Saturday, October 25 - Jane Ringwald and Marva Eck

Saturday, October 25
By Jane Ringwald and Marva Eck

Today is our free day!!! We’re off to Hlane Royal National Game Park. This is a protected area and is home to the largest herds of game in the kingdom.

We boarded 2 Land Rovers and started out to see what we could see. Many dead trees, a result of the elephant rubbing against them, reminded me of scenes from the Lion King.

The Park is divided into several areas and the first one we visited is home to many rhinos. They seemed comfortable around our vehicle. The highlight was meeting a mother rhino and her baby (about 1 month old). As expected she was very protective of her little one. We also met up with a large elephant who has only one tusk. When we entered this area, a couple of the Kuudus crossed our path.

As we went along, we say many vultures hanging out in the trees. We found a carcass of an impala – probably their afternoon snack. Trees were abundant in this area, and we did see a cactus looking tree where sap is milky and poisonous (related to the poinsettia).

In another area we ran across a pride of lions taking their afternoon siesta. One of the mothers was grooming her cubs.

We were near a watering hole where there were many large birds, including a large heron, a variety of storks, and more vultures. A large beautiful elephant was also there. He got tired or our taking his picture and decided to charge the Land Rover. That was exciting, but no one was hurt. Luckily the drivers recognized the sign of a charge (the elephant’s ears forward) and got us out of the way in a hurry. Driving around the park we saw many impala.

After the drive, we had time for shopping at the gift shop and had a wonderful lunch at the restaurant. As the menu was impala – a very tender “beef like” meat. Near the restaurant was another watering hole where we saw 2 submerged hippos.

On our way home we stopped at Swaziland Candles. A nice shopping area.

Catastophe #1: Glenda ran to board one of the vans, hit her head on the van and was knocked out for a brief time. We’re all glad she wasn’t seriously injured.