Blogs from Butha Buthe, Lesotho, Africa
December 18th 2008
In the centre of South Africa, is the world’s third-smallest but highest country - Lesotho. Lesotho has 2.1 million people living in it. The population is largely farmers, living in small rural communities, their main crop maize. The Northern Drakensberg, where I am staying, is nearby the Lesotho border and my backpackers runs day trips across the border. So that was my adventure today. Two mini buses of us packed in and headed off. The drive was almost 2 hours to the border. We all lined up with the locals at the immigration booth to have our passports scanned and stamped. Then we entered Lesotho. Right away, it was different. Lesotho is quite a poor country. South Africa, while it has it’s challenges has it’s share of people who are poor, has great financial infrastructure, especially ... read more
July 16th 2008
Histoire d'un week end par temps d'hiver au Lesotho, pour aller voir .... la neige. Et oui, en hiver, on peut trouver de la neige en Afrique du Sud, et notamment au Lesotho, pays situé en plein centre de l'Afrique du Sud. Pour la partie historique, le Lesotho est la patrie des Basotho, et des peuples sotho-tswana. Lors du grand trek des Voortrekkers (sud africains blancs), ceux ci envahirent le pays pour s'y installer. après quelques conflits et grâce au génie du roi Moshoeshoe 1er, le peuple basotho réussit à garder le pouvoir. Afin de défendre son territoire, le roi signa en 1843 une alliance avec les britannniques pour repousser les boers (sud af blancs). En 1966, l'indépendance fut acquise, suite à un accord passé avec les anglais. La situation actuelle du Lesotho est cahotique et ... read more
May 2nd 2008
Amazing place The backpapers at the Drakensberg organised day tours to Lesotho - The Kingdom in the Sky - and as we were so close we decided to head over there. The roads up to Lesotho are very, very bad and very, very twisty. You wouldn't believe that we could get up there in a normal minibus! on the way we passed Qwa Qwa (to say this you have to use the click found in Zulu/Sotho languages - replace the Q for a click - very hard to get right!). This is another of the Apartheid's homelands and again thousands of people were relocated to this area on the South African border, far away from any cities and therefore work, and with very poor agricultural land. Qwa Qwa was the focus of a British documentary trying ... read more
April 24th 2006
Once again at the crack of dawn, and with Morgan in tow, we watched an amazing sunrise then set out with the intention of hiking and hitching to the town of Mokhotlong, which at 57km away was the closest town and best chance of getting any transport towards anywhere that we might decide to go. The five hours that passed before the first car came along and gave all three of us a lift to Mok. passed in a flash. Full of energy after the previous nights big dinner and sleep in front of the fire we effortlessly hiked through the snow and over the Black Mountain range, unknowingly summitting the highest point in Southern Africa at over 3300m. The sense of adventure was unbelievable, as was the scenery. Nothing grows above about 2000m here and ... read more
