The Sibebe Survivor

On Sunday morning the local Rotary Club hosted their annual fundraising event called, Sibebe Survivor. While I know that we have climbed Sibebe multiple times (for free), we wanted to support the event and enjoyed the unique opportunity to hike ‘in mass.’ One of the greatest parts of the event was that Swazis participated in addition to the expatriate community. Many companies pay for a ‘team entry’ and sponsor their employees to participate in the hike; therefore, there was a lot of team spirit, as well. P.S. I keep saying ‘hiking event/hike/etc.’ because it was not a race.

Doug, Stephanie and I drove down into Pine Valley for the start of the hike at 8:00am.

While there was a clear 'starting line,' due to the fact that it wasn't a race, most people started walking whenever they arrived

The beginning of the trail winds through a couple of homesteads

And it never gets old to see a random cow or two

Most of my pictures from the day include the long line of hikers because I was fascinated with the fact that so many people came out for the event. Last summer when we ran the breast cancer 10K there were only a handful of people, so I was pleasantly surprised by the turnout. Here's the view ahead of us

And behind us

Since we've been in Swaziland for a full year and we now know so many people in the community, we saw many of our friends and acquaintances along the way. Here's Todd and his son Jacob (who had just seen Star Wars [the original] for the first time and found a friend in Doug who knows everything about the movie [even years later]).

Once we reached the top, we headed across the meadow (aptly nicknamed, 'The Shire')

Doug and Stephanie hiking across The Shire

And finally at the turnaround point

From this picture you can see those still hiking behind us and those in front of us on the later half of the loop

As mentioned, there are numerous corporate teams; some of which dress in costume. I'm not sure what company this was, but there was a whole crew in 'lederhosen'

The Royal Sugar Company had the best kit with safari hats and all

On the way down the mountain

The finish line

The (long) walk back to our car and another random cow

Last, but not least, a couple of AIDS advertisements...always nice to see people willing to talk about the disease