Mantenga Nature Reserve is Swaziland’s most accessible wild area. Only a few minutes drive from the old main Mbabane/Manzini road in Ezulwini, it offers complete quiet in beautiful surroundings.
You can visit Mantenga waterfall or walk and picnic along the banks of the Usushwana (Little Usutu) It is safe to swim in the many rock pools. The reserve is also the site of the very well made reconstruction of a Swazi chief’s village about a hundred and fifty years ago, known as The Swazi Cultural Village.
The building techniques used in the huts are historically correct. The saplings are tightly woven as they were centuries ago to stop spears being stuck through into sleeping people. You can walk around the village on your own or take a guide. They have traditional dancing and there is a restaurant and furnished tented accommodation near the restaurant and village.
The tents are large and airy on platforms under thatched roofs and big trees. Each tent has its own bathroom. The whole area has been very well and sensitively developed, without the crass commercialism of similar villages in Zululand.
