Lesotho II

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Before I describe our transport to and through Lesotho, I have one more piece of trivia for you. The country has the highest incidence of people being struck by lightning (as a percent of population).

We waited in Underberg for three hrs for the taxi to fill before it would take us across the border. Our taxi ended up with 17 passengers with bags in their laps, and one row of seats packed to the roof with more shopping bags Taxis are vans custom-made to maximize income. 4 people squeeze into the back row, then three into the row in front of that, then you drop down a seat on a hinge to fill in the space, then three more people in the next row, and another hinged seat to fill in that space. This way there is no aisle, just solid bodies. When someone needs to get out, the people in the aisle seats get out to clear the way to the door. Taxi riders hold packages on their laps, small items fit under legs, but there is no room between knees and the row in front. Packages taking up seat space are charged the same as a passenger. The other 13 passengers trickled into Underberg that morning on taxis from Pietermaritzberg where they’d obviously been doing a lot of shopping. The northeast region of Lesotho where we were headed is sparsely populated and it is more convenient for the people there to go to South African cities to shop than to a Lesotho town. The taxi ride from Underberg over Sani Pass and then on to Mokhotlong takes 5 hours. (or so, the guide book told us) These Lesotho shoppers knew the ropes....they arranged amongst themselves to share the cost of 3 seats for luggage, and knew what to do when we changed taxis an hour out of Underberg where the dirt road began. The taxi stopped at a wide spot in the road (the ruins of an old store with a small metal shed against one wall.) The young man seated nearby warned us with “You need to stand up now!,” but we weren’t prepared for the stampede off the taxi to the shed. So we were last in the queue (SA term) to register and pay for the next taxi. I can’t say whether this taxi was a 4x4 or what, but it didn’t have space for the same number of passengers as the taxi we came in on. When they filled up that taxi, we four and a Lesotho woman got on a second taxi.....but, of course, this taxi was not going anywhere until it was full!!! We needed another taxi to arrive from Underberg to load up our taxi to go up the dirt road. Things like this happen as a matter of course.....what else could we do anyway, but sit and wait with the driver? (who spoke no English). We spent the next hour speculating about how the rest of the day would go...would we make it to Sani Pass to stay at the lodge that night, Friday, and the next day get back out on the road to hop on Saturday’s taxi run, to take us to Mokhotlong for Saturday night? When the Underberg taxi pulled up, the driver spoke English and helped us make arrangements for the next day’s pickup. His passengers packed themselves into our taxi, even more crowded than the first taxi, and off we went. Now let’s forget about the inside of the taxi and look at the photos of what we were seeing outside as we climbed up to Sani Pass. In my first Lesotho blog, I gave the names of some of the corners we took. Truly breathtaking...... and not a little terrifying... I was in the back seat, entertaining my neighbors from Lesotho with my grimaces...Serena and Amanda know how I can be. Susan, in the front seat, was getting laughed at by an ugogo who reassured her that the taxi drivers were experts. We passed through the border post, taking about an hour and a half to get to the top.

The lodge at Sani Pass where we stayed that night had “The Highest Pub in South Africa,” but we went over a higher pass yet on Saturday when we continued on to Mokhotlong. (I will describe the lodgings we stayed in, in Lesotho III) We bounced along over the dirt road for 3 hours, but really, the road was more like rocks with dirt in between. The driver had to be careful not to get our overloaded van high-centered, especially crossing streams in the road. We were high above the tree line, looking back over misty ridges as we climbed up over the next pass. We’d occasionally stop at a group of huts to let off or take on passengers. This stretch of road put me in mind of remote villages in Alaska. The Basotho, (the people of Lesotho) who live in this region have little contact with the outside world; their livelihood is raising sheep, and they ride horses everywhere. But they do have cell phones!

Besides public taxis and the beat-up cars or trucks belonging to locals, you will see the occasional nice looking 4x4 vehicle on the dirt road. This is how the tourists get around, and when they pull over to the side of the road to let our taxi pass by, they get their cameras out for a picture of the super-crowded taxi. Our PCV group was part of a Lesotho tourist attraction! We chose to use public transport in Lesotho, because it was cheap and accessible, and we were accustomed to taxis in SA. If this account of our travel sounds “over the top,” well it is. Taxis to my shopping town are crowded, yes, but not with so MUCH shopping, because we only need to travel 20km to get there, and on paved roads as well. So we were tourists traveling like the Basotho. and you could say we were integrating into their life experiences....(PCV talk)....but it leads us to the 3^rd day of our travels. Have you been wondering about “The Bus Ride from Hell?”

Our handy-dandy guidebook said to take an 8 hour bus ride from Mokhotlong to Maseru, Lesotho’s capital. A bus, not a public taxi. So we were looking forward to NOT holding all our stuff on our laps, and to leaving at the 8am scheduled departure time, not waiting for the bus to fill as taxis do. We arrived 20 minutes early and the driver stowed our backpacks away. When we climbed onto the bus all the seats were taken and people were standing in the aisles! Again, the locals knew their stuff...the elderly and those with children arrive very early to get their seats, and when the seats are full, you stand. For eight hours....and, again, I am not being “over the top” when I say we were packed in like sardines. We were having a pleasant conversation with a young woman, who was seated, about how astounded we were with the prospect of standing for 8 hours, when the bus attendant came along and “compressed” the aisle-standers. He moved us further back, put his hands around our waists and swiveled each of us so that we fit together like puzzle pieces. Totally as if we were cattle....Later on, I mentioned that it made me think of the railcars to concentration camps, and Susan thought it was like the slave ships from Africa....But to put some perspective on it, we did have light and ventilation and we were going where we wanted to go. So we got what we wished for: No backpacks in our laps (because we had no laps) and we left at 8 am (but should have got their 2 hours early to get seats).

We took on more passengers as we headed out of the Mokhotlong region, and again started climbing to some fantastic heights. There was light snow on the ground at one spot; this is summer at the equivalent distance from the equator as Arizona. We learned later that cars make the trip to Maseru in 2 hours less than the bus which must toil up and down the grades in low gear. As it takes the corners we aisle-standers hold on to the rails above our heads or the seat-backs. We sway to one side or another as one, silently ignoring the jabs and shifts of our neighbors. The people sitting next to the aisle, (there were 3 seats on each side, not 2) have to put up with the aisle-stander creeping into his or her comfort zone. (what is comfort anyway?)

After a couple of hours we passed a big diamond mine, with a small cluster of houses, then, after another hour, we stopped to let someone off, and then....trouble. Our bus had truly broken down in the middle of nowhere...the man we had let off was met by someone with a horse so he could load up his shopping bag and ride over the ridge to where he lived, I suppose. There were no houses, just shepherds going by with sheep, men on horses, and the occasional taxi or car. The driver sent a passerby for a part, and who knows how far that place was. The timeline was this: the aisle-standers piled off the bus and sat outside for 3 hours, then, when it started to rain, we returned to our aisle positions for 2 more hours until the bus started up again. It felt good to be outside, eating our PB sandwiches; watching the man lying under the bus trying to get us running. Spectators from the surrounding area, mostly young men looking very stately in their traditional attire, came down to see the stranded bus. The real low point came when we got back onto the bus in the rain. We’re standing squished together on this bus, and we are not moving forward...it felt pointless to me. But it was raining outside, and the young Basotho men were now doing their best to entertain the unfortunate bus passengers. They were dancing around, knocking on the bus windows; at one point I think they sold a sheep to a man in a truck. There is no way to explain how unreal this was.

The part arrived, the repair work for the next hour was unsuccessful, and a woman told me that a mechanic was coming up from Maseru (4 hours away). This is the epitome of “The Bus Ride from Hell”, wouldn’t you say? You know already that they did indeed fix the bus, which started up about half hour after the woman told me the bad news about the mechanic coming. So, we were 5 hours behind schedule and arrived in Maseru at 9 pm instead of 4 pm. What you should know is that Susan sat on the ledge by the driver after our outside break, and dared them to make her move, so she was able to sit the rest of the trip. And Lee was offered a seat with a group of children, and she held one of them on her lap. During our two hours standing on the bus in the rain, some men got off the bus to smoke and hang out outside, so I took their seats and gave them back when they returned. That rest helped me to last for the remainder of the trip. Monica was standing all this time, but she got a seat about an hour out of Maseru. By the last two hours of the trip we were travelling through one town after another as we approached Maseru. As passengers got off the bus, the aisle-standers took their seats, and it turned out that by the last thirty minutes there was no one left standing. Glory Be!

Two more items to relate about our trip after the break-down. We dropped rapidly down from the high barren mountains to green pastoral valleys. This drop was on the steepest grade I have ever seen...I am sure those switchbacks would be illegal in the USA. I’ve seen some steep grades in Idaho, but nothing like this!!!!! And the green pastoral valleys were so lovely, especially at that time of day. Thanks to the 5-hr delay it was about 7 pm and the sunlight slanted in on the terraced fields, creating beautifully contrasting shadow and light. The Basotho homes are round with thatched roofs, called rondavels. So, it was like the Shire and the hobbit-holes for me. I felt just fine after standing on that bus for all that time, because I was loving the view so much.

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