didn't really agree) we ended up visiting the Sudwala caves, which where only an hour drive away.

The cave at the end of the tours

The caves were a very old formation where the old Swahili people used to live in, we saw stalagmites, stalactites and flowstone formations, which are hollow and where used by the Swahili as alarm system. The tour ended at a little cave 80 metres below the surface and was only accessible through a 0.5 metre high and 40 metres long access cave, but it was absolutely worth it, the cave was lit up with various colours and was the start of a longer tour (which only happens on Sundays) that lasts 5 hours and goes all the way into the deeper caves that have no lights at all. 

Afterwards we went to visit a sort of dinosaur museum, which Sofie obviously loved. For dinner we checked out a suggestion of the guest house, it was supposed to be a local restaurant but we ended up being a little bit disappointed, because on the menu we mainly saw steaks and chicken (not that I'm complaining, the steak was lovely).

To start of the 7^th day I have to mention that we had a special breakfast: eggs, but instead of sunny side u or a regular scrambled egg, it was served in a wrap with some vegetables and some bacon. Once finished the extensive breakfast we left heading to Swaziland.

After a long drive we got at the border controls, which were especially annoying at the South African part of the border, but once we got to our lodge in Mbabane we thought it was worth the wait: The rooms had a beautiful sight over the river that was coming down. 

After lunch we decided to go for a hike upwards the river, we had a stunning view over the valley and my dad was feeling extra adventurous, so he decided to climb up a little mountain that there was next to the top of the river.

Now the lodge was amazing but it felt a little awkward to be there, we got told that they were short on staff, and later on we even heard that the dinner room was full (luckily we had already booked) I have to add that the full dinner room meant 7 persons. The dinner we had was nice but we all agreed that it would be a shame to spend Christmas eve here, even more after we heard that there would be no service at all during Christmas eve nor Christmas day. 

View from the top of the little mountain