Blogs from Lesotho, Africa - page 3

Lesotho was on my route simply because it is a visa free country and people said there were mountains. I had even considered skipping it due to rumors of snow and negative temperatures, which after over a year in tropical African I was not enthused or prepared to experience. Needless to say, I am glad I went. From the moment we left the South Africa border post and started winding our way upwards on the steep switchbacks that traverse no man’s land, it was clear that Lesotho would be the most culturally and geographically unique country that I have visited in Africa. The Afrikaans family that gave me a lift up Sani Pass, the 2874m southeastern gateway to the kingdom, had the same idea as the majority of tourists who reach the top: take some photos, ... read more

Drakensberg into Lesotho Friday 31st December 2010 Today we left the beautiful surroundings of Drakensberg to travel over the dramatic Sani Pass into Lesotho. After a slow start we walked 3km's up the road to some ruins where the 4x4 mini taxis apparently wait to pick people up. It was in the middle of nowhere and difficult to imagine that this was a bus stop. We had made a weak attempt to hitch hike on our walk up, but at this point we had decided that it would be rude to try and hitch hike while we waited at the bus stop with the local Basotho people (Lesotho people). The 4x4 mini taxi van arrived at about 11:30, so we were pretty happy, thinking we were going to get to our destination Mokhotlong at a reasonable ... read more

July 13th Nicio and I had arranged the day before to get a ride with one of the owners of the Semonkong Lodge to Maseru, where we would get a bus to Johannesburg, South Africa. The lodge does two weekly trips to Maseru to get supplies and even though they were already planning on going they still charged us. Things like this kind of upset me, seeing how he basically was paid to have us give him conversation, I mean it’s not like he was going out of his way to give us a ride, he was heading that way anyways!! Anyways, the drive was great as you can already imagine from the previous posts and pictures. I was able to get a couple photos on the way to Maseru and the border of Lesotho and ... read more

July 11th Nicio and I woke up early to catch the bus to Semonkong at 9am, that’s what time we were told the bus would arrive to Roma. Two and a half hours later and various failed attempts at hitch hiking and the bus finally arrived. What was interesting was that it was a huge city bus, the kind you would see in Chicago, New York or Sioux Falls. That may sound normal to you dear reader, but here we were in the middle of Lesotho, a country dominated by huge mountains, cliffs and steep slopes. So you can imagine how surprised we were to jump on this bus after using so many micro buses in the days and weeks before! Anyways, after getting over the surprise we got on our way to Semonkong. The drive ... read more

Hello again this time writing from Durban, It has been a great last few days. Since we left Swaziland we have done a ton of hiking and such. We went to the ampitheater to see the worlds 2nd highest waterfalls as well as the very highest in Africa. We were a bit sad that the worlds second highest waterfalls was all but dry this time of year but we saw the snow patch where it all begins :-) ...i wish i had more internet time to lable all of the pictures and edit them... but alas this may be a project for India. Anyhow after the ampitheater day (a 7km sheer drop in the northern drakenburgs) we headed to the southern berg to the Sani Pass lodge. LESOTHO: We proceded up a stone/dirt road at 25 ... read more