24 Hours in Eswatini

Our final hurrah of our big cross-African roadtrip that saw us traversing six incredible countries, spending two weeks and nearly 6000 kilometres chasing views, wild landscapes, epic experiences, incredible animal sightings and most of all, life-changing adventures that pushed us to the edge of our comfort zones, was to visit the tiny Kingdom of Eswatini.

Eswatini is a little country, completely landlocked by South Africa. Formerly known as Swaziland (Eswatini means "land of the Swazis"), Eswatini is one of the few remaining absolute monarchies in the world and just so happens to be a fantastic source of water, providing most of the drinking water to Johannesburg and the nearby South African regions. We had barely 24 hours to visit this country given time constraints on our roadtrip, entering post-roadtrip on the Panorama Route and leaving the next day to Johannesburg.

Our trip across Africa began with a week based in Cape Town, a gem of a city situated right on the southern tip of Africa. We landed on a beautiful Saturday morning, picked up our rental car and spent the rest of the day getting acquainted with the city and exploring many of its highlights before we dropped off our rental car at before spending the night sleeping on benches in Cape Town airport. From there, we took an early morning flight in a tiny airplane up to Windhoek in Namibia where we picked up our rental 4x4 truck with a roof tent and headed into the city, anticipation at an all time high for the adventure we were about to undertake.

We spent six days roadtripping across Namibia, witnessing extraordinary places, deep in the desert and thousands of years old. From Namibia, we turned eastward and completed our first African land border crossing into Botswana where we visited two exceptional game reserves - the revered Okavango Delta, a wet river delta teeming with life, before entering Chobe National Park.

From Botswana we continued east across the continent, making the long drive from Chobe National Park towards Victoria Falls, a famous spot in northern Zimbabwe and right on the border with Zambia. After Victoria Falls, we made the long drive southward across all of Zimbabwe, stopping to spend the night in Matobo Hills, before crossing the border back into South Africa at Beitbridge and driving eastward towards Kruger National Park.

Our final stop in South Africa was to drive the revered Panorama Route, a 160km loop near Graskop connecting mountain passes, waterfalls, hikes, viewpoints and other incredible natural formations of the region, before we headed to our sixth and final country of the roadtrip: Eswatini.

Crossing the Border from South Africa into Eswatini

We left the Panorama Route in South Africa and headed the 260km southward to the Oshoek Border Post crossing into Eswatini. The capital of Eswatini is Mbabane and where we had our AirBnb for the night, so we entered at the closest border crossing.

The border crossing between the two countries was a total breeze, perhaps one of the easiest of our trip. Maybe it was a combination of it being our sixth African land bordering crossing and we were pros by this point as well, but certainly it felt like there was no corruption and no strange expectations; we picked up our gate passes, got our immigration departure stamps, paid our customs fee, got our immigration entry stamps and then we were in Eswatini!