Our trip to Southern Africa was planned a long way in advance. We bought several travel guides from the region to learn as much as possible about what to expect. In addition we found lots of useful information on the Internet.

Our first major decision was on how we should travel around. Since none of us had a driver's license, we basically had two options: Either we would go "backpacking" and arrange everything by ourselves, or we would join a tour group.

Initially we favoured the backpacking option, but then May Tina by accident came across a brochure from Drifters Adventure Tours, and we saw that they had an 18-day tour of South Africa, which more or less included everything we wanted to see and do. Since we were on a limited time schedule, going on this tour would enable us to see what we wanted and still have time to travel around by ourselves for a while, after the tour had finished, so this seemed like a good option.

One definite point on our agenda was to visit our father's aunt, Borgny, in Swaziland. She was a sort of mysterious person to us, as we had only met her briefly a few times. However, she has been running an orphanage in Swaziland for 45 years, and we were really interested in meeting her again and seeing the conditions she was living under.

In the end we decided to fly to Johannesburg, spend one day there, and then go on the Drifters 18-day tour of South Africa. This tour ends in Cape Town, and since there seemed to be general agreement that Cape Town is a nice city, we decided on spending a few days there after the tour. Then we would travel back to Swaziland and visit Borgny.

First, we had wanted to take the Baz Bus from Cape Town to Swaziland, but then we realized that this option would cost us several days, so in the end we decided on flying to Durban. We would spend some time in Durban and then we would take the Greyhound bus to Piet Retief, near the Swaziland Border, where Borgny would pick us up.

After spending some time in Swaziland, we would travel back to Johannesburg on the Greyhound bus, and fly home from there.

The Internet made planning much more easier, as time schedules for flights, the Baz Bus and Greyhound were just a few clicks away. Almost every detail was sorted out before leaving. In fact, we were so pleased with our preparations, that the day before departure we said to ourselves that if anything were to go wrong, at least it would not be our fault.

We were completely right. Although, on the first few days everything went wrong, none of it was our fault.

This is our story: