Mike and Shirley and I decided to leave a day early because in our vehicles it's great to enjoy the scenery along the way. We made it to Ladybrand (just outside Lesotho) that evening and after struggling to find accommodation we were lucky in finding a quaint guest house which was fully occupied with Harley Davidson riders who made our rooms available by them sharing rooms.
The next day saw us trying to help one of the Harley guys effect a minor repair on one of the bikes.
Today saw us all meeting up at Malealea, a campsite near Maseru, the capital of Lesotho. Here we all chilled out and enjoyed a braai and a few sundowners and really got to know each other. Our journey was to be travelling Southwest and then through the southern parts of Lesotho and exiting through the eastern border at Sani Pass.This was the beginning of an adventure of a lifetime. Marc and Brigid were the only ones who had toured Lesotho before and we were all looking forward to tackling the mountains in earnest. I must admit to being a bit apprehensive because Basil (our Landy) tends to overheat on long uphills so I wasn't sure what would happen to our progress. As it turned out I had no need to fear as all went well in that department.
Plans were made but Marc warned us about being adaptable to change when driving in Lesotho (and for the rest of Africa for that matter). This was prudent advice because we indeed had to change plans due to underestimating the time it would take to travel planned distances and due to a breakdown more of which will be mentioned later. Our second night was planned to be at a village near Mphaki where we would ask the local headman for permission to camp.
The trip would be a bit rushed as there was a long way to go and the roads in Lesotho do not lend themselves to being driven fast. Tarmac was limited to about five percent of our trip and the only level ground was on a bridge crossing a river. We picked up a guide named Jerry to help with finding places to camp and to help with the interpretation. He was truly a great guy and it was a boon to have him along.
We were now experiencing passes up to altitudes of 2800 metres and then dropping down into river valleys of about 1600 metres and then immediately climbing back up again. Lesotho seems to be just climbing and dropping and climbing and dropping. The scenery is spectacular although the area is completely overgrazed. The highest passes which were still to come would peak at about 3400 metres.
All the vehicles were behaving wonderfully and we were all having a really wonderful time. Drivers and passengers were swopping vehicles and chatting and also conversing over the two way radios.
We were now discovering the term "pop ups". No matter where you drive children and often adults will pop up from the most obscure places and ask for sweets and money. We had heard incidents of refusals being met with stones being thrown at the vehicles. This has been widely reported on by many travellers through Lesotho and responses from the Lesotho government has been that they are trying to educate the people about the harmful effects this practise is having on tourism. We were travelling in the southern part of Lesotho and reports are that the people in the north are more prone to doing this as there are more travellers there than in the south. We only had one incident where something was thrown and that was a plastic cooldrink bottle. This whole begging for sweets syndrome has been promoted through people throwing sweets out to children and has entrenched the idea that white people have wealth and they, the local inhabitants, have nothing and also in a rural areas where dental treatment is greatly lacking this induces further problems. It also instills a concept of why work for anything when we can beg for it.
But enough of the moral talk and back to the journey. This day also saw us crossing the Senqu River which is the start of the mighty Orange River. We found ourselves getting worried about
directions and then finding we were on the right track after all. Time was getting short and we were looking for a short cut that would entail fording a river thereby cutting out about 40 kilometres which relates to probably a little more than an hour travel time. Often language is a problem but we came across a young lady pushing a wheelbarrow up a hill loaded with a large gas cylinder. She told us how to find the river and we asked if she thought we would be able to cross the river. She thoughtfully surveyed the two Defenders, two series Land Rovers and the one Discovery and then said she thought they would all make it except for that one, pointing at Henk's Discovery. Needless to say we were all rolling around on the floor in laughter much to the non-amusement of Henk. The river crossing proved to be extremely mild and two wheel drive vehicles frequently use the crossing.
Shortly after the crossing we wound our way up a mountain pass with some extreme gradients only to turn around and make the descent and spend the night at Mount Morosi. This area was named after King Morosi who had defied the British forces way back in the eighteen hundreds by holing up in the mountain and was able to repel attack after attack. After a very lengthy time I think the siege ended in suicide of everyone. I will research and post on this again later. That saw the end of an adventurous day with picnic lunches on the side of the road and river crossing and some pretty hairy mountain passes but the best was still to come.
