so you have not fully lived until you have packed up a rooftop tent in the
rain but we are alive and well hey you ready to go ready to go it is now time
for us to leave Mthunzi of camp and Poponyane behind us making our way through
beautiful orchards and sugarcane fields as we made our way to Hlane National
Park we had a good 4 hour drive ahead of us so it was time to just take it easy
soak in the scenery and make our way there. Ok so we finally made it to Hlane
let's go check in, we were super excited to visit our first national park for the
trip and having the campsite pretty much all to ourselves
meant we could just have a peaceful and relaxing time. Ok so we are all booked in
we're camping, they've got complimentary firewood which was amazing we're gonna
make ourselves a nice fire and this place actually looks really really nice
but I'm trying to find Natalie she's disappeared
turns out she was hiding around the corner, looking at these beautiful
creatures right by the fence and our only protection is three strips of
barbed wire and a couple sticks we haven't even been here for five minutes
and we've just seen five animals right at the fence like super super close it was
time again to set up our campsite and although you might think that it gets
quite frustrating having to set up camp every single day and break it down every
single day there's nothing quite like the rewarding feeling when everything is
set up you've got a cozy place to stay, you're protected from the elements and
you've got somebody amazing to share the experience with it was time for us to do
a little bit of maintenance with all the rain from the previous day
our tent and awning had gotten a little bit wet and we needed them to dry out a
little bit so it's turned out to be the perfect time to era our tent a little
bit there's a nice breeze and there's a bit of warmth in the air so just this
front section of the mattress ended up getting a bit wet from the water
consistently dropping through and obviously because that wasn't elevated
and pushing the water away we needed the airflow so we didn't have the other flap
down so it's a bit of a situation but we know now that if it rains we keep the
grey flap down as long as we can and as much as we can it'll just prevent the
water from entering inside the tent so otherwise we're pretty much ready to go
fires there our chairs and everything set up and it is not even 4:30 so we are
set up for a beautiful evening in the bush we've got the bush right here on
our doorstep we're gonna make an amazing meal and have another amazing night in
the bush with our camp set up the fire roaring just time to get some food in
the belly and what we had in store today was a vegetarian mushroom risotto
I love the versatility of having something like a Dutch oven because you
can use it to make stews and you know casseroles and things like that but at
the same time you can use it to bake breads and pastries and all sorts of
things It's such a versatile piece of equipment and it's always worth lugging
around and what's great is because it's a quite a big cavity you can fit a lot
of other things in it so we can store all of our other pots and pans and
things inside of it when we're not using it but just look at what you can do with it
everything's ready on our little hot pot we're gonna go and have a look at the
little viewpoint and maybe go have a drink at the bar
and then come back when this is done in about 30 minutes or so and then we can
settle down to the rest of the evening watch the sunset and head off to bed
because it's been a long day
we always love being able to see wild animals from our campsite and seeing a
Wahlberg's Eagle being attacked by Paradise Fly-catchers is certainly a
unique sighting it is now time to feast with final few additions and a good mix
up our hearty delicious meal was done and there's only one way to finish up a long
day in Eswatini, good company and a couple ice cold Sebebe's
there's nothing quite like waking up to the sounds of the birds in the bush all
around you especially with a night listening to lions mating in the
distance this place is really nice we didn't have to fight off the rain last
night we didnt have to have any hassles it was good
Natalie got up at 5:30 in the morning to wash dishes and do all the things but
it's that like excited energy today we're gonna pack up our camp and we're
gonna spend the whole day driving around the park but I think with the weather
the way it is and considering we saw the five animals yesterday and we could hear
lion the whole night I think we're gonna have a good day and I think we're gonna
see some cool stuff so keen to get out there but first we've got some coffee
coming we got some leftovers from last night to eat for breakfast and then we
can get our asses into gear although there are often many chores to do when
you're out camping it's always good to sit down and soak in the scenery and
really enjoy your cup of coffee really take the time otherwise it's very easy
for camping to become a labor of having to set up and break down and wash dishes
and cook and do all of those things and this was also a great opportunity for
Natalie to learn just how well the rooftop tent works how to pack it away
and things like that and there'll be a necessary skill
because over the next five days we'd be doing this quite a bit but as you can
see here it's really good to fold away all the excess fabric and once you've
got it all folded away nicely the rooftop tent actually compresses down
quite small and I think if Natalie really had to she could also set up the
tent all on her own in case I was injured or something like that but you
know what teamwork really does help
oh and it's beautiful weather
it's not too hot not too cold it's perfect hopefully we're gonna see some good game
today
excuse me mr. Impala we going now. With all the rain and everything happening
recently the bush was lush and this female animal and her baby actually
surprised us and you do not want to make a female animal feel threatened about
her baby luckily they moved on by with no
problems just like this little tortoise but struggling to find anything else we
did end up finding another mom and baby animal so I wouldn't say we had an
uneventful Drive but we didn't really see much a couple buck lots of animals
which is great and some baby animals which is amazing but ehh.. we taking it
easy today we're gonna maybe make a little bit of food and then go find
ourselves somewhere to sit and enjoy the view of the watering hole and get a
little bit of relaxing going today it's really lovely just taking you at a time
sitting under the tree and watching the elephant's swimming and playing around
in the water it's beautiful we've seen animals come to the water we've seen
warthogs we've seen elephants Nyala, Impala a bit of a fight between a
animal and elephant and it just shows you sometimes just sitting still and
just letting the things happen around you is the best thing you can do and
we've seen way more sitting here in the past 30 minutes then we did in our whole
hours of driving around this morning so chances well we might just take it
easier just hang out here for a bit why not we're on holiday
after having an amazing lounge in front of the watering hole was finally time
for us to set up a camp and for Natalie to put her practice to test setting up
the tent in no time at all we were really lucky to have such a great
campsite all to ourselves peaceful and quiet.
so unintentionally it's turned into a little bit of a foodie holiday we've been doing a lot of
nice cooking and just playing around and stuff with the kind of ingredients that
we decided to bring along and I think it's because we've started to try and
eat a little bit less meat so you have to be a little bit more creative about
your meals so bringing through a lot of vegetables and things like that often
the food ends up looking good and ends up tasting good but obviously you've got
to use it up quick and you've got to actually use it and because we don't
have that just like pull into camp make a fire and barbeque some meat and that's it
for the night or barbeque a chop or a piece of steak we actually have to go through
the effort of cooking something once you've pulled the pot out and you
got the gas out and you got everything there you might as well make something
nice so it's unintentionally kind of turn out that way but it's actually been
enjoyable you can very easily become just eating a whole bunch of quick junk
food or fast food along the way and not looking after yourself and especially if
we're gonna start doing this more and more we need to start making this more
like our normal lifestyle so we can't just do the take all the shortcuts but
we do have a couple nice things planned for us while we're here a couple nice
treats you know it is a holiday and we're gonna do some things like some
pancakes and bake some bread and do some nice things besides making some nice
healthy meals so I hope you guys have kind of enjoyed watching some of these
meals as well and seen maybe gives you a little bit of inspiration for your
camping trips. It's still something to get used to not eating meat while out
camping but wasn't so bad and Natalie finally taught me how to properly
actually fold a wrap so I'm sure if this was useful for me I'm sure some of you
would find this useful too it's a really handy little technique
Dinner's in and it's time to go enjoy our little sunset with some sundowners by
the waterhole it's our last night in Hlane and
tomorrow we make her way to Kosi bay so we are going to be camping on the banks
of a river or of a lake then we're heading to St. Lucia which is an estuary
also going to be really nice so we're going from the mountainous humidity to
the oceanic humidity but I think it's gonna be a nice shift in things there is
still gonna be wildlife this we're gonna be a lot of game see, a lot of birds
to see it's gonna be really nice real. but let's enjoy our sunset and
continue our day of ultimate relaxation we can see see what we can see hopefully
not more animals but more animals is also okay with bird books in hand and a
beautiful beautiful sunset awaiting us there's time to head back to the
watering hole to enjoy our last sunset at Hlane just soak it in see what we see
and enjoy it and one of the mother animals and a baby
from earlier that day also came down to the watering hole to say goodbye to us
as we soaked in the final golden rays of sunset before making our way to camp and
heading to bed
with it now being our third time packing up our setup and getting ready to go we
had gotten it down to a fine T all that was left to do now was to freshen up and
hit the road so we're pretty much ready to go now we've decided to have a easy
kind of morning we're gonna be having breakfast down at
the restaurant we're just now gonna go have showers get ourselves ready
everything's packed up and we wanted to make our lives just a little bit easier
making our way through to Kosi Bay so we can have as much time that side to be able
to set up find a nice campsite and enjoy our time while we there thank you so
much for watching so far and then and I hope you enjoyed our first couple days
on this on this trip and yeah Swaziland has been amazing and I hope you guys
have enjoyed and gotten to see some of the beautiful scenery out here from the
mountains of Bulembu out through the forests and everything we were staying
in Poponyane and down through the sugarcane fields and eventually arriving
at Hlane it's been really amazing I hope you enjoyed it and I'll see you on
the next adventure bye for now on the next episode of ROAM Overlanding we
leave Hlane National Park making our way through to the border to head back
into South Africa and make our way to Kosi Bay but little did we know there'd
be something in our way that's supposed to be the road heading to the border and
it's just some rocks so that's not happening so please remember to like
subscribe and comment down below I'll see you on the next adventure
bye for now