Swaziland Back to South Africa

We were packed and ready to leave at 8:30am. There was a lady cleaning the bathrooms as we left and Ellie asked when would they next be busy?
I’m sure it will be busy on Friday she said, but today was already Saturday.
We drove our past the reception area and then hit tarmac again. We had a long drive ahead of us. It was 130 miles to our next destination of the Boabab Inn and we had to do a border crossing.
After 3 hours of slow driving and 70 miles we came to the border. This was an easy crossing. The Eswatini’s thanked us for visiting and said goodbye and the South Africans welcomed us back.
We had another 50 miles of driving to do before we reached our first stop of the day. The Boabab Inn and we were here because it en-route to Pete’s and they did a really good Eisbein. Unfortunately the place was still beautiful but under new management and Eisbein was off the menu. I was gutted, I had been looking forward to this since we left and it was the sole reason we were here.
I settled for a steak which was good but Ellie’s chicken schnitzels weren’t fresh made like they used to be and she was disappointed.
After the meal we left and had a decision to make. Do we drive through a private game reserve or around it? Looking at the sat nav it was 10 minutes quicker to drive around Phinda so that’s what we opted for but unbeknown to us this area was hit by 200mm yesterday. We started driving and 5 miles into the drive we left the tarmac and picked up a gravel road heading into Zulu country. Straight away I put it in 4 wheel drive as a precaution and every time the gravel road dropped in elevation it became boggy but ghost just lapped it up dragging the Gnu until we came to a raging river at the lowest point and the road the other side was gone. I had to turn around. The road was only just wide enough for 2 cars so I reversed over to one side and then attempted a 3 point turn. I knew I was going to have to Jackknife the trailer and I put it in such a tight twist I ended up putting the front of the trailer through the back lights of the car. I was very annoyed.
We managed to turn the car around and it was 20 miles back to where we had come from. I thought we’d just go through Phinda game reserve but when we pulled up at the entrance the security guard told us we couldn’t get all the way through because of flooding.
We told the guard where we were trying to get to and she gave us alternative directions which took us up to Empilozi and down route 22. 50 miles out of the way.
This added an extra hour to our journey and now it would take 2.5 hours to get to Pete’s on top of the 3.5 hours we had already done. It was a nightmare. The car was and trailer were now caked in mud and I’d smashed a back light. I really felt done.
Finally at 4:30pm we arrived at Pete’s and we were all so happy to see each other but to top it off Pete had a mega surprise for us. He had actually managed to restore his old backpackers to it’s former glory and it looked amazing. It had a roof, working kitchen, 2 bathrooms, a library, indoor and outdoor eating area and a huge camping area. We couldn’t believe it, on top of that he also has a partner called Cameron so we are so happy for them. Pete also had 3 other guests staying with him, Steve who is from Durban in South Africa, Marco a paying guest from Sweden and Ludvig, a volunteer from Germany. It turns out that since we were last here Pete and his Volunteers have discovered 2 new species of mushroom in the area and a new species of spider. He also still has Milly the cat and a new dog called come here. That is a true Pete name if ever there was one.
At 8pm Pete cooked us all Wors on an open fire. His.cooking is still the best.
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