Skywatch Friday - A montage of mountains

Another view of the Maluti Mountains from Three Fountains in the Free State.



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Skywatch Friday - Maluti Sunrise

Sunrise over the Maluti Mountains in Lesotho taken from the Three Fountains View in the Free State.

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Skywatch Friday - Village Sunset

These huts silhouetted against the sunset give an interesting view of a village in Lesotho.

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Some local signage

Make mine a dubble or should I say dubbel or is it double.......? I guess it doesn't matters.

A specialist in court cases too? I think I may stand a better chance with my with my lawyer.

Froggy, froggy.............

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"Froggy, froggy may we cross your golden river?"

"No!"

"Why don't you rather stop for a while and admire my beauty?" 

It's amazing what you can find lurking beside the river banks. You can see the big picture or if you look more closely, you may see the little one as well.

I came across this little fellow alongside a river in Lesotho and identified him as an Ornate frog (Hildebrandtia ornata). If you are interested in knowing more about these frogs click here.

Skywatch Friday - Equidae Sunset #2

This is the second of my donkey sunsets taken in Lesotho.

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Bald Ibis

This bald ibis vey obligingly posed for me the other day in Lesotho.

Food glorious food and other signs

I found this sign on a roadside shop in Lesotho quite amusing. I know what chips are, but can only guess what fats are..........needless to say that with my no fat and low cholesterol diet I was not tempted. Aside from the humour, it also shows an entrepreneurial spirit in a harsh environment, where there is a daily struggle to earn a living.

This seemed like a desparate, or should I say novel, appeal for business in Molteno. I also see that some of the petals on the flower were sacrificed, to improve the view of the sign. Having just eaten a big breakfast at Aliwal North we did not stop.

Then about 50 kilometres from Cradock we stopped at the Daggaboer Farm Stall to browse. For the unenlightened "dagga" is "marijuana" and "boer" is "farmer". Yes, that is the name of the farm. Apparently the name has four possible origins, but only one relates to dagga. If you want to hear these accounts you will have to pop into the farm stall and ask the owner.  It is well worth a visit and I can highly recommend the homemade pineapple juice and ginger beer and the roosterbrood (griddle bread)

And then, before resuming the journey, you can always stop in at the local loo, to have an "enjoyable farm pee". There is a lot of humour at the Daggaboer Farm Stall. You can also visit them on the net.

At one time our travel was aimed at getting from point A to point B as quicly as possible. These days we kind of dawdle along and enjoy the ride, looking for the these types of roadside gems.

Village Roads

I think I may have mentioned, in an earlier post, that the roads in Lesotho are bad......though bad may be an understatement. 

All the roads that are featured in this post are marked in my GPS, but don't be fooled as they are not necessarity accesible by car, especially the one that is now incorporated into a maize field.
We were going along quite nicely here, when suddenly the road became too narrow for a vehicle.........................

.......it seemed that someone decided this was no longer going to be a road .......well maybe it could be used for bicycles, motor bikes and donkeys.

No problem my GPS showed us another route, so with some careful reversing and making sure we missed any strategically placed fence posts, we found another route. At this point the GPS said we "Turn left". As we were not riding a mountain goat, the logical thing to do was to go straight.

Can it get any worse? This section had the unmistakable signs of turning into a donga.

No, it was not all bad. This section of road also doubles up as the local soccer fiield.

What more can I say about the village's roads?

When we left the country and I was asked to fill in a form on our impresions of Lesotho, I marked the condition of the roads as poor. The tourism lady was most put out, so as a compromise I said that if one was in a 4x4, all set for adventure they were execellent, but in a normal vehicle one could have a problem if you left the tar roads.

A lesson from Lesotho

If you happen to go to Lesotho do not have a set to with one of their sandstone corner posts.......

They are about as solid as the Rock of Gibralta and you will not win..... they tend to bring a reversing car to a very sudden stop. They are very unforgiving.