Epic Adventure -- Day 53 -- 21/10/2012 -- Piet Retief to Ezelwini Valley

As it was a Sunday and we were both pretty shattered from all the driving, we both decided to set no alarms for this morning and to wake up whenever we felt like it. Unfortunately that time was around half six anyway! After a snooze we got up to write more blog posts and research accommodation in Swaziland for the next few nights. I found a backpackers to stay in for R365 for a double room, so I emailed them for availability. Once we had packed the car we drove into town to see if we could get some more supplies from our list. I bought contact lens solution from clicks, we found a single blanket for R79 to cover our things in the boot from thieving eyes and we bought a really big and decent map from CNA for R115.

The drive to the border post was an easy 40 minutes away, and as we got there I warned Dan to not say anything, to hide the biltong and to be ready for a hard time. It was so much easier than I was expecting!!! We simply had our passports stamped in one building, paid R50 road tax to drive in Swaziland in another room and that was that, we were in Swaziland!!! No requests for the copious amount of paperwork I have on Snolly, no interrogation, no car searching, and strangest of all is that there was no second border post. All the others I have ever been through have one post for each country, ie you leave South Africa through theirs and enter Swaziland through another. Not the case! Anyway, after that strangeness we set the sat nav to the Ezelwini Valley where I knew the accommodation to be.

Just before we entered Swaziland I had a message from the accommodation saying that it was ok to stay, but that we would have to share a dorm room this evening. No other options available we chose to go ahead with it, but a second email came through before we lost the Internet saying that someone had cancelled so we could have our own twin room for this evening and then a double room for the rest of the time, brilliant! When we arrived at the backpackers lodge we quickly unpacked the car, noticed there were braai facilities, and set off back into town to pick up food for our dinner. Pick and Pay was our first stop and there we found al that we wanted for a much needed braai, except fire wood. Jenny chose some smoked steaks for our dinner but we crucially needed something to cook them on. I asked some security guards outside the store where I may find fire wood. They directed me to xxxxx market just down the road.

The market turned out to be a bit farther away than my help had told me. We even had to stop at a petrol station to confirm that we were headed in the right direction. When we finally got there we were not disappointed, the people we very friendly and Jenny and I felt safer in this local shanty market than we had felt our entire time in South Africa. True to their word this market did sell fire wood for R30 a pile, we bought 2 piles and a cooked ear of corn (which was terrible haha) and headed back to the lodge to start the fire.

The firewood proved quite difficult to light. It was a very hard wood and the braai was recessed which impeded the influx of oxygen to the fire. Jenny and I decided to pass the time by drinking, a sensible solution I think. I started on a bottle of LBV port I had purchased during our wine tour the day that Chris left, and Jenny had a bottle of dessert wine from the Nederburg tasting. The longer the braai took to be ready the more we drank. So much so that we found ourselves most of the way through our respective bottles by the time that we could cook the steaks on the fire.

The food was delicious and just what we needed after a few days of not being able to cook our own dinners. We finished our food, started a fire and went on a short wall around the lodge, mostly gossiping about the white teenage 'volunteers' that were also staying at the lodge. The type of people that pay £3000 to come to Africa for a week and 'help the locals'. When we finished venting we returned to the fire and found it almost out. The fire restarted much easier than it was to light in the first place and we enjoyed the heat and the light for a while. At some point I remembered that we were carrying with us an insane amount of springbok biltong and droewors so I decided to offer some to the volunteers. They had never had any before, they hesitantly took some; commenting on my shirt "are you actually awesome" to which I replied "probably not -- enjoy!" hahaha.

At this point Jenny and I were both feeling the effects of finishing our respective bottles and decided it was time to head to bed. Jenny knew I was more drunk than she was and so was very kind in making sure I had enough water to drink before falling asleep. She felt a lot better than I did and continued writing posts long after I had fallen asleep. She accidentally deleted day 52 while typing and woke me up so I could reassure her that it was ok and we could simply retype it. I fell back asleep and she shortly joined me after some more writing.