Our first Safari!

Baby Elephant at Hlane Royal National Park

This post will be a little different that our last two, more uplifting and back to our travels around Swaziland. We rented a car this weekend with our roommates here (a resident from UCSF also working for a month at the clinic, his wife and 2 year old daughter -- so cute!). We rented the smallest car they had and the guy who rented it to us made a point of showing us the spare tire, ummm, was there a good chance we would need that?? Mike tried his hand at driving on the left side of the road and the hardest part was the blinker. He kept signalling his turns with the windshield wipers, whoops! I was the worst back seat driver, so concerned that he was driving too close to the side of the road where there is no shoulder and at some point a large ditch. We thought we wouldn't be so nervous on the roads in Swaziland if we were in our own car instead of travelling in a Kombi. But driving with the Kombi's on the road is just as terrifying as being in one. They are crazy drivers! We survived and by the end of today Mike was actually using the blinker, not the winshield wipers.

Yesterday we went for a hike in Malolotja, a nature park about 30 minutes from Mbabane, in the mountainous northwest part of Swaziland. It was beautiful there, but really hot! We had a sweltering hot hike in the plains with very few trees. We could see a river and waterfalls, but our trail did not actually go down that way. Oh well, we lasted a couple hours and then went for a drive in the area. Swaziland is a really beautiful country with several different types of landscapes within such a small country.
Today we took off on an adventure with Dan, Meredith and Sophia that started at the Cuddle Puddle in the Ezulwini Valley. This is a hot springs area that apparently lives up to it's name in the free, down stream section. We went to the up stream section that you had to pay for. After stopping at a craft shop that supports Swazi women we headed off to Mkaya Game Reserve for a driving safari. We arrived at the gate of the game reserve to find that we had made reservations somewhere else and this park is not open to public vehicles. Crisis averted when we called up Hlane Royal National Game Reserve about an hour away and they were able to accommodate us all on the sunset safari tour.
We arrived at Hlane to see the hippos in the pond and have lunch before our 2.5 hour open Land Rover tour. Our ranger/tour guide was named SonnyBoy and we were joined by another family who are missionaries from California doing HIV work in South Africa. As the ride started the mother prayed to Jesus that we would see some animals on the trip -- apparently it works! We saw several elephants, including a few baby elephants, who came within a few feet of our car. They are huge animals, I cannot believe we were so close to them. Then we saw several lions, including a few cubs and a male lion, lounging on the side of the dirt road we were on. It was amazing to be so close to the animals and we felt safe up high in the Land Rover and with a knowledgeable ranger. The animals didn't seem to care that we were there, the lions laid there while we stopped and had a beer that the tour guide brought for us! The whole trip was just incredible, we were so excited to see the animals.
So even though our original plans to go to Mkaya game reserve didn't work out I think that Jesus came through for us on the trip to Hlane! And we even made it home without having to use the spare tire.