Flashback: Bushfire and St. Lucia

Enjoying the music at Bushfire 

Bushfire is an annual music festival in May Swaziland - 3 days of live performances from all over the world (though most performers were from Africa).  Gelane, Premal and I missed it in 2010 so we had been planning to attend in 2011 for some time.  Then realizing that there was a Botswana holiday the same week, we decided to make a week of it and explore the Eastern coast of South Africa with Bri joining us there.  We got off on a bit of a bad start.  We drove from Gaborone to Pretoria in Gelane's car and then realized that the radiator was leaking.  We took the car to a Honda dealer and they said the radiator needed to be completely replaced.....We spent several hours in the Honda dealer (during which I finished the handwarmers I had been making for Gelane)...

Gelane testing out the new hand warmers and praying that they would be able to find a radiator in the area!

Unfortunately they were not able to find the radiator in the area and told us that the car could not be fixed until Tuesday (it was Friday and bushfire was Friday-Sunday in Swaziland which was still a 5 hour drive away!) So we went into planning mode and to make a long story short - headed off in a rented Nissan Hardbody truck (with manual transmission)!  We needed such a big car since we had so much stuff (below is Premal in the rental agency with all our stuff....)

We finally arrived in Swaziland at night and managed to put up our tent in the dark (Premal got really into hammering in the stakes - below) before heading out to experience the music. 

For 3 nights and 2 days, we were treated to some amazing performances.  We camped right next to the area where the stages were and it was great to be able to come and go as we pleased.  

Here is Gelane in the midst of the crowd in front of the stage

It was gorgeous during the days and pretty darn cold at night, but thanks to Liz and Jon's awesome tent and camping equipment we managed to stay pretty warm.  

Oliver Mtukudzi was definitely our favorite.  He is in his 60s and still was jumping around the stage and has an amazing voice!

There was one artist from Botswana, Shanti-Lo, who we also really enjoyed.

When the concert finished we drove through Swaziland (it is a tiny land locked country surrounded by South Africa). We stopped at the Swazi Candle factory where we saw intricate candles of all kinds (from elephants to birds to larger circular creations - these people were talented with wax) being made.

We watched this entire rhino be created and it only took about 10 minutes!

Next stop was St. Lucia - no not the island in the Caribbean!  There is a beach town along the Eastern Coast of South Africa called St. Lucia.  It was a very sleepy beach town (esp. because it was not high season).  Which meant we had a gorgeous beach to ourselves and plenty of room for the requisite jump shots ;)

We even went snorkeling one day though the water was extremely cold and the waves were pretty rough. After freezing a bit and getting bashed by the waves, Gelane and Premal spotted a small tidal pool and decided to try it....

The town is basically in the iSimangaliso Wetlands Park which provided for some amazing views and landscapes as well as excellent animal spotting on our self-drive safaris.  We saw rhino, buffalo, giant kudu, and then on a boat cruise we were super close to Crocs and hippos!

 Here are some photos from the boat cruise

Bri, Gelane, and I even got to go scuba diving in Sodwana Bay which is bit further North of St. Lucia and as extremely clear waters with tons of beautiful fish.

All in all an amazing last trip from Bots!