Saturday 6/28/08 - Tuesday 7/1/2008
After saying our quick goodbyes to our new friends at the airport, they were off to try and catch their 11:40am flight, although our little 15 minute flight landed at 11:25am …luckily Magaia, our Habitat coordinator was there to meet us and somehow worked some magic for them to hold the flight. We caught a ride into town with our travel agent, and he dropped us at a very confusing parking lot of cars, buses and minitaxes. He helped us find the bus to Swaziland, where they were only waiting for 4 more people before they would leave. We were highly entertained when amongst all of the natives, a little Chinese man popped his head into the window asking us questions about the bus to Swaziland. He will be taking the bus in a week, but he wanted to make sure he knew the cost and where to pick it up, before heading out. Katie decided to go grocery shopping, aka, walk outside the bus to pick up ‘lunch’ for our ride, including delicious Portuguese bread, drinks, crackers and cookies.
In about thirty minutes, we were fully loaded with 20 individuals heading for Swaziland. The ride was fairly uneventful, for which we were grateful. We did get randomly stopped by two ‘police officers’ in Swaziland. They searched all of our bags as well as full on yelled at one woman, for what…we will never know. We just stood there, not moving while they walked around checking our bags with their machine guns on their hips. Katie was able to risk her life for this ‘shot’…no pun intended.
We arrived in Swaziland slightly behind schedule, thanks to the 30 minute police stop. Immediately, we had individuals coming up to the window offering us their taxi services. We agreed with one guy on R40 to the airport to pick up our rental car, even before stepping foot off the bus. After stepping off the bus, we were swarmed with people yelling ‘backpackers’ and ‘cheap price’ to us—but we shook our heads and headed to the airport with our driver, who told us he was ½ Swaz and ½ Zulu.
The Avis representative had a rather shocked look on her face when we arrived. Of course, our day traveling from Mozambique had gone rather smoothly…was this going to be the kink? She asked how we arrived, and we told her we came by taxi from town. Relieved, she told us about how the entire airport was shut down for flights, since the Queen Mother of Swaziland had just landed. Since there were no other customers, she was very personable, and when we asked our usual shpeel “Are there any upgrades available?” a grin came across her face. She said, let me just make a phone call to see if I can do this… She was going to offer us a ‘Merc’ which we learned was a Mercedes-Benz, since they had several come from Jo’Burg from a recent conference. However, since we booked the cheapest possible rental car, her manager told her it was a no go. We were honestly relieved, since we would be driving through some of the most dangerous parts of South Africa. We hopped into our manual, no power steering Citi Golf VW and hit the road for South Africa.
After two border crossings and 200 km of driving, we were exhausted, so we decided to stay the night in Ermelo, South Africa. For dinner, we experienced “Spurs,” S.Africa’s version of “Chili’s” and hit the hay.
We were up early the next morning, but none of Ermelo was awake. We waited for about 15 minutes for the local ‘coffee’ shop to open, grabbed some breakfast and hit the road for Rourke’s Drift. Thanks one of Katie’s friend’s Rich, we headed for the night to the Zulu Battlegrounds, more specifically Fugitive’s Drift Lodge.
We arrived just in time for lunch before heading out on our 3:00pm tour of the Rourke’s Drift battleground. We checked into our room for the night at kWa Natal, an adorable cottage for two on the old farmhouse property. Rob was our guide for the afternoon, and it was rather incredible to hear the story retold through his eyes. His passion, detail and animation, as well as his knowledge of both the Zulu and British side of the story was amazing.
To make a long, long story very short, the British decided to invade the Zulu territory to claim it as a commonwealth for the England in 1879. However, they severely underestimated the Zulu Warriors, and a six month battle began on 22 January 1879 when approximately 25,000 Zulu Warriors defeated 1,700 British soldiers at Isandlwana. The Zulus were born warriors and their military tactic was called the head and two horns. However, they were able to defeat the British with only the left horn and the head, while the right horn went after fleeing British towards the Buffalo River crossing, which was afterwards named Fugitive’s Drift. (a ‘drift’ is a safe place to cross in the river)
The Zulu continued their fight against Rourke’s Drift, where the British had taken over a local man’s home to create a storehouse and hospital for their 35 injured and ill men. They had received word of the massacre at Isandlwana, so they had little time to prepare their fort as well as their small unit of 70 men (including 35 sick and injured).
Through many heroic feats, Rourke’s Drift was held for the British and 11 Victoria Crosses (Britain’s highest award of valour in battle) were awarded. However, the battle which British leaders thought would take 3 weeks to win went on from January until July, when British ultimately defeated the Zulus to colonize Zululand for England.