But don’t stress if you don’t crack the nod, take a while to browse our page – its the best way to get a grasp of what we offer… and how much fun we have.  We try to take a camera out on most of our adventure trips: rafting, caving and mountain-biking in particular. We upload the majority of trip images and photos on our Swazi Trails flickr site, but often post albums of the best selection on our the facebook page with a back-link to flickr, for those that want to search out the rest.

Please feel free to tag images of yourself, to share or to make comments… and fear not – your comments will never be as stupid as ours. We are the masters of stupid comments and off-colour wisecracks.

If you haven’t before: now is the time to “like us” – do it – there is a facebook connect button just to the right of this very page!

UPDATE

Our winner of the coveted 5000th fan spot was none other than Matthew Escobar Blair Sr.

Matthew lives in the USA, but is a real worldly traveler having been to more places and continents than most. During July 2012 Matthew was in Swaziland as part of the operations of The World Race . Matthew and a few of his his travel companions tackled our Swazi Trails Adventure Caving trip to the Gobholo Caves. Some of the fun from that day can be seen here – Caving Images 3rd July 2012.

We hear that our winner has itchy feet once again and is hoping to lead one or other of these 11 month long global  missions kicking off later this year, on which Swaziland is a regular destination.

Hey – we’re holding thumbs for him, that he does get back here again soon – as his prize or reward for being our 5,000th fan is a full-day white-water rafting trip on the Great Usutu River for him and 3 of his friends. That is not something that we can easily gift wrap and send by courier!

But the world is a small place… and we look forward to another set of images of Matthew and his mates going BIG – this time on Swaziland’s Great Usutu River.

Well done Matt – let’s keep in contact!

Adventure Caving

Adventure Caving is not for the faint-hearted. Swazi Trails mince when they label their trips into the Gobholo Caves as “real”, “hard-core” and even “extreme”.

So if you’re curious, but not sure if this is might be something that is not too much fun… why not have a look at some of our picture galleries? Our cave guides take a camera along on almost every trip to capture Adventure Caving images. They say pictures don’t lie… here’s a quick snapshot of some of the many sets of images stored on our Swazi Trails flickr site

• Swazi Trails Caving Trip 27th February 2013
• Swazi Trails Caving Trip 7th March 2013
• Swazi Trails Caving Trip 21st March 2013

Just recently we provided a teambuild for the New Hope Centre from Bethany, here in Swaziland. The New Hope Centre was founded in 2002 by Rev. June McKinney and Dr. Elizabeth Hynd. Their mission is to:

provide a permanent home for orphaned and abandoned children in Swaziland, and to raise these children with love, education and a Biblical foundation, so that they are ready to lead Swaziland out of these difficult times and into a bright future.

So we got to spend a full day working with this group, which was made up of both management, teachers and care-givers. We provided a customised version of our favourite teambuild – Communication is the Name of the Game for them.  During this time we, as facilitators, got to hear about the extremely valuable work they do within our community. It was a humbling experience.

One thing that stood out was their acceptance and stoical absorption of the results of the various challenges. One of the insights that we like to build into these sessions is the point that “life is not fair” and it doesn’t help to whinge about it.  Often we find individuals on teams that are prone to complain about equality or fairness, a tendency brought on by the competitiveness of the challenges. Our ears are always open to catch even the slightest hint of this, as its a point we like to ram home. Life is certainly not fair, your boss might not be fair, your colleagues or competitors may not be fair either, but there ain’t no benefit in whinging about it. Such negativity is a poison to teams that seek a higher level of performance. We keep a dummy (yeah – the type one gives to a baby) handy to pass out as a poignant reminder to the complainers.

Seldom do we reach the end of the day without some opportunity to hand the dummy out. It was therefore a rare occasion that we started summing up in the late afternoon with Team New Hope… and the dummy was still in facilitator Darron Raw’s pocket.

Darron said he came away from the experience pretty certain that this was a team that knew in graphic detail the sad truth that life is REALLY not fair. However, he was also more than certain that they had a steadfast belief that they could do something about it – and to him that was inspiring.

If you would like to hear more about the work that the New Hope Centre does please visit: http://www.newhopeswaziland.com/default.asp

The Great Usutu or Lusutfu River, as it is known in SiSwati, is a predominantly a rainfall-fed river. The main branch of the river itself is dammed in neighbouring South Africa, with little flow released into Swaziland.  However two of its other main tributaries, the Ngwempisi and the Mkhondvo remain unrestricted by dams, with constant year-round flow. The forth and northern-most branch of the river’s catchment, the Little Usutu, or Lusushwana River, is dammed within Swaziland. This however produces a positive effect in that the water is released throughout the year for hydro-electric power generation in Ezulwini, at Dwaleni and at Magaduza. These water releases are particularly useful in winter months.

Full water trips are often characterised by the muddy brown water for which the Great Usutu River is renowned. In fact it is possible that river’s name is itself a corruption of the SiSwati word for brown which is “-nsundvu“.

To see what we mean, just have a look at this selection of daily white-water rafting images from our Flickr libraries:

18th November 2012

4th December 2012

12th December 2012

30th December 2012

17th January 2013

31st January 2013

14th February 2013 – Valentines Day! 

16th March 2013

3rd April 2013

What did YOU do today ?

What are you doing tomorrow ?

From a tourism perspective the town offers a historic lodge building with rooms and restaurant facilities, a really nice conference centre (we rate it as one of the best in Swaziland) and the opportunity to do some great mountain-walking, which includes Swaziland’s highest point.

Now there is another reason to visit: Bulembu Museum. This facility has been prepared by historian Bob Forrester and has made use of many of the artefacts that were abandoned when the original mine shut-down. It provides a fascinating glimpse into Bulembu’s past – when it was known as Havelock.

The Museum is set-up in the old cable-way building, from where mined product was exported from Swaziland to South Africa via a 22km aerial cable-way – which in its day was the longest cable-way in the southern hemisphere

Take a visit yourself… or if you’re looking for a venue for a teambuild or corporate retreat, give us a call, we’d love a reason to get back up there… sooner rather than later.

Applications for these position are only being accepted online. This is part of our commitment towards becoming an entirely paperless business. So join us in saving a few trees… and saving a whole lot of filing space in our offices.

In the last few year’s Swazi Trails has shifted to become an almost totally “cloud” administered business. Our email platform is cloud-based, as is our main document server, our sales pipeline, operational planning sheets and even our store of daily adventure photographs.

So if you’re the type of person who wants to join us in the clouds… you know what to do!

Tonight’s rumble from mother earth was reported on from Lavumisa in the south, Siteki in the east, Nhlangano in the west, Manzini dead centre and probably most excitedly from Mbabane, the Swazi capital. However it wasn’t limited to Swaziland, as friends in Waterval Boven and Barberton in South Africa also made mention of it.

Many folk were quick to call it the Bushfire Earthquake, which is not surprising as we’ve just come to the end of a weekend of earth-moving good vibe at the annual MTN Bushfire International Festival of the Arts.

The folks in neighbouring Piet Retief may still lay claim to it as theirs though, ‘cos it seems they got enough of a shake to trip the lights out. But that’s probably to be expected in a 3rd-world country like South Africa. Here in Swaziland our electricity grid stood firm – good one SEC!

Keep rockin’ good people – its been a great weekend – from the shrieks and shouts to Mango Groove’s penny-whistle on Friday night, to tonight’s deep-deep rumbling drum roll.

Postscript: This minor earthquake measured four on the Richter scale, according to Ian Saunders of the Council for Geoscience.

According to Acting Principal Secretary in the Swaziland Ministry of Home Affairs, Andrew Masilela, the border posts that will have their hours extended this Easter are: Ngwenya-Oshoek border, Mahamba border, Matsamo-Jeppes Reef border and the Mananga-Border Gate crossing.

Only Oshoek-Ngwenya will be open 24 hours and only for one night -  Thursday the 5th April, whilst the others have had extensions in their operating hours as follows.

Ngwenya-Oshoek border

• Thursday 5th – 24 hours
• Friday 6th – until midnight
• Saturday 7th, Sunday 8th, Monday 9th – 07h00 to 22h00 (normal hours)

Mahamba border

• Thursday 5th – 07h00 to midnight
• Friday 6th – 06h00 to 22h00
• Saturday 7th, Sunday 8th, Monday 9th – 06h00 to 22h00

Matsamo-Jeppes Reef Border

• Thursday 5th – 07h00 to 22h00
• Friday 6th – 07h00 to 22h00
• Saturday 7th, Sunday 8th, Monday 9th – 07h00 to 22h00

Mananga-Border Gate Border

• Thursday 5th – 07h00 to 20h00
• Friday 6th – 07h00 to 20h00
• Saturday 7th, Sunday 8th, Monday 9th – 07h00 to 20h00

All other border post hours will remain the same.

Note: the only permanently 24 hour border crossing to Swaziland is the Mhlumeni-Goba border between Swaziland and Mozambique.

From the Swazi Trails Team: “Please travel safety this Easter – take regular breaks, don’t speed… but rather get into the chilled holiday mood from the minute you get in the car – take it slow and enjoy the scenery!”

Swazi Trail Managing Director, Darron Raw, was very pleased with the development: ” Our initial involvement with this project was purely as consultants. As white-water rafting operators on the Great Usutu River for the past 20 years we have developed intimate knowledge of this river and were able to provide precise guidance on route choice and the avoidance of hazards. However, we are also now Swaziland’s leading supplier of online booking services, through our involvement with the global group whl.travel, so we made a pitch for the appointment as local booking agents for the project, which we were successful in securing.”

Raw was in fact the first person to do a Source-to-Sea descent of the Great Usutu River in 1997, when he and Johan Radcliffe paddled the river from its source near Ermelo in South Africa, right to Maputo in 11 days.

“And no – unfortunately this ferry won’t be able to reach Ermelo,” comments Raw, ” the ferry will dock at Sidvokodvo, just outside Manzini, as this is the last point that is accessible by a vessel of this nature. Further upstream the gradients become too steep.”

The good news is that the trip will be a lot faster than paddling downstream by kayak. The hovercraft will connect Manzini with Maputo in a little under 4 hours, travelling at an average speed of 80km/h. Passengers will be shuttled from the new Sidvokodvo dock to the international terminus in Manzini by local coach operators Intamakuphile Coach.

Wandile Dlamini, a director of Intamakuphile added his enthusiasm for the project. ” The recent trial trip, although very hush-hush, was an eye-opener. This hovercraft, which seats over 120 passengers just flies over water, sand and even rocks.  It can go upstream and downstream equally easily. As Swazis we are not much used to travelling by water, we I think it won’t be long before this is accepted… maybe even Bemanti will give it a try…” he mused.

Whilst the project has remained a guarded secret for commercial reasons it is clear that certain businessmen were privy to the opportunities that this new transport route presents.

The hovercraft at its depature terminal in Maputo Harbour

Tums du Pont, whose recently built Tum’s Waterworld overlooks the ferry docking site, and Nkonyeni Golf Estate, which already has 80 top quality hotel beds available, are two venues that are sure to cash in.

“We will be offering residents of Maputo special golfing packages,” confirmed Resort Manager Julius Steyn, ” and we predict that this will become a major attraction to Southern Africa. The whole journey is magnificent, passing through Bay of Maputo and up the Rio Maputo, across the flood plains near Salamanga and then between the sheer cliffs of the Usutu Gorge to Big Bend, Siphofaneni and beyond.”

Due to Customs and Immigration reasons the ferry will not stop anywhere en route, with officials being based at the existing Maputo harbour offices and a new facility at Sidvokodvo. This was not a popular decision however and it is believed that the matter will be raised shortly in Parliament.

Siphofaneni Member of Parliament, the Honourable Gundwane Gamedze was reported to be particularly upset. “Why Sidvokodvo and not Siphofaneni?” he complained. “We have magnificent natural hot springs here, that are just waiting to be developed, and Hilton Hotels have long been interested in developing this site,” he said, ” Siphofaneni is much more central as a transport hub and we are sick and tired of the Lubombo region always being bypassed by development, I am going to raise it in the House tomorrow – with no disrespect to the Mozambique developers of this project, but something smells very fishy about how this decision was made.”

For more information, visit: www.swazi.travel