Swaziland Lowveld plains - landscape with trees

I love the trees of the plains of Africa. They are not just acacias.

Even better when antelopes decide to come and make the scenery very "African".

Mountainous Swaziland with zebras

Here are some photos from a hike to the top of Execution Peak.

See if you can spot the zebras in this second photo.

Oops, here they run away.

Swaziland a few words

I guess I am back to doing "a Photo a day" but got out of "Johannesburg" sort of theme I had. I think I will just do "a photo a day" of what ever I want with no theme even though I really enjoyed when Amira did hers with a theme. I just don't have the discipline to stick to it.

I just want to say a few things about Swaziland.

First here is a map from Google Maps to locate Swaziland.

 

It is land locked between South Africa and Mozambique.
It is a small kingdom (the present king is King Mswati III). To give you a sense of the size of Swaziland, if it was a square it would be 130 km wide - meaning of course that you can easily go from one side of the kingdom to the other and back in a day.
English is widely spoken but the true language of Swaziland is siSwati, a somewhat difficult language which makes Zulu with its 6 genders etc seem easy.
The currency is the Lilangeni (plural Emalangeni) which is on par with the South African Rand (as is the Namibian dollar).
The climate changes wildly from one side of the country to the other based on elevation.
In fact the country can be divided into 4 belts running parallel to each other from east to west.The west side of the country is mountainous with an elevation around 1800m.
As you travel eastward each belt has a lower elevation than the previous one. And the Eastern most belt is subtropical with a mean elevation of 200m. Its climate allows sugar canes to be widely and successfully grown commercially.

Obviously as I was looking for warm weather I just drove through the 2 western belts and went right through to the good weather. This took me less than 50 kms from the western border!

Anyway here is the photo of the day: A view of Swaziland plains just 40 kilometres east of Mbabane (the Capital city which is in the Highveld and so was quite cold this time of year)

White Fronted Bee Eaters in Swaziland

More blurry photos of birds! I like the Bee Eaters. They are quite colourful and fun to watch. They really do catch flies (and bees) in flight and are amazingly good at it.

They nest in colonies digging holes in cliffs.

You can see two of them on the tree trunk.

Lonesome George the tortoise has died

I just read that Lonesome George the tortoise died.
I know there are many worse news out there but somehow it is sad to me.

I'm back

I was in Swaziland for a week and I am back. It was my first time in Swaziland and it was great. I am a bit sorry to be back in Johannesburg, mostly because it is so cold and my place like a typical South African house has no heat, no insulation and is terribly drafty.  When it is windy my curtains move in the wind. BRRRRRRRR!!

Anyway, here is some of beautiful warm Swaziland.

leaving for a few days

I am going away for a few days...so no posts for a while because I am not taking my laptop with me.
I am hoping to have some photos when I get back.
So here you go, I wasn't able to keep the "one photos a day" for one month. I travel so little these days and I miss it so much, there was no way I was not going to go just to finish my month.

Birds of paradise now in seeds

You've see the flowers.

I am sure you had seen them before.


Now the seeds:

Johannesburg - Another Camouflaged Cell Tower

At the risk of seeming obsessed about cell towers, here is another "model".

I just think those things are so clever.

Here is the "palm tree model", the tall version.
At the same time you can see that typical sunny winter days have left us and the weather is quite grey these days..... hopefully not for long though.

Johannesburg - Art and Crane

From the top of Circa Art Gallery.