We arrived at the Mkhaya Game Reserve!

We are ready to go to the Mkhaya Game Reserve, but we still have in mind the scene of the children with cookies we saw earlier and we are still pleasantly surprised: we bought them cookies and they lined up to wait their turn to get one ...

Meanwhile, Richard, our safari guide for the next few days, gets on his safari car and tells us to follow him.

We venture along a dirt road, that passes under a bridge and crosses the riverbed of a river that, at this time of the year, is dry; we continue for a few miles, until we arrive at a large house, we enter the gate and park our car.

We will leave Dr. Livingstone here during our stay at the Mkhaya Game Reserve, then we  unload the suitcases and get on the safari car.

The car is an old Land Rover used as a safari car, it is a completely open car; they are the cars we prefer because we have the sensation of being more in contact with nature, of feeling perfumes and smells and of feeling the air on the skin and face.

As we go to the lodge we do a short safari of a hour and a half; we see a crocodile and a terrapin in a waterhole that is located near a dirt road.

The reserve has a very thick vegetation, it will not be easy to make sightings here, but the landscape is beautiful; we see several giraffes walking in front of our car or among the plants at the side of the road.

There are also several nyalas, these antelopes prefer this type of vegetation; we also sight some roans and some tsessebes, the animals of these two species are not easy to spot because they usually escape easily.

We also pass by a small lagoon where there are several hippos fighting each other.

As we continue to explore the reserve, the sky is getting darker and, shortly thereafter, it starts to rain; no problem, we have our green ponchos, we wear them and we are ready to continue our safari.

Richard is looking for rhinos but cannot find them, even if they are habitual animals, finding them in the midst of this thick and lush vegetation does not seem very easy; on the other hand we find a herd of wildebeests and one of them leaves us speechless: it's albino!

With all the wildebeests we have seen in all these years of safari, especially in the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, we had never seen an albino wildebeest, but what a show!

Obviously we take several photographs, it is a sighting that alone deserves a visit to the Mkhaya Game Reserve.

We have not found the rhinos, but it is now time to go to the Stone Camp, where we will stay during our presence here.

The lodge is very beautiful, the common part consists of a stone building that serves both as reception and gift shop, next to it is another building, where some photographs and information material on the conservation projects of the Kingdom of Swaziland are exposed , while on the opposite side there is a large tent, that is used as a restaurant.

First, we are taken to our cottage, the number 5 or Inyatsi, that in Swazi means "buffalo"; we follow the path and, after a few hundred meters, we get there.

The structure of the cottage is made of pebbles with a thatched roof, but the central part is completely open: no windows, no curtains, nothing at all; how wonderful, it will almost be like sleeping outdoors tonight.

We leave the suitcases at the cottage, we do not open anything for fear that there are a few monkeys around, even if they would not have built open cottages, and we go to lunch and then wait till 3.00pm when our second safari will start.

To pass the time we observe the birds that are in the dry river bed and we observe the trees that are in the camp, many have the tag that indicates the species to which they belong, it is very interesting.

The Stone Camp is really beautiful and integrated in the nature that surrounds it, we are happy to be here.