Wednesday 10 July 2019

Day 1 - Arriving in SA and Swaziland

We finally made it to Africa! Yay! It feels like this trip has been needed for ages, what with everything that's been going on medical-wise.

We had the whole of Tuesday to sit around and wait for our flight, and ended up heading across London on the tube at rush hour. Not so much fun. Especially with two enormous suitcases.

We were a tiny bit stressed, since they had given us seats on different floors of the plane and it literally didn't get sorted until I was sat next to Matt on the plane, asking the chap whose seat I was in if he minded moving! He moved, so all sorted.

The business class lounge at Heathrow was fun. Lots of food and drink, so we had a glass of bubbly and a bowl of curry. It was lovely in there, I could have spent more time there to be honest!

I got Matt some whisky for Matt for our anniversary and then we were on the plane in business class. We were in middle seats next to each other, with one person either side of us, facing us. We were travelling backwards which made take off and landing a bit odd.  The seats were so spacious! We could fully stretch out! We had a glass of bubbly before I settled down to watch Bohemian Rhapsody, which is amazing and Matt watched Oceans 11. Dinner was delicious, bread rolls, salad, chicken terrine, tomato soup and then a pander korma curry. So tasty.

Then we both managed to settle down to sleep for a good 6 hours of the 10. We were woken up to fresh fruit, decaf tea, a croissant and granola and chipotle omelette. Then we were in South Africa!

Our lovely driver Tom met us and we were off on our 4 hour drive to Swaziland. I was asleep immediately and didn't wake up until our half way point, which was a Nandos restaurant in the middle of nowhere, agricultural land and distant mountains. The Nandos is in a rhino conservation area, and overlooks a watering hole where there were 5 rhino, an ostrich and plenty of impala, buffalo, zebra and birds. Very cool for our first taste of South Africa! We were pretty pleased about the Nandos too!

At the border we got a passport stamp out of SA and into Swaziland. I love nothing more than a stamp in my passport, so 3 in one day has really pleased me!

Swaziland is very green! Our hotel is called the Silverstone lodge and is in the middle of the bush, yet only a 10 minute drive from Mbabane, the capital city of Swaziland. Its so peaceful here. Our room terrace overlooks a beautiful waterfall, which we climbed up to. The room is gorgeous and the owners are so friendly.

They do a set dinner here in the evening at 7, so we had delicious veg soup, followed by stuffed chicken and roast potato's then brownie and ice cream. Yum. We went for a gaze at the stars after dinner. Its very dark by 7pm and very cold too. Its winter currently, so the sun is hot in the day and the nights dip to freezing. I've had both shorts and my wooly hat on today. Bizarre! The moon is so bright it cast a shadow from us and the sky is littered with stars. I'm pretty sure we saw both Jupiter and Saturn, amongst a hundred other pinpricks of light. I love it here already!





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