Home » South Africa Swaziland » Southern Africa 2000 - Part 5: Soweto and Swaziland

After spending one day in Pretoria and going on a guided tour of Soweto, we headed for Swaziland. We stayed two days at the orphanage in Nhlangano before travelling by kombi to Mbabane. From there we arranged a hiking tour in the Komati Valley. It was a really beautiful place, although our crazy guide turned out to be slightly disorganised.

Southern Africa 2000 - Part 5: Soweto and Swaziland

Jan Arild Teland
2006-05-09 00:02:39

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arrangements for the next days. As we were planning to visit Mbabane tomorrow, we called Mbabane Backpackers to reserve a room and get more information on some tours they were offering. According to the guy answering the phone, we didn't need to reserve anything, though, we could just come by. We also phoned a company called Swazi Trails to book a bicycle safari for Friday.

Around 17.00 we started making dinner and soon aunt Borgny returned as well. She had a lot to tell about everything that had happened while I was away. The most important thing, however, was that her eye would become better and she was feeling fine now.

Borgny went to bed early and we did some packing since before going to bed at 21.30. For some reason I was itching all over my body and had problems falling asleep, even though I was very tired.

November 29, Wednesday

It was 08.00 before I woke up today. My hair looked like it had been abused during the night, so I had to shower before I could meet someone else. We had breakfast and packed the last of our stuff before saying goodbye to the puppies. They were happy to see us, probably because we were so good to chew on :-)

At 10.00 Borgny drove us to Nhlangano, where our plan was to catch the bus to Mbabane. She didn't like the idea of us using public transport, but we insisted since we knew she had more important things to do than drive us around.

At first glance the bus station looked very chaotic, but on closer inspection it was actually quite well organized. The destination of each bus was indicated on signs hanging from the roof, which made it relatively easy to find the right one. However, the Mbabane bus turned out to be full already, and not wanting to stand the whole way (2 hours), we decided to take a Kombi instead. A Kombi (or a "minibus taxi" as the Lonely Planet calls them) is a van with 10 or 11 seats that drives between cities and smaller places, ...