This morning as we were driving out of Piet Retief, Alison spotted a tourist info office and we stopped by to see what we could pick up. That was when I asked why we didn’t plan to go to Swaziland.  Alison said that she thought I didn’t want to go there but I only said to her that the King was looking for his 14^th wife and did she dare to go, just in case the king took a fancy to her!

So we decided on going to Swaziland and found our way to Mahamba, the border town, without too much difficulty. Otherwise there are 10 other entry points from South Africa into Swaziland. The border crossing was simple and took no more than half hour. On the South African side they didn’t even want to take the slip from the carnet documents as the officer said he had too much junk as it was. On the Swaziland side they didn’t even know what the carnet was.

We had to buy petrol for the stove and I stopped at a petrol station not knowing what the currency was or the exchange rate, assuming that they did take Rand.  I only needed one litre and gave the girl 20 Rand believing that the cost was Rand 6.85. She gave me back the 20 and took some coins from my hand instead and gave me returns in Emalangeni, Swaziland’s currency. I honestly didn’t know who got cheated in the process but I do believe that the girl should not have given me back the 20.

Swaziland is all mountains and valleys and the view again is nothing short of spectacular. We turned off towards Mbabane and then turning off towards Elzuwini Valley. As we drove along Alison spotted the turning to Swazi Candles Craft centre while looking for Malendela’s Farmhouse. Swazi Candles is a delightful place for souvenirs and we bought loads of stuff, candles mostly, for the first time since starting the journey.

While at the centre an American, David Moss approached me about Tuah. When he discovered what we were doing he was amazed and happy to meet us, doing something different from the usual. He and his wife, Phyllis invited us to stay with them when we get to Seattle, and jokingly said that he could provide us with hot showers but only for a week.

We then went on to Malendela’s where they had more shops with a view of distant mountains from the Restaurant terrace. They had internet services and we aimed to be there tomorrow morning. In the meantime we had to find a place where we could camp and went back to Swazi Backpackers which we had seen earlier before the turn off. We settled in quickly and had dinner of lamb chops and fried potatoes before going to bed earlier than usual.