Dumela from Lesotho!!!!
This is going to be a good, honest, absolute rave about Lesotho. I absolutely, absolutely loved it. The complete highlight of the whole trip I reckon – hopefully I’ll be able to convey all the things which made it so special.
On the way down to Lesotho we stopped for lunch in Kroonstad and partook of Debonairs Pizza – a pizza chain which we’d seen just about everywhere in SA. It was insane. We got one pizza which had two complete layers, then another one which had three – three layers in a pizza?? How everyone is not falling over dead from heart disease I do not know. They were pretty delicious – but even we conceded that they were a very, very occasional temptation…
From there it was straight to the border at Maseru. One more stamp in the passport later we eagerly tripped over the border straight into a bit of a teaming mass of market stalls. Saving the purchasing until a later date (it was getting dark) we got straight on the road to our final destination – Malealea Lodge.
We got caught up in a traffic jam just outside the capital – and were immediately the centre of attention from all the kids who were crowding around either trying to sell us things like single cigarettes or mandarins, or were just curious to see the tourists in their overloaded car. Some of them were incredibly cheeky and were asking for us to give them the entire contents of the boot, but luckily we had a few extra baseball caps and vuvuzelas we’d picked up on the way which proved to be extremely valuable bootie. Some of the others just wanted to say hello and either shake your hand or have a kiss on the cheek – it was a pretty funny way to pass the time. The stop/go man finally turned in our favour though and it was back off down the extremely, extremely terrible roads. Dan was in his long-distance zen-like driving mode, but the constant inhalations of breath and screams of ‘watch out!!’ hopefully helped avoid some of the worst pot-holes. I have never seen pot-holes like it actually; some of them seemed to cover the entire road and even though you swerved to avoid one, you nearly always managed to hit one in on the other side of the road…
Leaving the tarseal behind didn’t actually improve things… Once we’d headed through the 2000m high pass, it was down the dirt road to the lodge itself. We were doing this in pitch-black and suffering from nervous passenger syndrome clearly was not helpful. But, finally, we made it. For the first time in the whole trip it felt like the lodge actually knew we were coming and sent us straight to our rooms. The lodge operates on generator electricity so we just managed to get into the communal kitchen area and make some dinner and clean up before the lights were turned off for the night in lieu of candle power.
We were up and at em early the next day, ready at the tack room at 9am to load up our ponies and meet our guides. Our first guide, Mujalifa (phonetic spelling) (also known as Jeff) got us all sorted with our ponies – I had Mistress who according to the little kid who helped me onto her was far too soft and left me in no doubt as to his feelings on this matter! Adrian named his horse Silver (as in heigh-ho Silver) but as he was the oldest of the lot didn’t really have the pep his namesake did! Emilia had a pony variously named Buttercup or Butterscotch who had a fiery temperament and who was in her bad books pretty much immediately. I never knew what Dan called his horse – he was always up the front and leading so I just followed! Our second guide who I want to say was called Mandala, but it was probably another variation on that, was dressed in what appeared to be the ultimate in Lesotho chic: a combination of tracksuit, blanket and freezing worker gumboots. The agility of those guys in their gumboots was something to be seen to be believed!!
And then we were off. We started plodding through the fields recently harvested for maize and I have to say, I was thinking, is this it?? It didn’t seem nearly difficult enough. I was soon sharply corrected! We reached the edge of the cultivated area and woah, were we really heading straight down to the river on that path?? The majority of the up and downhill sections over the next two days comprised steep switch-backs made entirely of big chunks of rock which the ponies were quite frankly very scary! Emilia opted to walk down the first section (sensible girl) but the rest of us honed our horse whispering skills and made it in one piece. As we were concentrating there was a constant distraction – the absolutely stunning landscape. It was absolutely glorious! The river far below, lazily running over rock beds, the cliffs rising up on either side, the immense feel of the sky… I’m far too bad a writer to give it anywhere near the justice it deserves – and I doubt the pictures we took will either. You’ll just have to go for yourselves!
The rest of the day consisted of up and down sections, some through villages, others across more open, cultivated land, all in pursuit of our final village destination. We had a fun interlude playing patter-cake with some kids in one village; they were incredible mimics and it was hilarious hearing your Kiwi accent coming out of a little kid from so far away.
Finally the village was in sight…but that was nowhere near the end of the journey for that day! Stayed tuned for the next instalment…
This is going to be a good, honest, absolute rave about Lesotho. I absolutely, absolutely loved it. The complete highlight of the whole trip I reckon – hopefully I’ll be able to convey all the things which made it so special.
On the way down to Lesotho we stopped for lunch in Kroonstad and partook of Debonairs Pizza – a pizza chain which we’d seen just about everywhere in SA. It was insane. We got one pizza which had two complete layers, then another one which had three – three layers in a pizza?? How everyone is not falling over dead from heart disease I do not know. They were pretty delicious – but even we conceded that they were a very, very occasional temptation…
From there it was straight to the border at Maseru. One more stamp in the passport later we eagerly tripped over the border straight into a bit of a teaming mass of market stalls. Saving the purchasing until a later date (it was getting dark) we got straight on the road to our final destination – Malealea Lodge.
We got caught up in a traffic jam just outside the capital – and were immediately the centre of attention from all the kids who were crowding around either trying to sell us things like single cigarettes or mandarins, or were just curious to see the tourists in their overloaded car. Some of them were incredibly cheeky and were asking for us to give them the entire contents of the boot, but luckily we had a few extra baseball caps and vuvuzelas we’d picked up on the way which proved to be extremely valuable bootie. Some of the others just wanted to say hello and either shake your hand or have a kiss on the cheek – it was a pretty funny way to pass the time. The stop/go man finally turned in our favour though and it was back off down the extremely, extremely terrible roads. Dan was in his long-distance zen-like driving mode, but the constant inhalations of breath and screams of ‘watch out!!’ hopefully helped avoid some of the worst pot-holes. I have never seen pot-holes like it actually; some of them seemed to cover the entire road and even though you swerved to avoid one, you nearly always managed to hit one in on the other side of the road…
Leaving the tarseal behind didn’t actually improve things… Once we’d headed through the 2000m high pass, it was down the dirt road to the lodge itself. We were doing this in pitch-black and suffering from nervous passenger syndrome clearly was not helpful. But, finally, we made it. For the first time in the whole trip it felt like the lodge actually knew we were coming and sent us straight to our rooms. The lodge operates on generator electricity so we just managed to get into the communal kitchen area and make some dinner and clean up before the lights were turned off for the night in lieu of candle power.
We were up and at em early the next day, ready at the tack room at 9am to load up our ponies and meet our guides. Our first guide, Mujalifa (phonetic spelling) (also known as Jeff) got us all sorted with our ponies – I had Mistress who according to the little kid who helped me onto her was far too soft and left me in no doubt as to his feelings on this matter! Adrian named his horse Silver (as in heigh-ho Silver) but as he was the oldest of the lot didn’t really have the pep his namesake did! Emilia had a pony variously named Buttercup or Butterscotch who had a fiery temperament and who was in her bad books pretty much immediately. I never knew what Dan called his horse – he was always up the front and leading so I just followed! Our second guide who I want to say was called Mandala, but it was probably another variation on that, was dressed in what appeared to be the ultimate in Lesotho chic: a combination of tracksuit, blanket and freezing worker gumboots. The agility of those guys in their gumboots was something to be seen to be believed!!
And then we were off. We started plodding through the fields recently harvested for maize and I have to say, I was thinking, is this it?? It didn’t seem nearly difficult enough. I was soon sharply corrected! We reached the edge of the cultivated area and woah, were we really heading straight down to the river on that path?? The majority of the up and downhill sections over the next two days comprised steep switch-backs made entirely of big chunks of rock which the ponies were quite frankly very scary! Emilia opted to walk down the first section (sensible girl) but the rest of us honed our horse whispering skills and made it in one piece. As we were concentrating there was a constant distraction – the absolutely stunning landscape. It was absolutely glorious! The river far below, lazily running over rock beds, the cliffs rising up on either side, the immense feel of the sky… I’m far too bad a writer to give it anywhere near the justice it deserves – and I doubt the pictures we took will either. You’ll just have to go for yourselves!
The rest of the day consisted of up and down sections, some through villages, others across more open, cultivated land, all in pursuit of our final village destination. We had a fun interlude playing patter-cake with some kids in one village; they were incredible mimics and it was hilarious hearing your Kiwi accent coming out of a little kid from so far away.
Finally the village was in sight…but that was nowhere near the end of the journey for that day! Stayed tuned for the next instalment…
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