This morning I discovered that Allan (or Joyce) had somehow recovered the Wednesday blog with photos that was ‘erased’ last night. Don’t know how they did that, but are so thankful they administer the mcguireclan.org webpages!

The service today at the Evangelical Bible Church started right at 9am and was very special today. At one point, during the singing of a hymn, the words on the overhead screen were incorrect and the signing stopped. Several men jumped up, went to a side room, grabbed stacks of hymnbooks and quickly passed them out. Singing of the hymn restarted shortly and the service continued as if nothing had happened!

Pastor Deon Philips spoke on Ephesians 2:1-9 and titled his message, “Our appreciation for what we have and who we are in Christ will influence the way we live.”

There were five candidates for baptism and, after his message, each one stood before the church and gave their testimony. After that each was baptized.

Following the baptisms, communion was observed as well. The service ended just after 11:30am.

After church, we stopped by Pick N Pay to pick up a few supplies for the week. After being here for five weeks, the list is getting shorter each week. We also picked up a sub sandwich, a chicken wrap and some salad for lunch.

In the afternoon, I managed to get our blogs up-to-date. Virginia worked on sewing a table cloth for an old table on the screened back verandah. Since there was no manual with the sewing machine (on loan from Lorraine) we looked on line to see how to thread it and wind a bobbin correctly. Because of the poor light available, Virginia asked me to thread the machine and needle for her to get started.

Hope to turn in early tonight to start the new workweek tomorrow.

Last night my laptop was giving me problems, but with a little help from our son Allan, via email, everything is sorted out for now and I can get to work on updating our blog.

What a nice warm day this is – in the high 70sF! Several loads of clothes were done. The washer gave a ‘slow drain’ error code. I opened the drain filter and, as expected, found it clean. No error codes after that. We then moved the clothes to the dryer – see photo below:

Because my laptop is old our blog site will not give it access. Therefore, blogging involves producing text (easier with a proper keyboard) and processing photos on the laptop, then emailing the text and edited photos to myself. These are then accessible on my Kindle which can combine the photos with text for editing and publishing to our blog pages. This evening there were some complications in that process which seemed to erase the Wednesday blog with photos and replace it with Thursday’s text only. About that time, access to the blog site quit working before the error could be corrected. I emailed Allan about the problem, then called it a night hoping to get everything corrected tomorrow afternoon after church.

This morning was hazier than yesterday. We are so grateful to our Lord for the amazing day He gave us yesterday.

We packed up and were able to leave by about 9am, with enough time to stop by the Royal Natal National Park Visitor Center on our way out. It is a nice large building. About the only thing of interest inside was the 8 foot by 6 foot relief map of the park. This map used to be located in the Tendele Camp office. The rest of the building had a rather limited supply of curios and groceries for sale. We think the Tendele Camp office, though much smaller, had a greater selection.

Our first stop was at Bergville for the only petrol stop of our trip. Next we stopped again at Dundee Boulevard for a restroom break. Like most malls here, there are security guards watching the customer’s vehicles. What was different about the guard this time was he was an elderly white man that spoke English very clearly. When he learned we were from Swaziland, he asked if we were farmers! When he noticed that Virginia was slow getting out of the car (still recovering from the hike yesterday), he said there was special parking reserved for the disabled. We laughed and said thanks for his concern. We wondered if he was a former, or retired, farmer himself, but didn’t get a chance to ask. We did not see him when we got back to the car.

We were using the GPS and maps saved in my smart phone for the return trip, especially since we were returning via a different route. Unfortunately, we lost the GPS signal just before we got to the anticipated turn in Piet Retief, so we were looking for the road sign towards Mahamba. After progressing through very heavy traffic and as we were leaving the north end of town, I noticed an old faded Houdkop sign pointing to the right. Knowing that Houtkop was the old Afrikaans name for the border gate that we wanted to use, we took that route. All signs after that only mentioned Emahlathini, so we assumed that to be the new name for Houdkop. The first mile was paved. The next 11 miles was an all dirt road that eventually ended up where we wanted to be. It ended up being over 4 miles shorter than the anticipated route. (Reviewing the maps later, the turn that we initially should have made would have been on the south side of Piet Retief, but from Google street view there are no signs for that turn. That’s why we didn’t see it!)

We were able to reestablish GPS contact at the border, but by then we knew the route. The rest of the trip in Eswatini was on fairly new paved road with a few well marked speed bumps. We filled up with petrol in Manzini, and got home shortly after 4pm. Fuel mileage for the Honda Fit Hybrid from Bergville to Manzini worked out to almost 48 miles per gallon (less than 5 liter/100km)

We had one response to the above photo (first shown in an earlier blog). That person said it looked like a dog, that it was bread that got squashed in shipping. Very close to right, except the squashing happened to take place in a self-operated electric bread slicer at the store. The store sells unsliced brown bread for about $0.45 per loaf, so I grabbed a still warm loaf (wanted it the freshest possible) and took it to the slicer. The fellow after me commented that the loaf was too warm. The crust on top sliced normally, but the warm, softer part of the bread got ‘squashed’ by the slicer. Since then we look for the loaves that have cooled down some!

We slept well and woke up about 5am and looked out the window. It was still dark but could see the outline of the amphitheater against the night sky and with many bright twinkling stars above. If only that image could have be captured with our camera! Only an hour later and just before the sun rose, we captured this image.

It was a promising start for a clear spectacular day.

We ate breakfast, then decided to try a relatively easy hike because of Virginia’s arthritis. I found a dead branch to fashion a hiking stick of sorts. We considered hiking to Tiger Falls, but that hike obscures the majestic view of the Amphitheater. Instead we decided to see how far we could go on the Gorge Trail. So a lunch and water was packed, and off we went getting started at 9:30am.

There were only a few others on the trail; mostly hikers that had driven up for the day. Saw a group of 13 that started just ahead of us, a runner in the late afternoon, plus a man from Swaziland and his lady friend. He was familiar with the Voice of the Church radio programs.

We hiked until noon and ate our lunch. At that point, Virginia decided that, although she would like to go further, she would have a hard time getting back. It is always harder going downhill with hurting knees and the return trip took over three hours. I helped support her down the larger ‘steps’ in the trail and we made more frequent rest breaks. She made it!

Back at the chalet, we ate supper, watched the sunset, and relaxed before finally calling it a day.

If you have viewed our 2 August entry already, we have added a couple photos to that entry (on 6 August).

Today we set our alarms for 4am to be on the road about 6:30 so that we could arrive at Tendele Camp close to the 2pm sign in time. Mission accomplished — left 6:45 and arrived 2:15pm.
We went through the Mahamba border post to South Africa, then bypassed the towns of Piet Retief (now renamed eMkhondo) and Vryheid. A portion of the bypass that Google maps suggested around Piet Retief was terrible with washouts and big rocks all over the road. We had to slowly pick a path to straddle the gullies and not scrape bottom on rocks at the same time–didn’t bother even trying to stay on the correct side of the road. Decided not to return via this route! We stopped in the town of Dundee at the Dundee Boulevard (mall) that Steve suggested for a restroom break. Went into the Pick N Pay store for a couple items while there.

Next we went through the town of Ladysmith and by the edge of Bergville to the Royal Natal National Park. The last 6 miles to the park entrance was a detour on a narrow winding paved road because a bridge had washed out. After another 4 miles on a similar paved road inside the park, the final mile of ‘residents only’ road was a strip road–two strips of concrete with grass growing in the middle and both sides.

Just some comment on paved roads in South Africa–we found them not to be up the the standard they were 30 or more years ago. The pavement often looks good then suddenly there is a pothole (or many). In addition, for areas of high pedestrian traffic there will be speed bumps (“sleeping policemen”) to slow traffic. Sometimes these are preceded by reduced speed signs, warning signs and rumble strips. Sometimes not, and the warning stripes are often worn off the speed bumps. As a result, a good driver is always scanning the road for a pothole or speed bump that may be hard to detect. Also the painted lines (center, no passing and edge lines) are often well worn or almost invisible.

We picked up the key to our 2 bed chalet at the camp office and on the way to the upper camp saw several bucks, guinea fowl and lots of baboons around the chalets. There were signs not to feed the baboons, and there were also warnings not to leave windows and doors open. On our previous visits, we never saw baboons around the chalets, only at a distance while hiking. We had a baboon climb onto the kitchen window sill and watch while getting supper ready this evening.

It is definitely cooler at 5,000 feet elevation, so we used the electric oil-filled radiator heater most of the time we were inside our chalet. There was a small wood fireplace in the living room and wood for sale at the camp office. The electricity was included in our cost. Should have brought some firewood with us!

Like the roads, we noted the upkeep of the chalets were not up to the previous standard. They were nice, comfortable and functional, but details needed attention. For example, the beautiful varnished wood window frames were long overdue for refinishing and the landscaping was lacking the finesse of earlier years.

Thankfully, the scenery was a beautiful as ever and we look forward to a full day of enjoying it tomorrow. We were in bed about 9pm to get some good rest for the full day ahead.