Beautiful South Africa

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It is indeed a very beautiful country with a landscape that varies all the time lush green to desert beige, and it's not flat lile the Pampa of Argie or the plain of Brazil, nor is it col, well it is in places but more about that later.

I left my boutique hotel and went for the coast double checking every now and then so that tracks4Africa in cohorts with Mssrs Garmin would not lead me on a wild goose chase yet again, close to Port Edward I was suppose to take a left which I did and then I thought about a nice cup of coffee and made a U-turn and went back to Port Edward and had a nice cup of coffee when the moneys came.

They were looking for food and searched under and around the tables but were not very keen on being photographed.

One coffee and a monkey show later I hit the road, towards Port Shepstone, where I had panned to arrive yesterday.

Going back up into the coastal mountains, the road went back and forth up and down, never boring.

According to my paper map there were some major rivers to cross and upstream they're narrower and the bridges get cheaper, so another loop in country and there i was, Port Shepstone, what a dump!

I asked some locals about lodgings and they told to leave P S as it was a dump, they sent me down the road a bit, to what they called a posh place, not posh but clean.

Why break a good habit?

Well I won't so I had some liquid painkiller yet again, life is indeed very hard on us who suffer from saddle sores, self inflicted, but they hurt anyway.

For dinner I trotted a km or so to a couple of restaurants, had tghe today's special ; Hake with fried calamari, chips , salad and a beer. Cheap and very nice, hit the right spot as well.

The next day got me to Underberg, closest town to the Drakensberg and the famous Sani pass, the way into Lesotho, the Kingdom in the sky.

Of course the GPS sent on a wild goose chase but i got there in the end, Underberg on a Sunday is dead, the restaurants are closed!

I stayed at a very nice B&B, somebody's former home, somebody with a lot of money.

Ihitched a ride with some French Canadians to a restaurant and tried out what's left of my French, the Canadian version of French is unintelligible.

Nice breakfast in the morning and off I went, the perfect black top turned into a track, a track under construction and not a very successful one.

I was hard at work keeping the rubber side down and watching the views.

Once on top the track turned into a perfect black top and I crused along with the aim of getting across Lesotho during the day.

Lesotho does not have any fences so its all open, not barren but close to, lots of sheep lots of shepherds, they all have a blanket wrapped around them and a balaclava.

The lay down as to escape the wind and won't have their pictures taken.

The road went up, up and up, through the highest pass pass in Africa, 3200 and some meters.

It got cold, very cold 7 C, thank Dog for heated grips. Cold but beautiful but the beauty gets moved to second place when it starts to rain as well.

I got hassled at the border because i did not have an entry stamp, WTF do I stamp passports, well I got out, out to Fouriesburg the first village on the way out of Lesotho and quite a bit warmer.

Dinner, beer and bedtime.

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Photos

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Breakfast room i Underberg