Royal Swazisun Mbabane

... glass. The designs and colors are superb. A rhino wine bottle stopper is going to find its way back to Canada as a result.

Our destination is the Milwane Game Reserve, the oldest game reserve in Swaziland. We see from the entrance sign it was started in 1961 and begin to worry about what the condition of our accommodation may be like, given the rustic conditions we had in Kruger National Park. We are staying in a traditional beehive hut and soon discover ...

South Africa is a throwback to another era, and I don't mean their obsession with skin color. I mean their dedication to original backpacker principles and hippie ethic… and their general lack, and high prices for, Internet (always rare, never well done). It also includes Woodstock-like rock festivals, hippy-dippy travel guides… and BazBus. BazBus may not be the Gray Rabbit or Green Tortoise of US PacNW fame, but those ...

... after two hours of negotiations going nowhere the lads gave in and got off the bus. I felt so sorry for them as they had booked hostels in advance and it meant they were stuck in this random town for an extra 4 days.


After two more hours of driving we arrived at the Swazi border and after a quick bit of paper work and another hour of driving we arrived to our hostel. We said goodbye to the two faced hypocrites and checked into our hostel. I was feeling a little ...

A very small kingdom between South Africa and Mozambique, that you can cross in 2 hours. A king that has more than 100 wives and chose a new one every year during a ceremony where all the maidens of the country dance in front of him, hoping to be chosen... A kingdom where the media cannot criticize the King and his actions/decisions...

I was not sure of what to expect of Swaziland. As beautiful as Lesotho? As developed as South ...

... are very helpful, particularly in finding directions and or getting around the bus stop. People will literally walk you to the bus that you need to take. That was great. However, you need to ask people directly for help. In Swaziland, the people are much less friendly and colder than in East or North Africa. Everyone keeps their head down and does not say hello. When I was in Kenya, everyone would say "Jambo" (hello) whenever you walked down the ...

... doctors seeing the patients besides when we come there 4 days per week....so then no one sees the patients for the remaining 3 days of the week!! Pretty messed up huh? There were 3 cuban doctors who used to take care of the patients there, but then they got into a car accident, 2 died and 1 survived and had to go back to cuba. In the meantime, one of our docs decided to step in and fill in there....and they just never got someone else to ...

... better. The party was pretty fun. I met mostly americans but there were a few Swazis and I met a Zimbabwean as well. It was a good time. The white guy who came as a Swazi was pretty funny.... Otherwise, I then got up Saturday and went for a really rigorous hike. The area I went to was all like hills, mountains, and valleys with a dry grassy vegetation somewhat similar to the plain states in the U.S. It is quite interesting the many different ...

... of the hospital to start rounds. first of all, the children are in these tiny hospital beds, 20 to a big room. then the mothers sleep on chairs next to the child's hospital bed. there is not a whole lot of free space in these big rooms. and unlike the states, the nurses don't do most of the care for the patients...the mothers do. so the mothers feed the children, change the diapers, wipe them down etc. the nurses weigh the children, hand out food/supplmentation/formula, and ...

... to be doing well and the baby is still being worked up for HIV. Then again, next patient we saw was a gal who was pregnant and has HIV. We went over her meds to make sure that everything else is good. When they get to 28 weeks in the pregnancy they get started on anti retroviral medications. That was interesting and deciding which medications to start. One halllmark of pediatric HIV is noting how the kids are developing. Often, acutally more than ...

... the last site and lots of tourists at the other sites and teems of teems of South Africans poured out to go shopping. Swaziland gets a signficant amount of money from South African tourists. I know it may be my own preconditioning, but it really seemed like to me the white South Africans were in particular quite rude to the local Swazi shopkeepers. They would often ask how much a certain item is, and then dismiss the people and just walk away while the ...