We
had both had a good night’s sleep tucked up in our little cabin and
it was hard to force ourselves to get up and out. We’d bought bacon
and eggs in the resort shop yesterday and treated ourselves to a
cooked breakfast. It made a pleasant change to also cook a hot
breakfast but shoulder bacon (all they had) is not something either
of us would repeat in a hurry. As I was trying to get the bacon to
cook Stef suddenly jumped and cried out – one of the family of
baboons that was meandering up the road came for a closer look and
jumped up to our kitchen window. Fortunately the metal bars across
it stopped the baboon from getting in.
We left the Aventura resort and carried on our southbound
route. A few kilometres down the road we followed the directions for
a viewpoint, taking a very short detour off to the left. A short
series of pathways takes you out to the edge of the cliff from where
you get fantastic views up and down the Blyde Valley. It is the
third largest canyon in the world, after the Grand Canyon in the US
and Fish River Canyon which we didn’t have time to see in Namibia,
and it is simply huge. When we drove up towards it yesterday I had
no real idea that something so vast lay behind that first face of
rocks. By the car park a few people had set up stalls in what looks
like an arranged sales spot and they were selling wood carvings,
bowls, textiles and other bits and pieces.
Our next stop was to see the pot holes in the rock. We had
seen a pothole or two in Canada. They are formed by water getting
trapped in a small space and whizzing round in a circular motion.
The water then erodes the rock creating a pot hole. We pulled up and
were a bit taken aback that we had to pay to get in to see them. The
pot holes are one of the star attractions of this area and it was
pretty busy with groups of tourists as well as people on their own
like us.
A pretty good path winds down from the car park to the river
where bridges take you in different directions over the rocks below.
We first went off to our right, seeing very small pot holes before
we ended up walking up the river bank for 50m or so. By this stage
we were both thinking that it was a bit of a rip off but undeterred
we doubled back and went across the other bridge. We then saw why
this place is so special.
Carved into the rock below us was lots of evidence of this
unique geological and physical phenomenon. In Canada the holes had
been about 30cm wide and about a metre deep. Here they were enormous
and you could still see the action of the water at work digging ever
deeper into some of the existing potholes. At the level of the river
were the remnants of the outside walls of some of the potholes but
the cliff edge leading down to them showed how big they had been.
Most were more than a metre in diameter and several had drilled down
over the years so that they must have been about 20 metres deep. It
was a really unusual sight and I don’t think our pictures do it
justice.
Further down the road we pulled in to another view point. This
one was on the edge of the escarpment looking down over the valley
below. Beneath us we could clearly see huge tree plantations with
access roads tracing as rusty lines through the sand. The
plantations stretched for miles following the undulations of the
hills. Beyond them we could see way off into the distance, with
another mountain range visible at the horizon. I have no idea how
far we could see but it must have been at least twenty or thirty
miles.
Following the same road for a short while more we soon came to
the turn off for the God’s Window viewpoint. This again was very
busy and the car park caters for tour buses. There is a short walk
with a slight uphill climb to the viewpoint which again provides
views out across the surrounding landscape. A steeper walk up takes
you to the level of the clouds and to a short stretch of rainforest.
The viewpoint here gives you similar views to the ones at the last
stopping point but also has the added benefit of a short walk
through this very different landscape.
At the car park here there was a pretty sizeable crafts
market. A sign explains that this is a project to help support the
local community and it confirms that the people are there with the
consent of the parks management type people. Had we been in the
market for wooden carvings of giraffes, different types of 4x4 cars,
bowls, scarves etc, all the usual stuff, we could have quite happily
parted with cash but we weren’t and we didn’t.
Craft stalls at God's Window
From here we agreed we would make no more sightseeing stops
but would just focus on getting down to the border with Swaziland,
which we hope to cross this afternoon. We worked our way down to the
toll road and then whizzed along the motorway until heading back
east for the border. Before long we were at the border, neither of
us really knowing what to expect but both knowing that land borders
are not necessarily straight forward. On the South African side
there were no clear signs of what you needed to do there was just a
queue of people.
One of them muttered to us that we needed a gate pass but they
didn’t tell us where we had to go to get one. We finally found out
that the gate pass was a slip of paper onto which they write your
registration number and then two different people at two different
windows stamp it. We got an exit stamp in our passports and then
drove on a few metres to the South African border. Here they took
our gate pass from us. We then had to pull up again to get into
Swaziland. Here you were met by friendly immigration staff, laughing
and chattering and muttering “PSV Eindhoven, ah this one’s
Buckingham Palace”, who told you exactly where you had to go next.
It was surprisingly much less chaotic than the South African
process.
We drove from the border through the capital Mbabane, a small
city which has major road works ongoing to create a bypass. It
looked a lot poorer than the places we had seen across the border
but people here all seemed happy. We headed out through the other
side of Mbabane and down to the Ezulwini valley. Here we checked
into the Mantenga Lodge a smallish hotel with views out across the
valley, but not as good a view as they make out in their literature!
We had a little chalet room which was very cosy. Dinner was served
on the patio, very tasty food with generous portions but
disappointingly no Swazi options to choose from. A few games of gin
rummy and we were soon off in the land of nod.
