Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Day 10 - The glass factory and oldest mine in the world

Another craft, besides the candles, batiks, and woven mats that Swaziland is famous for is it's hand blown glassware made from recycled glass. We got to see first hand the people heating, blowing, and shaping the glass as well as the finished product at the Ngwenya Glass Factory.

Here is just a sampling of some of the beautiful glassware we saw there.
















After touring the glass factory, we went on up the road to the top of what they say is the oldest registered mine in the world, the Ngwenya Mine, meaning crocodile because the ridges in the side of the mountain look like those of a crocodile. You can really see that in this picture on the right.





We didn't take the time or spend the money to take a full tour through the mine, we just wanted to see it from the top to be able to say we stood on top of the oldest mine in the world :)




And here we all are on top of the mine.


By the time we left the mine, we were getting really hungry, and couldn't think of anywhere to eat. But David remembered a restaurant recommendation from his golfing partner for what he said was the best pizza in Swaziland. At this point in our trip, pizza sounded like a wonderful choice, so we went to this restaurant for brick oven pizza!Doesn't it look fancy? It was so pretty, and was actually some of the best pizza I've had!
Later that evening we took a tally of all the souvenirs we had purchased so that the next day, our last day in Swaziland, we could plan to go back to some of the craft areas to pick up some last minute curious.

1 comment:

David said...

so how old is it?
at Ngwenya mine the section called "Lion Cavern" is supposedly 43,000 years old.

http://www.sntc.org.sz/cultural/malarch.asp