Safari time in Mozambique and Eswatini

I’m sure we’ve spoken about our good friends Bethany and Felipe before. I don’t believe in fate and I’m not superstitious but it really has always seemed like we were meant to know them and stay friends no matter what.

We actually were on the same boat with them on the Irrawaddy river but never actually met (we discovered this only afterwards). That having failed, fate decided to randomly have Bethany see me birding (also a hobby of hers) in an obscure location outside of Yangon and then have her bump into us a few days later in the street so that she could ask about the birding. This led to me accompanying them on a morning’s birding and we became fast friends from then on.  Bethany and Felipe left Yangon permanently a while later and I can specifically remember our last dinner with them in Yangon and thinking, ‘well, we’ll never see them again’. Not so, fate then decided that, in order for us to all be together again, somehow we would end up on the same Island in Thailand (Phuket) and in the same town while working in a nearby time zone to Yangon. They stayed in Thailand and we went back to Yangon only to then move to Africa – guess what, they then also moved to Africa – Mozambique, which, by the way, is Portuguese speaking. I’m convinced that there is a very important reason that we are friends. Maybe one of us will need a kidney someday and we’re the only donors possible – I don’t know – just seems like it was meant to be.

Of course, we had to visit them in Mozambique while we were still in Ghana so in April of 2025, that’s exactly what we did. Now, Mozambique is not exactly close to Ghana. In fact we had to fly to Ethiopia and stay overnight before flying on to them the next day. We landed in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia and were met by someone who would take us to our hotel. This meant temporarily clearing customs and that meant putting our hand luggage through an x-ray machine. Lindsey was told to wait after hers had gone through. Briefly I thought of the ‘scissors incident’ (see this post) but no, they had flagged the bag because it had her binoculars in it. It turns out that to own a pair of binoculars or to have them with you on holiday in Ethiopia you need an actual licence! This was clearly not the first time this had happened and we were shown to a room where our binoculars could be stored until the next day – it was wall to wall binoculars. Another one of our friends, who I know through birding, subsequently went to Ethiopia for work and had to go through the binocular licensing process. At night, as we drove to our hotel we were quite impressed with the brightly lit shop fronts and well maintained roads but it turns out that this is somewhat of a ruse to give people in our position a good impression. We never went beyond those first few roads so cannot really say whether this is true. The only other thing to note about Ethiopia is that I was able to see birds from the departure lounge and quite a few I had never seen before.

We arrived in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, in the late morning and were met by our friends who took us on a bit of a tour of the city and then a lovely dinner overlooking Maputo Bay and the Maputo Katembe Bridge. Maputo has some similarities with Accra but with a rather welcome latin flair which I guess comes from the Portuguese. It also has much more of a city feel with a good number of nice colonial style buildings still standing. Our friends had just taken possession of a car – a rather impressive – Toyota Prada 4×4 although they hadn’t actually driven it yet. The first time was going to be for our first trip to Maputo National Park the next day but our friend Felipe assured us of his confidence in driving 4x4s. 

Maputo National Park is actually quite a short drive from the centre of Maputo which again is one up from Accra with no national parks in easy reach. On the way there was an elephant crossing sign and amazingly some elephants actually showed up to frolic in front of the sign before crossing the road. I love it when that happens.

Once we got to the park entrance, there was a big map on the wall showing the various roads and we could see our lodge destination for the night. A nice lady at the parks office gave us some advice on the best roads to take and looking back at it, was quite insistent on one particular stretch.

Eventually, we got to that stretch of road only to discover that it had a section that was very muddy and looked like it could cause us some problems. But come on, we have this big 4×4 and an experienced driver – what could go wrong? Ha ha, we got immediately stuck and no amount of revving and reversing and playing with the 4×4 controls would let us move. What to do. We still had a couple of hours of light but not much more. Stunningly, Felipe found the number of the park and was able to call. His Portuguese was already good enough to be able to explain our situation and was able to understand that help was on its way.

Just take a moment, if you will, to imagine the sheer horror of what Lindsey’s reaction would have been had it been me that had confidently said that I knew what I was doing with the 4×4 despite never having driven it and had landed us in this situation. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

Help soon arrived in the form of a 4×4 pick up and two guys. They had a tow rope and duly fixed it to our car but then, when they tried to pull the car out the rope snapped. When this happened they then got out some strong looking wire. The problem though, was that the wire was not long enough to stretch between the cars so what they did was to tie it together in the middle by hand. This seemed ludicrous to me. How could two, albeit sturdy looking, pieces of wire possibly hold together with the force of one car pulling another. Sure enough the wire knot proved not strong enough and came undone at the first try – so they then tried again. It took about 4 or 5 attempts but eventually, stunningly, the car was pulled out. We paid the fee and were able to move on, left wondering whether this wasn’t a standard trick that the ‘nice lady’ at the park office was in on.

Then on to Mkhaya Game Reserve where you have to park your car before heading to the rustic lodge where we were staying that night called Stone Camp. (You might remember from our last post that we had purchased a year round South African parks entry ticket – the Wildcard – stunningly this worked in this park too.)

We couldn’t believe it when we saw a Rhino mum with her calf right outside the staging location. Super cool. What was slightly less cool was getting a flat tire on the way. Due to the jankiness of the car jack, this was sort of a two person job. I haven’t changed a tire for a few years but it turns out you don’t forget.

Stone Camp was intentionally basic with no electricity which was fine for one night. The area had lots of rhinos which was a real treat and the usual assortment of other wildlife as well. In the evening we had a camp dinner and they put on a show of local dancing. We’re not normally into that kind of thing but this one was quite fun. The traditional clothing of Eswatini is a colourful full length piece of cloth called an Emahiya and we often saw regular people wearing it while we were driving in between the camps – and even some school children.

As we were leaving our friends had turned their backs for a second while gathering their things only to discover that monkeys had got into their hit and run riot trashing the bathroom and even pooping in their sink! Definitely not in Kansas any more!

The next day we moved on to the second reserve called Hlane Royal National Park and the camp called Ndlovu Camp. This was really nice with round huts to stay in. The main camp restaurant area had a great view of a watering hole at which there were rhinos a lot of the time as well as elephants. 

Here, we were able to organise game drives with guides and also do some exploring on our own. On our first guided game drive we came across a male lion unusually close to the road. Normally, lions just ignore you but this time we were so close and that combined with the driver wanting us to have the best view meant that it actually growled at us. A little too close for comfort and a reminder that you are far from being in a zoo.

On our last morning, we were treated to a group of maybe 5 rhinos at the watering hole. Up until our first trip to Kenya, we had almost never seen a rhino. On that trip we rarely saw more than one or two together. If you saw more than one it was usually a mother with a calf. This was a real opportunity to see a mixed group interacting with each other which was a real treat and the only time we’ve really been able to see that kind of group behaviour. 

That was our last day of the trip and we then drove straight back to the airport to catch our flight home also via Ethiopia but this time not making the mistake of having contraband binoculars in our hand luggage! A great trip and as I write this we are planning a visit from Bethany to São Paulo as she comes through on a trip to South America! Maybe I need a kidney!