There has been a recent new development which has enabled me to purchase a further 90 Hectares of Prime earthship land.

This land has a small spring on it and is on a North facing slope with the most spectacular views.

It also has a road access which make life much easier getting materials to site.

It is flanked 1 KM away by a Rock amphitheatre with a natural stage approx 50M above ground.

This pictures really do not do it justice.  This picture is approx 200M across

I will hopefully proposing a subdivision of this land if anyone is interested in building their own earthship in Swaziland.

Apologies to all for the delay on the blog.

I have lots of interim news and pictures that I will post in due course.

I have been busy in Lagos and the UK since October last year and have had precious little time and minimal bandwidth in Nigeria to update the blog.

Due to extended rains in Swaziland this year the staging window has been to small to complete staging in time for the build in May.

The first part of the staging was to get a scratch road put into the site and also to assemble a bulk of the recycled materials.

We have yet to get a useable road up to the site. I am visiting the site again this week as it is now dry enough to get the Landrover (with new all terrain tyres) up to the site and assess how we should progress.

We will therefore be staging from May 1st through to thend of the dry period 2009.

Main building starts March/April 2010 just as soon as the rains stop again.

Mike has just informed me that he has some experienced volunteers willing to help with staging. If anyone else has experience in Swaziland or South Africa I would be pleased to hear from them.

In the mean time the systems will be built in the US and shipped by container to Durban.

More later after the site visit.

For build 1 I have decided to go for a simple 2+2 sleeper in a Rondaval style.

This will be in keeping with the traditional Round Swaziland huts and hopefully will head us in the right direction for perfecting a 1 room design that can be adopted for single dwellers and small families.

Here is the latest sketches from Mike.

Similar in design to the one he built in Bonaire

After Mike had left and we had discussed the exact location and route of the build I had some concerns regarding the boundaries so I borrowed a GPS receiver from the local bicycle shop and Jon Myself and Richard of Swaziquad went to the site with 3 of Richards quadbikes to do a reco.

After much searching we found trig point A.. Only 4 more to go

After a gruelling 30 Hour journey from Albuquerque, NM, USA Mike finally arrives at Oliver Thambo Airport in Johannesburg.

A quick overnight in Nelspruit and then on to Swaziland