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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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at Spar for the evening meal and breakfast, and returning to Mbabane Backpackers for the night. Fortunately, no other people had arrived in our room! Unfortunately, some cockroaches had arrived in the bathroom, but I decided not to care about them. We had some yoghurt (they make the best yoghurt in the world in South Africa!) and bread for our evening meal at 20.00. For the rest of the evening we relaxed in our room before going to bed pretty early.

November 30, Thursday

We got up at 08.10 and had breakfast. We had been told yesterdat that the Komati Valley hike would start at 09.30 so we were ready in due time. However, it turned out that we needn't have bothered because our guide was still asleep. Apparently a guy called Mthunzi, who we had met briefly yesterday, and who had seemed a bit weird, was going to be our guide. When he eventually appeared, he said he wasn't quite ready yet, so we wouldn't leave until around 10.30.

There wasn't much to do about that, so we just went down to the shop and bought something to drink while we waited. Two other boys, from Ireland and England, were also going on the hike, but one of them had to organize a visa for Mozambique first, which we also had to wait for. Little information was given about anything, so we were a bit confused about what was going to happen next.

We ended up going down to the city centre while waiting for the guys who went to the embassy. After walking around in a handicraft market for a while, we sat down outside and talked to Mthunzi. It took so long that in the end Jan Arild and I decided to buy a wooden mask in the market, store it at the hostel and then return to Mthunzi. We had waited so long for the other guys that they could certainly wait for us if they came back before us.

However, when we came back, they still had not returned, and I was now getting tired of this mess. I also thought Mthunzi was very strange ...