Mr Loverman SHAKA!!

Trip Start May 26, 2004
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16
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Trip End Ongoing


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Flag of Swaziland  ,
Saturday, May 14, 2005

We moved onto the next leg of the journey which was into Swaziland which is a small country completely surrounded by South Africa. We journeyed down in the mystery mobile and came to the border control which was a fort Knox like bastion of security. It even had a boom gate! Swaziland is exceptionally poor and apart from tourist money is almost completely reliant on SA. Most of the houses were little more than shacks. Also Fi felt sorry for every person we traveled on the road cos they were plodding along and the road seemed to go on and on and on for miles! We decided it was time to spend that tourist money.  
 
We were booked into a tour of Shaka Land but first of all disaster struck. Our accommodation fell through due to a combination of an ancient South African, an apparent over booking and a complete and utter lack of knowledge of where the accommodation was situated. We stopped at the first place we came to which was a bit out from the main city, to try and ring and Fiona, cynically if you ask me, said I bet ya he will say we should stay here. She was of course right but still the lack of faith was a little disturbing. Righteous indignation did take over at this point and we demanded to be taken into the city but the place we had in mind was a complete shit hole so we went back tails between our legs to the first place and in fairness it wasn't bad. We had a nice dinner and the breakfast was something else. We got up in the morning and had cereal and toast and what have you and then they brought out the real breakfast so we were seriously stuffed. We stayed there for two nights and on the second morning for the first and last time ever I had chicken cordon bleu for breakfast. Some things stay with you forever! So apart from clogging the old arteries we did get around to some sightseeing. I mentioned Shaka Land earlier. This is basically a traditonal African village theme park. It is based around the life of Shaka Zulu and it included traditional dancing and some home brew passed round in a wooded ladle. I thought it was a ladle each so I got stuck in but the filthies I was given by the bird refilling made me have some doubts about that assumption. There were shows about the weapons and dress and everything to do with tribal life. They had dancing and singing and all te good stuff. It was very interesting and it inspired me enough to try my hand (legs) at the tribal dancing after a few castles in Cape Town.
 
The next day we headed to Ngwenya Glass Factory which is a factory that uses recycled glass to make everything from Wine glasses to huge glass statues. They also gave demonstrations of all of the glass blowing and sculpting which was really good. Later that day we headed into the town to have a look around and jump on the net for a few minutes. In the place we possibly Swaziland's 3 biggest Westlife fans and I mean that in every way possible. Whoa mama! But there wasn't a whole lot else to do so we headed back to the accommodation for dinner and a few beers.
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