People and Places : Trip to Swaziland : Mlilwane


Trip to Swaziland : Nelspruit - Kruger 1 - 2 - Mlilwane - walking - waiting - Reed Dance


Mlilwane From Nelspruit, we travelled across some beautiful hills to a remote border crossing, amongst plantations, and crossed into Swaziland.
We had arranged to stay at Mlilwane, an old farm which the owners had converted into a game park, now run by the Swazi government. As there are no big predators (except crocodiles) one of the nicest things about Mlilwane is how tame and close the animals come, particularly the beautiful nyala around the cabins.

	nyala come to within touching distance, if you are quiet

There is also a large hippo pool, where this daredevil terrapin was doggedly staying on its perch, despite frequent dunkings.

	at the hippo pool





bush baby and the small baby nyala I saw suckling in the morning sadly, it was clearly not well, and we found it dead the next day the hippo came out to feed later, and there was a big fire on the distant hills We stayed in these fantastic-looking traditional beehive huts, made of thatch. They were very simple but cosy inside, but gave no insulation against sound - conversations outside were clearly audible inside, which felt a little odd.