Road Trip Cankle and Africa for Beginners

Photos: Shan, A.D., and U.M., Execution Rock, and the craft market

It's 8:30pm and I'm sitting here at the computer desperately trying to keep my eyes open. Jet lag is still hitting me rather hard...Shannon not so much...lucky her. Anyway, it seems weird that my first week of 6 is practically gone with tomorrow being Thursday and all. I have no idea how we got here already. I left Sunday afternoon at 4:40pm and arrived in London Monday morning at 11am. I was to meet Shannon in Heathrow because she landed at about the same time. I sat for an hour waiting to hear from her before I called my mom and made her get up and check the flight info. She never answered her phone and I couldn't figure out what the problem was. Finally Mom get a call from her that she's been waiting two hours for me and that her phone doesn't work internationally. We had to play international phone tag with mom in the middle until we finally figured out a place to meet up. I could have murdered her. In the end I just laughed because whenever we get to visit each other I will be SO excited to see her and then somehow she manages to leave me waiting at the airport or something else equally irritating and I end up just wanting to strangle her instead. I love my sister!
After that whole mess, we decided to head into London to go to Harrod's department store to pass a bunch of the 9 hour layover. We finally make it to Knightsbridge tube stop and end up directly in front of Harrod's. It had been 5 years since our last trip and we barely saw everything it had to offer the first time around. For anyone who doesn't know, Harrod's is a HUGE high-end department store where the royal families of many countries shop and so on. They have a food department too so Shannon and I decided to get lunch there and just eat outside. I tried to be adventurous with a Sausage and Mash pie that we shared. It was delicious. After a couple of hours of walking through the maze that is Harrod's we decided to head back to the airport to wait for our flight. I hadn't slept hardly at all on the previous 11 and half hour flight so I promptly found an open bench in the airport and passed out for an hour. Our flight to Johannesburg was another 11 hours and both of us finally slept on that one for a bit. I must also note that South African Airways has the most *LOL* hilarious safety video I have ever seen.
This brings us to Tuesday, where we found ourselves in South Africa waiting for our last hour long flight to Manzini, Swaziland. The teeny prop plane took us south to the landlocked country where our Aunt Debbie and Uncle Mark were waving at us as we landed. The Manzini airport is quite small and as we'd been forewarned might happen, our bags had not made the flight from Jo-burg. We headed to the house for food, naps, and showers. My ankles and legs were swollen as can only happen when sitting for 30+ hours.
I was taking a nap when my bag made it home. My Aunt had stopped back by the airport and it had made it on the 3pm flight, however, Shannon's bag was still missing. Oops. We had a lovely dinner of roast with potatoes and carrots and then immediately fell asleep. Well, at least I did, Shannon stayed up to fix some issues with her ticket.

This morning we woke up at 7am and shopping was on the agenda. Uncle Mark wisely decided to stay home. We started out at the casino so we could get cash out at the ATM in a safe place. Swaziland crime is decidedly better than in South Africa but we'd rather not take any chances. First stop was to the massive crafts market where it seemed like miles of hand-crafted everything. It's Africa so of course there is stuff with elephants on it everywhere. I bought a few things, I won't lie. After that we headed to the Guava Gallery so Aunt Deb could buy some giraffe hair jewelry and we could get lunch. We sat in the shadow of Execution Rock while we had our soup and sandwiches. Apparently they made witches and murderers jump off this mountain in the old days. The last one happened in 1967. We stopped by another craft market but A. D. wasn't feeling well so we headed home.
We then decided to attempt a curry dinner, me, Shannon, and Uncle Mark with A. D. on the couch directing everything. It was QUITE the extravaganza. There is so much fresh food here including rhubarb so we decided to dig out the old Alaska recipes and make some Rhubarb crumble. Everything was SO delicious, especially when eaten with homemade chai, out in the cool air of the patio, with the buzz of the bees in the beehives in the background. U. M. busted out his Indian accent and told some truly hilarious Bengali jokes. Shannon and I were practically crying over our crisp and ice cream. So now it is time for me to pack it in and head to bed at the granny hour of 9:30. We have to be up in the morning to head into South Africa for a visit with some of their friends. The big game park Kruger is up that direction and we're staying overnight so we can drive through on the hunt (figuratively of course) for big cats, elephants, rhinos, and so on. I can't wait.