Day 12 – On the road again!

Johannesburg to Ezulwini (Swaziland), Timbali Lodge

We headed off to pick up the campervan, finding out that as normal the taxi driver had no idea where to go, luckily we had the GPS on M’s phone. We were given a thorough tour of the van and how everything worked (which we pretty much forgot five minutes later).

We had been upgraded from the “Spirit 3” to the “Spirit 5”, the numbers relate to the berths. Although this means we have a lot more room, the downside is we are almost driving a manual “truck” through Africa – big and unwieldy, and in a strange country. The Maui people told us where the supermarket was around the corner and gave us a map – an hour later we managed to find it!

After buying up at the supermarket we finally hit the road for the 350km drive to Swaziland. Once on the open road (the roads are in good condition, similar to home) at 120kmh it was pretty plain sailing. We decided to stop off at eMalahleni to get a local sim for our phone, as having no phone to book anything with is very frustrating ….. an hour later we were on the road again (without a working sim) and rapidly running out of time to reach Swaziland before dark.

We arrived at the border just after 6pm, the whole thing was painful and took almost an hour - we are just going to have to get used to this sort of thing! We had to complete customs paperwork as we were “exporting” a car, laptop and camera! Both sides of the border everyone’s vehicle was searched by the police – but so perfunctorily the only thing they would find by moving a couple of bags around would be an illegal immigrant! We were treated a little differently, as they wanted to come inside the van to have a look around! All in all though they were quite friendly.

By the time we left the border it was dark, and we were still had to find a campsite! Fortunately the trusty GPS saved the day, directing us to a place just outside Mbabane. We finally we checked in and set up, cooked a little dinner and fell asleep.