Submitted by SafariADV on Sun, 2018-11-11
This morning we woke up at the Bhubesi Camp, we are in the Hlane Royal National Park in Swaziland; we have breakfast at our cottage, we load the last things inside our Dr. Livingstone and then we leave.
We drive the 10 km that separate our stone cottage from the gate of the rhinos sector, we enter the gate and from there we head to the Ndlovu Lodge, but we drive slowly because we look around, even if we are leaving we are still doing safari.
We check out and head towards the main gate to exit the park.
We really enjoyed visiting this park and we greatly appreciate the effort that the Kingdom of Swaziland is doing to repopulate its parks and reserves; here at the gate, as a warning not to forget, there is an entire barrier built with snare traps that are used by poachers and those who try to hunt bush meat.
We leave the park and, after a few kilometers, we take the MR 16, a road that heads South to the Mhkaya Game Reserve; in theory this is a main road, at least on paper, but not being one of the main routes that cross the country to and from South Africa and Mozambique, it is in a state of neglect.
The road surface is full of holes, some very deep, probably dug out by the water during the rainy season, in some places the asphalt has completely disappeared; we do not have any particular problems traveling here, but we still have to proceed slowly, thank goodness there are few cars and so we can get away to avoid the deepest holes.
Finally we arrive at the intersection with the MR 8, this main road connects one of the busiest border posts, Lavumisa / Golela, with the city of Manzini, that in turn is connected to the capital Mbabane and to the border post of Ngwenya / Oshoek , whithatch is the shortest route to reach Johannesburg.
The MR 8 is in a much better condition than the MR 16 and this allows us to continue our journey at a faster pace.
We must arrive by 10.00am at the Mkhaya Game Reserve, following the directions of Maps.me and Tracks4Africa we arrive until the detour that leads to the reserve with a little advance; we do to continue along the dirt road but some children chase us, stop us and tell us "they come to pick you up here, it's better", so we decide to follow their advice, stop and wait for someone to show.
Around us there is nothing, just a small shop, that is inside a building of plastered bricks, and a house a little further away, we wonder where they come from all these children, they are about twenty.
They are very nice and kind and ask us if we have cookies to give them, so we go to the store to buy cookies and popcorn; we fear the assault on their part and instead they amazed us so much: the oldest of them took the packaging of biscuits and, while opening it, the others got all lined up to take each one their cookie, once they got it they diligently lined up to wait for the second biscuit ... we were speechless.
As we watch this scene Richard comes, he will be our guide during our stay here, there is also another car waiting like us.
Welcome to the Mkhaya Game Reserve to us!
