The Kingdom of Swaziland.

We took a short trip to Swaziland. We returned to Mozambique yesterday.

From Maputo, Mozambique to Manzini, Swaziland took about a 2h 30m drive. Our friend Joao drove us. He is a good driver, but he is a Mozambican driver. I almost had a heart attack a few times in the back seat, afraid we were about to have a head on collision on the freeway while passing a car. But it didn't happen, thank goodness.

Swaziland is a totally different story from Mozambique. It is tiny, to be honest I didn't even know it existed until a few weeks before we came to Mozambique. Swaziland is beautiful. The city is clean! There was no trash plastered in the gutters, I didn't see one person peeing off the side of the road, and the buildings weren't even falling apart. I even saw a legit golf course, the grass was cut perfectly. There were small mountains (if I can even call them mountains) everything was so green, and when I took a deep breath, I wanted to keep breathing deep breaths because the air felt fresh. It kind of felt like we were in a small town in Idaho. It was beautiful.

Swaziland is nice, but there are some definite downsides. First of all the King of Swaziland has 13 wives. Here is a side story about the King of Swaziland. Mswati III banned girls younger than 18 years old from having sex in efforts to prevent AIDS from spreading. Only 2 months after putting this ban on the girls, he married his 13th wife who is 17 years old. He broke his own law. He got fined a whole cow as a punishment. I have to give the guy credit though, 13 wives is good compared to his own father who had 70 wives. Another downside to Swaziland is the roads are WAY to narrow. When we were driving on the freeway, whenever a wider car (like a bus or semi) was coming on the other side of the road, we would have to move off the road to make room. Also they had a lot of speed bumps on the freeway. The speed limit would be 120 km/hr and then less than a mile later, there would be a group of speed bumps. Who does that? One last downside to Swaziland is they speak Swazi. A lot of the people speak english as well, but we have never had such difficulty communicating with someone who speaks english.

It was a good time. We had to take the trip in order to get our new car. We got it yesterday finally. It is a toyota surf... or a toyota 4 runner. Gotta love the Japanese for making good cars. Now we don't have to ride with anymore Mozambican drivers, and I can feel safe while riding in a car :)

Here are some pictures from our trip to Swaziland.