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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strange and wasn't sure whether I wanted to go hiking with him after all. Jan Arild and I talked about backing out and just do something on our own that day, but suddenly the two guys finally returned and we decided to go along with the tour. We all went down to the bus station to catch a Kombi to the Komati Valley.

We got a good seat in this car as well, the driver drove quite nicely and things were starting to look a bit brighter. It took about an hour to reach Komati and we were dropped of in the bottom of the valley around 13.10. The scenery was certainly very beautiful with green hills all around us. I remembered this valley from the tour with Drifters last year, when we had come in the other direction and stopped at the top to see the magnificent view. However, back then, the vegetation had been all dry and yellow, whereas now it was lush and green.

Looking around us, we were almost in the middle of nowhere. There were a few houses scattered around, a very small shop and that was about it. The hike started and we walked up, up and up! I found it was quite hard and wished we could have slowed down a little, but I managed to keep up with the others somehow. We made some short breaks to watch the view and it was indescribably beautiful! Green hills as far as the eye cold see!

Eventually we reached the top and could walk some other way than up, which made things much easier for me. I still didn't like the guide, actually I was starting to like him less and less, but there was not much to do about that at the moment. We needed him to get back down again, something I was looking forward to more and more.

After a while we walked through a plantation of some sort and the two other guys seemed very ecstatic about it. At first I didn't understand why, but I soon realized we had walked through a marihuana field. The rest of the walk they kept discussing the prices of marihuana in Britain, comparing it to ...