Wednesday morning when Jaakko was ready to go started the engine of Scotts and Grahams car. At midday we were at the border and it did not take a too long time. Close to border was an old mine field on the top of mountain. The scenery was awesome and we could see the coming rain from a far distance. Then we drove to the capital city of Swaziland Mbabane where we had a Chinese lunch in a local shopping centre. After a short tour around the city we headed to the mountains close to border. From a place called Piggs Peak we took to the left and were supposed to reach border after a 20 kilometres drive on a dirt road. Unfortunately it started pouring rain and the road became really slippery. The adventure started: Our car got stuck in the mud and we had to push it through the mud for three times! You can only imagine how how muddy we were in the end. Finally we reached a mine village called Bulembu and drove through that. Soon we reached the border which was offcourse closed! They closed it at 4pm and we were there 4.58pm so about an hour late. You can say it was stupidity not to find that out beforehand but it was too late to start crying. TIA= This is Africa. The gate would open the next day 8am so we had to turn back to village. It turned out to be a real jungle village in the midle of steep mountains. There used to be sulfat mine and some thousands of white people with black workers. It was definitely the coolest place I ever been with a köysirata of longest in Africa. There was also a golf course, hospital, school with swimming pool to an awesome scenery to the walley. Mine was closed years ago and and non profit organization had bought it to liven up life there and to start a orphanage. Swazilands population 39% are HIV positive so the futute does not look too bright. The whole evening at Bulembu was raining and there was no electrisity. We found a nice guest house and a dinner to eat. The next morning we went to run and explore village with Scott. We had a breakfast and bought some petrol and left to make it to border. The same friendly workers greeted us and let us go through back to SA. The road continued to be hilly and Barberton was the next place we could buy some more petrol.
We missed the road race which was planned for Wednesday evening in Nelspruit. That was allright for me and I got good time to recover and change some thoughts in the cool mountain weather. Our other plan was to go to Kruger national park which we did on thursday. It was a little rainy day and we got in for a very cheap price. We saw some animals including Elephant,Cameleon plus some basic gaselles. I´ve seen all the animals back in Tanzania Serengeti so I was basically sleeping in the car as we drove 50 km/hour through the park on good roads. Once we were outside the bark the adventure started again. Close to town called Sabie we decided to go for an hour run in the mountains. On the top of one mountain we found a nice field of grass. We continued running that for less than a kilometre discussing the purpose of well cut grassfield. On the top hill we found Sabie airport building which I thought to be a church. Really funny: an airport build on a hill/slope! Jaakko was enjoying his time in the car while we had our run. After run we headed to Sabie for a dinner. I had some crocodile kebab with rice and a pint. By the time we got back to road again it was getting dark and unfortunately very very foggy in a road climping to 2100metres. Speed was only about 40 km/h and we got back to Dullstroom very late at 10pm. Luckily our driver Scott “the sceptic” Frazer made great job keeping us all well and alive. Thank you Graham and Scott for an unforgettable trip!
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