Hlane Royal National Park

The following is an excerpt from the outdated Rough Guide to South Africa, Lesotho & Swaziland, with amendments and updates by myself (in bold).

“Some 67km northeast of Manzini (and 1 ½ hours including the time it takes to get out of the bus rank, 2 if your bus gets pulled over and retained by a traffic cop for a half hour) is Hlane Royal National Park (daily dawn-dusk; E10) (for reasons of inflation or recession, the park has more-than doubled its entry fee to E25 [roughly $4, no big deal]), the largest of Swaziland’s parks. Formerly private royal hunting ground (and we thank the king for allowing the public on land that comprises about 5% of the country. Could you imagine if you couldn’t go into Nebraska? Okay, bad example.), the main attraction here is the presence of big game, including elephant, rhino, lion, leopard and cheetah (which you probably won’t see if you don’t have time to wait two hours and pay E170 for a guided tour). Hlane is also one of the best parks in southern Africa to view elephants and rhino on foot – an unforgettable experience – in the company of a guide (E15 per hour) (which would be awesome if there are any guides on duty who aren’t busy carting around a gaggle of American teenagers). These two species are in the northern area of the park, which you can also visit in your own vehicle (or if you can stow away in someone else’s hatchback, which totally has room for all three of you if you move some things around), with or without a guide, and rhino-sighting is virtually guaranteed (which is true, even if you’re relegated behind the low-voltage electric fence [which you might be tempted to touch out of boredom] outside the gift shop). Other animals in this section include giraffe, zebra and waterbuck (whatever that is).

Various southern enclosures contain lion, cheetah and leopard, along with some more elephant and rhino; walking here is out of the question (which you will be told is “very dangerous”, reprimanded for, and laughed at by a group of teenage girls if you try), but you can drive with a guide in your own car. If you don’t have your own transport you can join a guided tour in one of the parks 4WD minibuses (E100) (which you probably can’t for reasons stated above).”

Take these amendments to heart if you ever visit this park. If you do not, you will be disappointed – as we were. Sibusiso, our friend and our trustworthy Swaziguide, who would never intentionally mislead us, apologized “for the crap.” The ultimate insult, though, was the row of mountain bikes that we couldn’t rent because there weren’t any available guides. I said we didn’t need a guide. I could totally outpace a cheetah on a bike, or at least Walker and Sibusisu, which is all I would really have to do.

It wasn’t a total waste. Walker communed with the lizards (see picture below), we saw a few hippopotami and a couple rhinos from behind the electric fence (pictures below), which is a few hippopotami and a couple rhinos more than we would’ve seen otherwise, and I had a decent burger and reconciled with Heineken, which was good because I had bad experiences with both local beer and local burgers the week prior.























However, we did get stranded on the side of the road for a while as we waited for a Kombi back to Manzini - in retrospect, another hilarious lowpoint.













We're heading to the south of the country this weekend for a big workshop, so we'll have more chances to successful tourism then. If we are not successful, you'll hear about it.

-Nick