With baited breath, we wandered into the immigration building at the Golela border post. The 3-month visa issue was on our mind – not being able to get back into South Africa would be disappointing on many fronts, not least because our flights back to Europe left from Johannesburg and also because we were scared of M's friend Inna murdering us when she landed there to visit us and discovered that we weren't actually in the same country. The large, prehistoric-looking Afrikaner border guard explained to us in no uncertain terms that we would be interviewed when we came back into South Africa, and that in all likelihood this interview would be completely pointless as we'd only be given 7 days on our return. We started mentally penning our apologies to Inna, got back into the car, entered Swaziland and pressed on. The sun had already gone down by this point and it was hard to see anything of rural Swaziland. The only thing I could tell was that the vast majority of the country was on fire as farmers burnt the old crops from their fields.
The guys took us to Bombaso's backpackers where they'd been living for a few months and we got a bed in a dorm with 4 Indian guys who eventually noticed our presence, moved their chins about half a centimetre up and then down in acknowledgement, and got back to what they were doing before, which seemed to be staring at the wall in silence. We left the room, had a few beers with the guys and met Laura, a Helsinki girl who had been living there for a while too, and went with all of them for a very typically Swazi dinner of enchiladas.
At least the weather is better than in Durban.The fact that we could hear the Indian guys snoring from the main house seemed to indicate that there would be a problem, and Riku emerged from the room laughing nervously. « It smells.... kinda funky in there... ». We walked in to assess the situation and found ourselves in a room where the snores were making the floor vibrate at a strength of about Richter 4. We made a snap decision and, not for the first time, found ourselves setting up the tent in the darkness of night while the guys settled for sleeping on the sofas in the lounge.
Mbabane is one of those towns which is pleasant enough without anything in particular to actually do besides walking around and looking at such exciting things as the City Council and the Swazi Mall. The market, potentially one of the interesting points, seemed to have no-one in it, and we quickly found ourselves having seen absolutely everything. I suppose that's what happens when you go as a visitor to a capital city which has a population of about 90,000. The Finns had mentioned going to a craft market so we went along with them down to the Ezulwini Valley not far from town, where M bought mini masks and salad spoons and I managed to score myself an outrageously loud Swaziland t-shirt. We stood around chatting and admiring our purchases and then headed back.
The sign says it all.
What lovely purchases.We spent a few days aimlessly wandering, going to Pick N Pay to buy food to cook at the hostel and so on. The walk from the hostel into town was over half an hour so that gave us a bit of time to get some fresh air. When we had nothing to do outside we sat on Bombasos' patio and played Jungle Speed, Scrabble and Rummikub, wondering what else we could do. It was eventually decided that we couldn't really find an answer to this so we decided to head out of town to some Natural Reserves. Swaziland, unlike South Africa, is a small enough place that you can get a minibus from one town to another, get off half way, and find yourself standing at the gates to a National Park or the like. We decided to make use of it.
Oh, the excitement! M, Erno and Laura losing to T at Rummikub.
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