I had already stayed in Swaziland for five weeks when my brother came to visit me. We met at the airport in Johannesburg and travelled to Pretoria, where we would spend the night at Kia-Ora Backpacker hostel, getting ready for our second trip to the Kruger National Park.

Background

In October 2000 I travelled down to Swaziland to live there for some time. The main reason was a desire to experience something different from the Norwegian way of life. My father's aunt, Borgny, runs an orphanage in Nhlangano, Swaziland and I wanted to help her a little, while at the same time finding out what daily life was like down in Africa. Since I hadn't taken up a permanent job in Norway yet, this seemed like a perfect opportunity.

After five exciting weeks with non-stop action (with 19 children something always happens), I really felt that I had learned a lot. I had gotten to know many nice people, and seen how things worked (or didn't work) in Swaziland.

On November 10, we had planned for my brother, Jan Arild, to come down and visit me. We would travel around in South Africa and Swaziland for some time and then fly back home to Norway together. We decided to meet at Johannesburg airport, where he would come from Norway while I would arrive from Swaziland.

It was sad to leave my friends in Swaziland, but it was also exciting to get the chance to travel around in Southern Africa again. In fact, we had been here on holiday in 1999, but that had been in the winter, and everything was very different now in the summer.

During my stay in Swaziland, Aunt Borgny's phone line had not been very reliable. Often the phone was out of order for days before someone came to fix it. Under these conditions it was difficult to make holiday plans on the phone, and we decided to take things as they came.

However, a few things had been decided in advance. For instance, Jan Arild had arranged a business meeting near Cape Town on November 17, and we also had to return to Swaziland to get all of my stuff before going back to Norway. Before the start of our trip, Jan Arild had also used the Internet to book a safari to the Kruger park.

This is what happened during the three and a half weeks we travelled around in South Africa and Swaziland:

November 10, Friday

I woke up at 05.15 before the alarm went off. I was very excited as I had waited for this day for a while now. Aunt Borgny was already up (she gets up at 05.00 every day) and we had breakfast together. At breakfast she even said a little prayer, that God had to be with my brother and me on this adventure we were embarking on today.

I had learned that there can be many unexpected incidents on the roads in Swaziland, so we left for Matsapha airport a little before 06.00. However, the drive went smoothly and we arrived at 07.30. Check-in also went very fast as I was the only one in line. This was a good thing because when I was going to pay the airport tax in cash (R20), I discovered that my wallet had been left in the backpack, which already had been checked in. Luckily the "check-in man" was nice enough to let me come behind the counter and retrieve the money.

After saying goodbye to Borgny, I went through the security procedures. I had a little chat with the security guy about what a great country Swaziland was, and he made fun of my ten year old passport picture :-)

The plane only had room for about 20 people and was completely full. I had a good seat by the window, the flight food was good, and being on my way towards another chapter of our "African Adventures", everything felt just perfect!

We landed on time (09.40) and I eventually got my backpack, although for a little while I was sure it had been lost somewhere. My brother's plane was not landing for two hours yet, so I had lots of time to find the arrival gate. I took a walk around the airport, looked in some shops, but spent most of the time in the arrival area looking at all the people there.

Jan Arild's plane was somewhat delayed, but finally at 11.45 he appeared in the arrival hall. It was so nice to see each other again. He told me that the weather had been absolutely awful in Norway during the whole autumn, and it was so wonderful to step out of the plane and feel the warm weather and the smell of summer. Just walking through the airport had brought back so many good memories for him!

We had so much to tell eachother so we sat down at a table to discuss our next move. Several things needed to be taken care of today, since early tomorrow we were going on safari to the Kruger Park. First, we needed to change my return flight ticket to Norway to December 4th, enabling me to fly back on the same day as Jan Arild. Then we had to buy flight tickets to Cape Town for next week, and make our way to our backpacker hostel in Pretoria.

Today seemed to be our lucky day because everything was so easily accomplished. First we bought our Cape Town tickets at the airport, which cost us only R708 each, about half the price of what Kilroy Travels was selling them for in Norway. Then we discovered that my flight ticket could be changed at the office of STA Travel in Pretoria. I had been worried that we might have had to go down to Johannesburg to get this done, which would have been very inconvenient.

We bought something to drink and went to find transport to Pretoria. Ths shuttle cost us R75, which wasn't too bad considering that it's almost a 50 km long drive. They even dropped us off outside "Kia-Ora Backpackers", our choice of accommodation.

We instantly liked Kia-Ora and the people who worked there. Our room was nice enough, except that there was no door to the bathroom, so it was more convenient to use bathroom down the hall. Since we were coming back to Pretoria later, we decided to opt for a room without bath the next time.

STA Travel was located in a suburb called Hatfield, and not bothering with learning how to get there by bus, we went to find a taxi. Outside the train station there were a lot of cars with taxi signs on them. The cars looked rather shabby, but we eventually found one guy who knew the way to Hatfield. It was much further away than it looked on the map, but we finally found the right street. Changing my flight was quickly sorted out as well (we just couldn't believe how smoothly everything was going!), enabling us to concentrate on more important matters, like finding somewhere to eat.

We walked around the Hatfield area for a while. It seemed to be a student area, and was quite a nice place with lots of people out on the streets. Eventually we sat down at Café Euro and had a wonderful big meal of T-bone steak (first time I`ve tried that), fries and salad for only R27 p.p. I had almost forgotten how cheap everything was in South Africa!

We walked through the area again, buying some stuff like extra film and food for dinner and breakfast tomorrow. However, when we wanted to go back downtown, at first we couldn't find any taxi rank. Fortunately, the waitress from the restaurant pointed us in the right direction, and we found a couple of pirate taxis parked near a petrol station. We agreed on a price of R30 and were driven down to Kia-Ora.

We relaxed in our room for a while and then went down to the cool bar and had something to drink. Except for a few locals, we appeared to be the only ones there. No wonder we got such good service! We chatted with one of the locals, a white guy, who apparently had been married to a Danish woman and lived in Swaziland for many years. The bar was a nice and cosy place, and even Jan Arild, who generally doesn't like hanging out in bars, unless they show English football or arrange "pub quizes", had to agree.

Unfortunately, in the evening we discovered that two gigantic cockroaches also wanted the food we had bought for breakfast. Fortunately, they hadn`t gotten into the plastic bag, but still it was very unexpected to find them in our room. This led to a hunt and kill situation, which the good guys won..us of course! :-) I guess this is probably the reason that at Kia-Ora they don't allow food in the room, as it attracts cockroaches. For the rest of our stay, we obeyed this restriction!

We went to bed early, but I didn`t sleep well, probably because I had been upset by the cockroaches.