19^th September-22^nd September – Days 354-357 – Semonkong, Lesotho to Pietermaritzburg, South Africa

Semonkong had treated us well, but there was only a certain amount of times that you could walk past Pep to a Chinese supermarket and then back to the lodge before it starts getting repetitive. Hunter and Jana were going back to work in Jo'burg and offered us a lift to Maseru. In wonderful South African style, we set up camp in the back of the bakkie with all of their camping equipment, including two thick mattresses that they'd put at the back as some makeshift sofa. They left the hatch up so we took pictures, let our feet dangle over the edge and took advantage of various other simple pleasures that would be totally illegal in Europe until the dust got too thick and we closed up. It was the same road as we took down so I won't describe it all over again (even if it would be in the opposite direction) and the trip passed uneventfully save for the obligatory flat tyre not far from Maseru. As luck would have it, the car ground to a halt just outside a garage and a guy came, took off the wheel, fixed the puncture and replaced the tyre, all in approximately 6 seconds. Chris had given us vague directions to a place called “Darnlink Hostel” he had stayed at in Maseru and, after some quite intensive driving around in circles, we were dropped off outside the old airport as Hunter and Jana wanted to get back to Jo'burg before the sun went down too far. We exchanged numbers, promised to meet up when we got back to Gauteng, and walked off smiling again at just how selfless South Africans are when it comes to helping people like us out.

A couple of kilometres' walk later, we found the place wasn't called Darnlink at all, but Durham Link. We got in anyway, set up the tent, and wandered around Maseru for the evening. It's another one of those “nice enough to walk around but with nothing in particular to do” places. It's the capital of Lesotho so by Sotho standards it's a huge place with every amenity one could possibly hope for, although if you lifted the whole city up and plonked it across the border into the Free State, it wouldn't really be very remarkable at all. We ate some enormous sandwiches and decided to head off to Leribe the next day.

Ol' George gets another workout

Leribe isn't very far but it was a bit of a hassle to get to and took about 5 hours to cover the short distance between the two. There isn't a direct minibus between the two towns, it seems, so we sat on a minibus to Maputsoe for a small eternity waiting for it to fill up. There, we were subjected to the usual coming and going of sellers of various things – some were familiar from other countries (grilled sausages, fruit, cheap sunglasses, mini-mirrors, little plastic things like hairclips that seemed destined to break as soon as you used them, etc) although one curiosity that seems exclusive to Lesotho is the guy who walks up and announces “I am selling stickers”, all of which appear to be of God and Jesus and the Virgin Mary and various other biblical characters. Neither of us really thought they would look good on the backpacks (even if divine protection may have been a useful side effect of purchasing such stickers) so we didn't get any. M decided that money would be far better spent of getting a Cheese Twister from the nearby KFC and I volunteered to go and satisfy her stomach. As soon as I'd ordered, of course, the driver came in and declared that we were ready to go. There were no twisters and only a small selection of various burgers so I took further time to get some food and eventually we got going to Maputsoe. People piled out along the route, though, and at Teyateyaneng we were pretty much the only passengers left, so the driver shunted us onto another minibus, which we again waited in for a while before we got going. The change in Maputsoe was smooth and we got to Leribe quickly. A fellow passenger with the delightful name of Phineas pointed us towards a cheap guest house and took our number, and we parted ways.

After another trudge to go and find the “Naleli Guest House”, we had one of those experiences where you realise that Phineas' interpretation of the word “cheap” probably is diametrically opposed to your own. We tried anyway and got offered a room at a mere 75€. Panic. We politely enquired as to whether there were any slightly cheaper places to stay but it seemed that the only other place that the receptionist knew in town was the local hotel. A quick phone call revealed that the prices were pretty similar. With that curious look of disbelief that Africans seem to give white kids who declare that they don't really have that much money to spend, we were offered the room without breakfast for 20€ less. With heavy hearts and very much lighter wallets, we accepted it. Phineas called to ask if the price was satisfactory. I dodged the question slightly. One of the advantages of getting a room for this price, of course, is that you have such things as satellite TV in your room. It appeared, though, that in the Naleli Guest House, each room had to watch the same programme despite the fact that every room had its own remote control. This led to us having a comical channel-surfing battle with someone from some other room – it seemed that our wish to watch the al-Jazeera news and documentaries didn't agree with their desire to watch home-makeover programmes and the SpongeBob SquarePants movie. We turned in early anyway as we had plans to escape this money trap and get off to Mokhotlong in the far east of Lesotho.

"Cheap Guest House"

Leribe High Street, early morning

Mokhotlong has all the feeling of a frontier town and, much like Semonkong, has the charming feature of two parking areas for each restaurant and bar (one for cars, one for horses). It's a dusty town which probably wouldn't rank too highly on a museum-and-architecture fan's list of places to go, but it was like many of the mountain villages we'd been through – an experience just to be there, and the feeling that you'd stepped back several centuries in time (if you can ignore the few pick-ups rumbling through the streets). We followed a sign for a B&B, headed off down the indicated road and the trail promptly dried up. Another one we found was full, and the women running it took us to a totally unmarked house where we were offered a room for 25€. The Ritz it certainly wasn't, but it was fine. We sneaked off for a dinner of microwave reheated rice and “Russians” (a type of sausage which probably doesn't contain much meat but has so much colourant that if there's a power cut, it's the only thing in the room you can still see). We hit the sack early again, knowing that we'd have to drag ourselves up the hill to the minibus station as the minibus to Sani Top would leave at 6am, pronto.

Mokhotlong sunrise...

Travelling in Lesotho - a must for those looking for the "tough guy battered by nature" look

This, of course, is why we were still sat around at the minibus station at 10am, waiting for more passengers. I do love the relaxed African concept of time, but I also despise getting up at 5.30am for nothing. Especially when it's freezing cold and my lips are falling apart from the cool, dry Lesotho air. I balanced it out and decided I'd still rather be here than getting up at 8am to go to the office in Europe (no matter how warm it would be there). My mother cheered me up immensely at this point by thoughtfully sending a text message to inform us that we should psychologically prepare ourselves because autumn was fast arriving in Europe. Great. Things felt much better.

Mokhotlong minibus station

The climb up to Sani Top, when it eventually got started, was slow but spectacular. The Sani Pass itself, the only road between Lesotho and all of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, was originally a mule track which was widened to take cars but it's still the kind of road where you feel like tapping the driver on the shoulder and asking him when his minibus was last serviced. This was on the way up, which we discovered was the gentler part. As we got to the Lesotho border post, we saw the Sani Top Chalet to our left, where we had been planning to go, stay for a couple of nights and have a mountaintop hike or two. As we got out, though, the wind was strong and cold and M didn't fancy putting the clothes she had with her to the test against the meteorological conditions up here at nearly 3000m. We looked both ways before heading off to the border post to get stamped out – we'd be continuing towards South Africa after all. With all the cool and calm for which I am renowned, I sulked a bit about missing Sani Top before realising I was being a bit of an arse, and sorted myself out. The cracked lips and an emerging lump on my face weren't really helping my mood though, and we rolled on to Underberg along the steepest slope I think I've even been driven down courtesy of a ridiculously tight series of hairpin turns.

South Africa seen from the Sani Pass

A bunch of tourists seen from the Sani Pass

A quick change of minibus in Underberg took us to Pietermaritzburg, where we'd be spending the night before heading out to the Drakensberg National Park for less windswept hiking and the chance to spend more than one night in the same place, which we hadn't done for quite a while by this point! Hurrah. “Maritzburg” was another one of those towns which I'd have liked to walk around more but neither of us really had much energy for it. Instead, we took the easier way out of having a beer and reading “Getaway” magazine, of which there were large piles at the friendly Umphiti backpacker's that we'd ended up in. “I'm sorry”, the owner said, “but I don't get much demand for camping these days. You can put your tent up there, though, while I try to chase the chickens back into their cages”. That raised a smile, but M and I decided that spirits could only truly rise by being taken around the corner for a Scooter's pizza. As always, it did the trick wonderfully well.

T celebrates his return to South Africa with another fabulous lump

The Walk in the Sky

15^th September-19^th September – Days 350-354 – Semonkong, Lesotho

Semonkong isn't really a one horse town in a literal sense – I don't think any town in Lesotho is. It's a town where the local shebeen has no car park but a place to park your horses. There's a big horse station on the main “square” (which is surrounded by two dusty Chinese-run supermarkets, various patches of grass and a South African “Pep” store which looks bizarrely out of place). Metaphorically though, it is the perfect example of a one horse town. The road from Maseru ends abruptly here, ensuring that anyone who comes this far faces a bumpy off-road bus ride all the way back to the capital, and there are just a few houses dotted around. Tarmac is, of course, a distant dream and local people mill around wrapped in their Basotho blankets and all toting rubber boots. It's a strange yet beautiful, enchanting place. Semonkong lodge, which seemed to be the only place in town to stay, is slightly out of town and set on a hillside, at one with nature as these places should be. There are small cottages dotted around and not a sound for miles around. The fact that our cottage was right at the top of the hill was not helped by the thinning air at this altitude and we were always out of breath when we got to the top but it was well worth it for the views across the valley.

M navigates the perilous slope to the cottage in the sky

Downtown Semonkong

Even more downtown Semonkong!

We'd signed up for a wander out of town towards the Maletsunyane Falls, which go nearly 200m into a gorge. In the spirit of Southern Africa it's been exploited by a company offering the longest commercial abseiling drop in the world but it's pretty discreet. We wander through fields, our guide chatting on passers-by on horses. I smile as I tell him that, back home, horses are for the rich. “Ah, but in Lesotho” he tells me, “Cars are for the rich. You have your cars, we have our horses”. As we get to the Maletsunyane gorge, he takes us to a small path which weaves its way almost vertically all the way to the bottom. It's a strenuous descent during which both of us took spectacular tumbles – so strenuous in fact that it wasn't until we got to the bottom that I realised we'd have to climb all the way back up. Hell. We had a bite to eat and a snack (and the guide disappeared for the third time, which I'm sure has nothing to do with the fact that we'd agreed to pay him by the hour) and met up with two horse riders living in South Africa who we'd seen at the lodge, Hunter and Jana. We had a chat, agreed to meet them at the shebeen later on, and hit the slopes up again. It's hard really to encapsulate the beauty and wilderness of the area in words so I'll let the pictures do the talking...

Basotho horses on the way to the falls...

The Maletsunyane Gorge

Maletsunyane Falls from the top of the gorge

Our guide tries to work out how to squeeze an extra hour from the walk

Following the river back to Semonkong

There's not much to do in Semonkong – wandering around town and having chats in the shebeen were about it, but it's a great place to take a breather. Unfortunately though, we were out of cash and the phone lines into town weren't good enough to take Visa Electron cards and so we had to cut the stay short. Hunter and Jana, in good South African style, offered to pile us into the back of their pickup for the long ride back to Maseru. We exchanged numbers, agreed to meet up in Johannesburg and waved them off, once again reflecting on how friendly people are around here.

Hunter, M, Jana, Chris in the happenin' Semonkong shebeen

The Kingdom In The Sky

13^th September-15^th September – Days 348-350 – Port Alfred, South Africa to Semonkong, Lesotho

Leaving Port Alfred was about as complicated as getting there was. Not spectacularly so, but probably more so than it should have been. Megan had given us a lift into town at 7.30am, dropped us off at the minibus taxi rank and gave us a cheery goodbye as she disappeared off to work. There was only one minibus in the area so locating the one we needed wouldn't be hard, we thought. That was until we were told that this was the local minibus station and to get anything else we'd need the other station which was accurately described to us as being « somewhere over there », accompanied with a vague waving of hands. We walked around in circles until the sight of a shopping centre reminded M that she hadn't had her morning coffee and so we ducked into a Wimpy so that she could get her fix for the morning. This was also useful as the Wimpy staff were slightly more helpful than the minibus taxi drivers – we'd have to get a local minibus to an intersection somewhere out in the townships where we could get onward transport from there.

We were aiming to get to Maseru, the capital city of Lesotho, but we weren't yet quite sure how to do it. We'd originally thought of going through Port Elizabeth but I thought that, given that P.E. was in the wrong direction, that might not be such a great plan. We decided on trying to find our way to Grahamstown again and get a bus from there to Bloemfontein, from where we could get something to Maseru. Easy. And in fact, for once, it turned out that we did make it easy. Grahamstown was sunny, as it always seems to be. M and I tried our hand at tennis, which we realised that we weren't very good at, and we got invited by Grant and Bast for a game of touch rugby, which I realised that I wasn't very good at. Rather than realise that she was crap at two sports too, M trekked off to the Pick N Pay to pick up some supplies for the night bus we'd arranged up to Bloemfontein.

M practises her backhand...

...and shows a distinct lack of coordination with the tennis racket

...but T's attempts with a rugby ball make her feel much better.

Now, not only was this a night bus but it also arrived in Bloemfontein at 3am, meaning that we'd have to find our way to the backpackers place that M had called up during the day, call up a guy inside to open a door for us and pitch up our tent in the middle of the night. It just seems that we're suckers for punishment – you know that line you always come up with after a heavy night? "I'm never going to drink again"? I'm starting to have that with night buses. Always uttering the same words yet, when it comes down to it, you always end up doing it all over again. I guess it's useful in a way for us as we have somewhere to sleep and don't need to pay for a bed for the night. In this case though, we'd arrive at 3am and would pay to spend the night in Bloemfontein anyway. Fortunately, when we eventually got there and woke the guy up, he seemed to take pity on us and offer us a dorm bed at a tent price. And in any case, that was the only bus going from Grahamstown to Bloemfontein so we had no choice. The fact that it was Greyhound, one of the smarter companies with nicer buses, didn't seem to make any difference – sleep was just difficult to come by. I think this is down to several factors: a) the movie on TV is always loud enough to prevent you from sleeping, but quiet enough that you can't really follow what's going on. Given that you can't sleep, you try to watch the movie but only catching half of it gets annoying. This in turns further prevents you from sleeping; b) you will always end up in the close vicinity of either a screaming baby, or an extremely large person who spends the night either clearing their throats of snorting like a hippo (as happened on this particular bus). This will be the only such person on the entire bus and is always either in front of, behind or next to you; and c) you will be woken up at every stop by a booming voice on the loud speaker. « WELCOME TO ALIWAL NORTH, WE THANK YOU FOR TRAVELLING WITH GREYHOUND. IF YOU WERE SLEEPING, TOUGH SHIT FOR YOU. YOU SHOULD HAVE WORN EARPLUGS. PLEASE TRY AGAIN. ». Of course, the only time that you would potentially sleep peacefully through this announcement is at the town where you are supposed to get off, which means that you spend the entire trip paranoid that instead of waking up at 3am in Bloemfontein, you'll wake up at 8am in Johannesburg. This paranoia, in turn, prevents you from sleeping. In this case you'll either be utterly tired when you get off the bus, or you'll pass out at 2.50am, and end up Johannesburg just as you thought. Miraculously, M and I found ourselves getting off the bus exactly where we should have, and by 4.30am we were sound asleep.

M poses before Naval Hill Backpackers, one of Bloemfontein's more arresting tourist attractions

Bloemfontein itself is one of those places that is nice enough to wander around for a day – pleasant and green, a few nice old buildings and an easy layout that means that you won't get horrifically lost very quickly. It's also big enough to keep you from stumbling upon the same thing every 5 minutes but also small enough to be walkable. Not the kind of place I'd take a 3-week holiday in but nice enough to while away the day waiting for a bus. It's also got a « Waterfront » shopping centre which is quite funny, given that Bloemfontein in the middle of the Free State, which is itself in the middle of South Africa and hence nowhere near the sea from which Cape Town's equivalent gets its name. We went there, split a pizza, and kept on walking. I had quite a headache for some reason, so we trudged back up to the backpackers and had a lazy evening (easy enough since we were the only guests there, by the looks) before turning in for the night. The owner was one of those guys doesn't seem interested in running a backpackers at all, but rather prefers watching horse races on TV and occasionally coming out with the odd racial slur, but he had a Franco-German guy working for him who was friendly and helpful and recommended to us that we go directly to Semonkong as Maseru was just a town with nothing much going for it. Besides, from the look of the maps, the road to Semonkong looked like a dead end so we'd have to bus it up back to Maseru anyway. The decision was made, a taxi was called for 5.30 the next morning, and we slept again.

The Bloemfontein skyline at sundown. Nice cooling towers.

The final day of the trip to Semonkong was a beautiful one. From the modernity of South Africa to the rural charm of its smaller neighbour, from the flat plains of the Free State to the towering mountains of Lesotho, we saw just about the full range of sceneries within a single day. The bus left bang on time and by 9am we were walking through the Maseru Bridge border crossing and before we knew it, we were in Lesotho. Arriving here was just like arriving in Swaziland – people suddenly started waving and smiling at you in the streets, people said hello to the tourists and we were asked if we needed help. We were pointed towards the minibus rank to get into town, where we went through our normal « new country » routine of getting a sim card, looking at the new money we got as change for it, and then wondering where the hell we were. In Lesotho, the fun was added to by the fact that many people spoke Sesotho to us and seemed quite taken aback that we couldn't understand them. The fact that they didn't speak English either restricted the depth of many conversations. In the end, we asked in the fabulously named « Hip Hop Shoe Shop » for directions to the Semonkong bus, and a woman inside said she'd show us the way. We weaved through market stalls, in and our of roads, stopped as our new friend had a chat with various people, and eventually got to the central bus station. The bus was due to leave in three hours but we were too tired to wander around with the huge backpack. Consequence being, we sat on the bus for three hours and waited.

Lesotho smiles at us in one of those "out of the bus window" pictures that turned good

It's a bumpy ride down to Semonkong – half of the way it's a gravel road, and the other half is pothole with a little bit of tarmac here and there. We rolled along the sides of mountains, up and down, left and right. Half of the time on such a ride, you'd be admiring the beauty of the mountains. The other half, you'd be thinking « Gee, I hope the brakes don't fail on the 1870s-built bus-like contraption, or we'd be rather finished ». The fact that this 1870s-built bus-like contraption appeared to have done the run from Maseru to Semonkong every day since its construction probably helped me to believe that it would be OK. And hence, with about 90 people on board, the chattering of Sesotho all around and M humming the Vengaboys to my left, we bumped our way through the countryside for quite a while. Every time we'd come over a pass, the mountains and valleys would spread before us without any sign of life or habitation bar a few herders on horseback here and there. People did get on and off quite regularly though, making the more inquisitive minded European wonder where the hell these people are going/where they came from. I guess Lesotho is just one of those places where people will walk 3 weeks over mountains to get back home just because they think they may have left the gas on, and then wander back without a care in the world to pick up the next bus. My aimless thoughts were crudely interrupted just after we crossed the Makhaleng river by the delightfully familiar sound of KABOOM coming from underneath the bus. We'd blown a tyre in a spectacular way and I realised everything that I had missed since being in South Africa, the country where things just seem to function well. In other parts of Africa things never go according the plan – things break down, things go the wrong way and things blow up, and that's part of the fun. I tried to count how many passengers were squeezed into our bus-like contraption several times but lost count and then it was time to get back on. We went repeatedly over passes again, and as night fell, I started to think that Semonkong was just an urban legend, an Atlantis of Southern Africa. We'd just drive through the night and eventually arrive back in Maseru tomorrow morning. « Semonkong » was just Sesotho for « Circular route » and the whole thing was an inside joke to be played on the monthly tourist.

Back in Africa!! T waits for the puncture to be fixed, one of his favourite pastimes

Like many of my imaginative and unlikely scenarios, this one also came to nothing. We pitched up in Semonkong which, in the dark, looked like a village with a population of at least 6. We were approached by several people asking if we needed help to get where we were going and one guy walked us half way across the village to give us some directions, wished us a pleasant night and turned around, walking back where we had come. How nice. This is Lesotho, it seems. In fact, there wasn't really much point in asking a foreigner with a backpack where they are going at night because it seems that Semonkong only has one place to stay, the Semonkong Lodge. But it's a good one.