Lesotho

Facts and Figures

Our first stop is the enclave of Lesotho.  It's a small landlocked country, totally surrounded by South Africa.  Lesotho means "the land where people speak sotho." Imaginative, no?  

It's generally situated at a high elevations - 80% above 18000m and nothing below 1400m and is the only independent state in the world to be situated entirely above 1000m.  Apart from that I don't know much about it.  

Useless fact - It has the longest ski run in Africa, but we'll be a few weeks weeks too early for ski season.  We are still expecting it to be very, very cold, so it had better be beautiful.  This trip is about sun and not Jo's thermal underwear.

A little research reveals that in rural areas rondavels (small round huts) are still the primary form of housing and the most common form of attire is the Basotho - a thick blanket type of covering made of wool and the men like playing whacky flute things called Lekolu's.  It sounds F– freezing cold already.

24th May

An early start and a quick breakfast, Dan's placebo drugs swallowed and we headed off to the Sani Pass.  To quote wikipedia...

Sani Pass is a route that connects Kwazulu-Natal and Lesotho. It is a notoriously dangerous road, which requires the use of a 4x4 vehicle [1] and above average driving experience. It has occasional remains of vehicles that did not succeed in navigating its steep gradients and poor traction surfaces, and has a catalogue of frightening stories of failed attempts at ascending the path over the Northern Lesotho mountains.

It's claimed you climb 1330m in 6.5km and the route is 40km long and can take up to "6 hours."  In truth when you leave Himeville there's 30k's before you reach South African Immigration over good to middling gravel (the majority of which is in the process of being tarred) then from the border point is 8k's from the Lesotho border.  It's generally pretty harmless.  The last 1000m were a bit harder but a guy behind us told us that in January it was far smoother - the rains since then have toughened it but there was a grader, albeit missing a wheel, near the top so it seems they are repairing the rain damage.  Saying that the guy ascending behind us ruined his clutch in a Pajero but he should have stopped using it and used low range.  Or just bought a Defender.  We were doing it for the views not the challenge and they were spectacular. 

We had some drinks at the "Highest Pub in Africa" and stayed the night - Rhubarb was utilised to jump start the generator so we could watch the F1 and have lights in the evening and we froze our tits off after the sun set albeit in a lovely thatched rondavel.  

FROM JO:  it was lovely.  So much so that I forgot to be scared - much to Dan's relief.  For the record; the thermals stayed on for 48 hours.   Classy.

Oh, there it is...

Tire kicking checks, pre ascent. 

Sani from the top

Sani on the edge

25th May

We woke early and drove down with another couple - you actually go up another 400m to 3200m but the road is good gravel.  We then descended to about 2000m down a lovely windy road passing lots of locals in brightly coloured woven capes and balaclavas.  It was like the IRA on acid at times.  A guy called Matt who's an expat in Lesotho recommended a routed through the centre of country which we took despite an old German guys constant exhortations it would take 7 hours "and I have a Toyota Prado - is it not good enough?"  Well Herr. German bloke the car might be good enough but you apparently aren't - it was a leisurely three hours.  We stopped for the night at the Khatse Dam which was vary pritty, sorry very pretty, much more so than the lodge.

26th May

Lesotho was nice 'n all but the mental mountain passes were getting a bit boring.  i took the executive decision to get up at 5:30am and push on back to South Africa and swap a couple of days there for a couple in Swaziland.  I forgot we were a couple of k's up in the early days of winter.  The mental mountain passes avec ice and a rising sun that was horizontal to the driver's line of sight were the main problems plus a 1500m descent cooking the brakes.  Not much fun.  We made it back to South Africa and stopped in a town called Clarins which was how Franschoek probably was 20 years ago.  Loads of independent restaurants and traders in an old Boer war town - really nice.  We randomly bought a jar of homemade Rhubarb jam.  We pushed on to Ladysmith a famous Boer war town and looked for a restaurant.

It proved a problem.  There wasn't a single one listed on dining-out.co.za or eatout.co.za so we checked the GPS.  There were six.  KFC, Chicken Licken, Nando's, Got Chicken, Chicken Fantastic and Robin Hood Restaurant.  Not in the mood for poultry we drove to the Robin Hood Restaurant.  We refueled the car there as it was a Caltex garage and skipped the food.  Went back to our lodge and slept.

FROM JO:  Ladysmith may well be the biggest toilet I have ever had the misfortune to visit.  When we did the GPS search I looked for "all entertainment" which covers anything from bars, to cinemas, to bowling alleys.  The nearest it found was 31.4 kms away.  Now, I am the first to admit that our Garmin is crap but I think in this case it may have been correct.  

On that subject.  If anyone is planning a trip in Southern Africa - sell the Garmin and buy a Tom Tom.  Garmin gets lost everywhere - when we were driving to Cape Aghulas it said we were in the sea.  It cannot even get big tourist spots right.  The Tom Tom we had on the last trip knew every little track even in the middle of the Kalahari Central Reserve.

27th May

Having decided to leave South Africa for months and being terminally disorganised we both had loads of paperwork and stuff to do before we left so we headed off to a Postnet office centre for a couple of hours to do applications and cancelations and obviously instruct attorneys to issue letters of demand for monies outstanding having lived in Cape Town for more than ten minutes.  This done I finally found a Tilly/Colman style pressure lamp that I'd been hunting for in every camping/antiques store for the 3500km of the trip so far.  Jo was overwhelmed with joy - no more random stopping at stores - we could ditch the large electric lantern she hates - until I told her there was now a search for fuel and parts and much tinkering to be had.  We drove on to Ermelo, close to the Swazi border and tried to stay awake for the Champions League Final.