Amazingly this morning, entirely due to Jenny, I woke up without the slightest hint of a hangover. Jenny, on the other hand, had a decent headache because she had focussed all her efforts on me last night and had forgotten to drink enough water herself! I went outside and re wrote part of the blog from day 52, as Jenny had accidentally deleted it last night whilst typing blog posts. The upside of that happening is that she felt so terrible about deleting it that she stayed up another couple of hours and finished nearly all the blog posts, so now we are basically caught up, let's hope we keep it that way!
Whilst I was in the shower Dan went to ask about when we could move our things over to the double room from the twin room, which luckily could happen straight away and we didn't need to wait till later. After we had moved our bags over we set off in search of the large craft centre we had been told was a few kms down the road. We initially drove past the centre because it didn't look like "the largest craft village in Swaziland". When we finally got there and started walking around, it became clear that we would be leaving again very shortly. The store owners would all tell you to come into their shop and look around, making you feel bad if you passed by the same things they were selling that you had seen being sold by someone else five seconds previously.
We set the sat nav to take us to the Swazi candle centre. It was brilliant to be there and have a look around, as I have always loved Swazi candles. If you don't know what they are, have a search on google, it's a very distinctive style of candle making. Dan loved looking at all of the different animals, and we contemplated buying a Christmas present for my parents but decided against it as it would probably melt in the car along the way. We got to watch a man make an elephant candle, it was quite amazing! He took a blob of white wax out of an oven in front of him, and once he had rolled it around in his hands a few times he got two brightly coloured patterned squares from the oven and worked them over the top and bottom of the ball of wax. We then watched him mild that into an elephant in about 5 minutes!
There was a really cute cat along the path to the other shops who we obviously had to stop and say hi too. She was so tiny and looked like she was still partly a kitten, but just had kittens, and a black cat who also came to say hi looked like he could be one of them! We walked around the other few shops that were nearby, and decided we should have lunch in the little cafe overlooking the craft stalls. My lunch was delicious, I had two pancakes filled with banana, bacon and syrup, and Dan had a sandwich with mozzarella, chicken, pineapple and sweet chilli sauce.
After walking around the stalls and watching two guys carve giraffe out of wood, we drove to the Mantengu falls. We didn't really want to go on the contrived village tour and watch the Swazi locals dance, so we just paid to enter the reserve and drove to the falls. We parked the car and walked down to have a look, they were quite pretty and made me wish we had brought along a picnic of some sort. When we got bored and walked back to the car I convinced Dan that we should walk down the road with the no entry sign on the off chance it too had a view of the falls. After walking for about a kilometre uphill in the sun and seeing no falls we gave up and went back again.
On our way back to the lodge we stopped at Pick and Pay to buy food for dinner and more braai supplies. We ended up buying a smoked rump steak, some boerwors and some impala chops! We decided to eat the impala tonight and leave the other meat for the next nights dinner. Dan set up a great fire, no easy feat as the wood that we were buying from the side of the road was extreme hard, and trying to get it lit was very difficult. We chucked two sweet potatoes into the coals and once the flames got low enough we cooked the impala. It has a different flavour to most I have eaten, very yummy but leaning more towards a beef flavour than a wild game flavour, if that makes any sense.
I got very caught up in reading the book I got from the lodges shelves, and went back to the room to read whilst Dan made friends with a girl called Jenny who had just arrived that evening. She was from London and travelling by herself for a week until she was to go to a wedding in Cape Town the next week. There was music playing loudly and a lot of noise coming from the kids who were here to volunteer as it was their last night at Lidwala. I finished my book at around the same time Dan came to bed, and I made him drink some water before I would let him go to sleep because he had had quite a bit to drink :D
Whilst I was in the shower Dan went to ask about when we could move our things over to the double room from the twin room, which luckily could happen straight away and we didn't need to wait till later. After we had moved our bags over we set off in search of the large craft centre we had been told was a few kms down the road. We initially drove past the centre because it didn't look like "the largest craft village in Swaziland". When we finally got there and started walking around, it became clear that we would be leaving again very shortly. The store owners would all tell you to come into their shop and look around, making you feel bad if you passed by the same things they were selling that you had seen being sold by someone else five seconds previously.
We set the sat nav to take us to the Swazi candle centre. It was brilliant to be there and have a look around, as I have always loved Swazi candles. If you don't know what they are, have a search on google, it's a very distinctive style of candle making. Dan loved looking at all of the different animals, and we contemplated buying a Christmas present for my parents but decided against it as it would probably melt in the car along the way. We got to watch a man make an elephant candle, it was quite amazing! He took a blob of white wax out of an oven in front of him, and once he had rolled it around in his hands a few times he got two brightly coloured patterned squares from the oven and worked them over the top and bottom of the ball of wax. We then watched him mild that into an elephant in about 5 minutes!
There was a really cute cat along the path to the other shops who we obviously had to stop and say hi too. She was so tiny and looked like she was still partly a kitten, but just had kittens, and a black cat who also came to say hi looked like he could be one of them! We walked around the other few shops that were nearby, and decided we should have lunch in the little cafe overlooking the craft stalls. My lunch was delicious, I had two pancakes filled with banana, bacon and syrup, and Dan had a sandwich with mozzarella, chicken, pineapple and sweet chilli sauce.
After walking around the stalls and watching two guys carve giraffe out of wood, we drove to the Mantengu falls. We didn't really want to go on the contrived village tour and watch the Swazi locals dance, so we just paid to enter the reserve and drove to the falls. We parked the car and walked down to have a look, they were quite pretty and made me wish we had brought along a picnic of some sort. When we got bored and walked back to the car I convinced Dan that we should walk down the road with the no entry sign on the off chance it too had a view of the falls. After walking for about a kilometre uphill in the sun and seeing no falls we gave up and went back again.
On our way back to the lodge we stopped at Pick and Pay to buy food for dinner and more braai supplies. We ended up buying a smoked rump steak, some boerwors and some impala chops! We decided to eat the impala tonight and leave the other meat for the next nights dinner. Dan set up a great fire, no easy feat as the wood that we were buying from the side of the road was extreme hard, and trying to get it lit was very difficult. We chucked two sweet potatoes into the coals and once the flames got low enough we cooked the impala. It has a different flavour to most I have eaten, very yummy but leaning more towards a beef flavour than a wild game flavour, if that makes any sense.
I got very caught up in reading the book I got from the lodges shelves, and went back to the room to read whilst Dan made friends with a girl called Jenny who had just arrived that evening. She was from London and travelling by herself for a week until she was to go to a wedding in Cape Town the next week. There was music playing loudly and a lot of noise coming from the kids who were here to volunteer as it was their last night at Lidwala. I finished my book at around the same time Dan came to bed, and I made him drink some water before I would let him go to sleep because he had had quite a bit to drink :D
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