Lesotho – The Kingdom in The Sky

It turned out that we would have two things to celebrate on the 7th October. Firstly and most importantly it was Lucy's seventh birthday. Not that we were going to be able to forget that. Lucy had been counting down the days for weeks. On the morning of her birthday we had told her she could not get up until 7am. She was awake before 6 and kept asking her sister how long it was until 7! On a trip like this it is difficult to think what to get the kids for birthdays, Christmas etc. We have space restrictions and often don't have access to all the normal shops. So for Lucy we decided to buy lots of little things and give her a treasure hunt to do to find all the presents in the truck. She loved this and with Alisha's help had soon found all her presents.    After all the excitement we headed out. First to the lovely artsy town of Clarens. Unfortunately we only made a quick stop for fuel and money because we were heading across the border. The border crossing into Lesotho was quick, easy and very friendly. We loved that the customs officer was wearing a sweatshirt with "Dope Sh*t" across the front. As soon as we were across the border we could see the difference from South Africa. The people were dressed differently with their Lesotho blankets, white wellies and the ladies wearing conical straw hats. At first in the lowlands it was fairly busy but as we turned away from the border we started to climb into the peaceful grand mountains.    About halfway up the first pass we stopped for our second celebration. The spot below marked the exact point we had driven 100,000kms since we set off from Halifax, Canada well over 2 years ago. Not a bad point to celebrate. The scenery was beautiful.     We continued to wind our way up to the pass at 3090m on a great tar road. From the top we got some spectacular views back down the valley.      We had hoped to stay on the top and camp in the Bokong Nature Reserve but when we arrived at the entrance the gate keeper said it was closed! So we had no choice but to continue down the valley and wind our way around the Katse reservoir. We camped that night looking down onto the Katse Dam, supposedly the highest dam wall in Africa.    The next morning we thought we would continue our dam education by taking a tour of the dam. The dam had been built to supply water to Johannesburg and effectively reversed the course of a river so that the water was pumped North rather than naturally flowing South. It was certainly an impressive engineering feat and with all the cement needed for the dam explained why the road to it had been so good. The tour was also very good. We were given an explanation of the dam and then we followed the tour guide down to the bottom of the dam wall. Here we were given a tour inside the dam before jumping in the truck again and following the guide up over the top of the dam. It was a an interesting way to spend an hour and a half and good value at less than a dollar each!       As we headed away from the dam the road turned from tar to gravel but it was still ok for a while. Then it deteriorated big time. And this is the A3 one of the main roads in the country. It took us over 2 hours to do the last 50kms to our camp that night at a lodge at the mission station of St James. Mind you the views along the way as we wound our way over mountain passes and into valleys were pretty good. You could tell it was spring as all the available arable land was freshly ploughed.                   The next morning we headed the short distance to the famous Sani Top. We thought that the 50km drive would take some time but as a new dam was going to be built, after just a couple of Kms a brand new tar road was been built by the Chinese. It was a fantastic road that was near to completion. Whilst the road was great, the roadworks were complete chaos. It was not clear which way you needed to drive down some of them. At one point I had to reverse 500m uphill to change sides. I hope they appreciated me rearranging the signing so it was obvious for other drivers following me. There were also long stretches of one lane only and no one operating a stop go system so traffic could arrive from both directions. Fortunately we could see a truck coming up before we entered the section and the only car we met only had to reverse a couple of hundred metres. It's a good job traffic was light.    Sani Pass sits at nearly 2900m and is a border post between Lesotho and South Africa. There is a lovely lodge there and some fantastic views from it. We did a lovely walk to admire the views and I managed to climb up to the top of one of the small peaks that was about 3100m. As our supplies were running low we decided that rather than cobbling together something pretty unappetising we would eat at the lodge at "The Highest Pub in Africa". We were really glad we did as we had a lovely meal and a few drinks while chatting with the friendly manager of the lodge.                   The next morning we had to tackle the descent of the Sani Pass. This pass is famous in South African 4x4 circles and you have to have a 4x4 to be allowed to drive up the pass. The tar road finished at the border and the road then twisted its way down through a series of tight hairpins. I think the road probably dropped a thousand metres in just over 3Kms so it was pretty steep. The truck coped well keeping it in low gear and there was only one corner where we needed to perform a small three point turn to get round. After driving in the Andes I thought maybe the pass was over hyped but it is steep and certainly matched some of the drives in the Andes although it probably was not as long as some of the steepest drives we have done.       Here is what the journey down looked like: When we could look up the views were fantastic as we could see all the way down the valley.    We were heading back towards Durban as Gilly's mum and her friend Rosemary are coming to visit us before we ship out of Africa. We stopped off for the night by another dam near Howick West where we camped for the night. This one though was not as scenic as the beautiful one in stunning Lesotho.

Dramatic Drakensberg

Oh mountains, how I have missed you!   We have experienced some of the most sublime deserts, coasts, grasslands and wetlands during our trip around Southern Africa but one thing has been missing: mountains. One of our highlights of our time in South America was how often we were able to head into the Andes and hike. We've have done very little walking in Africa (understandably so, in many places we would have been in danger of being eaten if we had headed out on foot) but we have missed it. We have more than made up for the lack of this during this last week in the Drakensburg. To do this beautiful mountain range justice we skipped between 3 different national parks. As the crow flies they are not very far apart but driving between them was far longer as we had to drive out of the hills before heading up again.  Our first stop was Cathedral Peak park, where golden grasses covered the rolling high hills. The upward slog became far more interesting for the girls once they found a couple of porcupine quills on the trail, hoping to find more they surged onwards. As the hot sun came out, the path took us through a lovely shady gorge where we picnicked beside a steam. As we returned to the camp after our walk, the peaks that had been shrouded in clouds came out to be admired.         The Royal Natal Park has the most awe inspiring 8km long wall of cliffs called the amphitheatre. On our first afternoon we took a hike up away from the amphitheatre views, which gave us great views of the other surrounding mountains. The following day we woke to blinding sunshine and abandoned our usual plan of doing two hours of school before our day's activity. It looked like it was going to be a scorcher, so we drove down to the start of the trail by 8am. We were right, it was very hot hiking through the grasslands. Thankfully there were patches of forest with some very welcome shade. The views were glorious though as the azure blue sky shone behind the wall of mountain in front of us. The last kilometre took us along a dry riverbed along a deep gorge. We returned back hot, sweaty and tired after 17 kms in the hot sun. The girls were amazing, with hardly a complaint between them. As regular readers of this blog will know they both like to walk and talk or should I say "TALK and walk". They didn't stop the patter the whole way for 6 hours. Brilliant, whatever works for them is good for us.            The scenery changed as we made our way northwest to Golden Gate National Park, the cliffs and mountains turned to sandstone. We hiked up to a overhanging cliff near the camp to admire the sandstone glowing yellow and peach in the evening sunset.     DSC05909 The following day we drove 60km to just a few kilometres from where we had camped just 2 nights before. The difference was that we were now at the top of the chain of mountains that included the amphitheatre, rather than at the bottom. We were going to attempt the Sentinel Hike one of the "most beautiful walks in South Africa" or as much of it as we could. Thankfully the truck did much of the hard work getting us up as high as the road went. Although, supposedly not in a park, it had its own Rangers, car park and entrance fee. Looking over one side of the spine of the mountains we were way above the cloud level, it looked like a white fluffy blanket spread out below us. To the other side the views were crystal clear with the huge Sentinel peak ahead of us. The path zigzagged upwards, at the foot of the massive Sentinel cliff face we skirted round the back to hike at the bottom of another massive cliff face. Eventually we reached a narrow crack in the wall where the path on our level ended. The only way was on a 30m high chain ladder up a sheer cliff to a narrow ledge then another ladder of about the same length to a flat top. Lucy was keen but it wasn't something we felt comfortable taking the girls up or down, so Steve stayed at the bottom with them while I climbed up to check out the views. Returning along the same path we stopped for lunch at the foot of a steep gully, which also had a longer path to the top but without the scary ladders. While the girls and I lounged eating our sandwiches, Steve took the 25 minute incredibly steep rocky path up to admire the views. The hike surely lived up to its reputation and was a wonderful end to our fantastic week hiking in the Drakensburg. imageimageimageimageimageimage