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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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.

The Lesotho Experience

We have just got back from an enjoyable few days stay, with family in village, in Lesotho. Like so many things in life, unless you embrace the situation and go with the flow, it will be a disappointment. We went with the flow.

If you are prepared to embrace rough roads, no running water, porter potties or long drops and no electricity this is a holiday for you. Our water supply came from rain water tanks at the side of the house, which was fortunate, otherwise we would have been obliged to collect our water in containers from the village borehole.

These inconveniences are more than compensated for by the friendly people, the village life and the spectacular views, whether it is the countryside or a scene from the village.

The washing on this line was probably done by hand in a tin tub, after the water was collected from the borehole about 600 metres away. It makes me really appreciate our local laundry - in fact I will never complain about going to collect the laundry again.

Sky Watch Friday - Sunrise at Malealea

Sunrise over the Thaba Putsuo mountains, viewed from Malealea in Lesotha, when we were on holiday there a few months ago.

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Sky Watch Friday - Gate of Paradise Pass

There is no shortage of beautiful vistas in Lesotho. This is the Gate of Paradise Pass looking towards the Thaba Putsuo Mountains on the way to Malealea. The drive to the pass is not that special, but when you get to there the the view is simply breath-taking. ...................


What we found was that 2001 metres above sea level gets pretty cold in winter.
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A sad old lady

The shell of an old Ford Mercury Eight, photographed at Malealea, Lesotho. A far cry from her glory days, which were in about 1946.

Sky watch Friday - Sunrise at Malealea

I love sunrises, but when in Lesotho, it was a big battle to decide on whether to get up or not and brave the cold...freezing mountain air. It was a toss up between staying in a warm bed and waiting for the sun to rise, or getting up and getting frost bite (well almost) and watching it rise. In this case the temptation to get up won, and here is the result. You can also see the moon at the top of the picture.

Queen Victoria

I seem to have a thing about Queen Victoria, whose statues seem to grace many a city around the world. In fact my last Q post was also on her.

On our recent trip to Lesotho, our guide Jerry, who had just taken us up Mt Moorosi and on a long trek to see bushman art, pointed to this mountain with a smile and informed us it was Queen Victoria sitting on her throne. If you look carefully, you will see some huts on the side of the hill in the foreground.

I immediately saw a resemblance. Do you?

Art gallery in the bush

In her post "Walking the hills", Suzi-k gave some insights into the Basotho concept of "not far". Let me just add that our guide's concept of not far and ours were two different things. To me walking to the corner store is not far, but the mall on the other side of town is far, which is why I drive there. Jerry, our guide would no doubt say that the mall , "is not far" and to prove his point would walk there in record time.

The bakkie in the distance. This picture does not do the walk justice I was using my telephoto lens


So when Jerry said that the bushman paintings were not far we took him at his word. If you read Suzi-k's post you will remember that after a long walk we left her in the middle of the blue gum plantation and continued our journey.

Our destination was somewhere near the rocky outcrop you can see on the right, above the blue gums. The trees hide much of the terrain we had to traverse, before getting there. Mt Moorosi can be seen towards the centre of the picture.





To lighten my load, I left my ruck-sack with my water with her - bad move.


And so the journey continued, through the plantation the through an open field, down through an erosion gully, up another hill and finally we reached the Senqu River. "Not far", he cheerfully said.

"Oh good" I said, as we proceeded to follow the river for what seemed like an interminable distance, on a rocky slope that would have suited me better if my right leg had been 12 inches shorter than my left leg. "If only someone had had the foresight to boat people down the river", I thought, as I valiantly struggled on in the heat, battling to breathe in the thin mountain air. And of course dying for a drink of water.

Eventually we arrived and after struggling through some dense bush, there it was - the gallery in the bush.

The bottom of the original overhang floor has long since eroded away, leaving the paintings high up on the walls.

The main panel still has some pictures in fairly good condition. Life must have been tough for these people, yet in spite of it they had time to express their creativity on rock faces, in a way that has endured for many hundreds of years.



This guy was obviously into modern art.





Jerry pointing out some of the finer details of the artwork. He reminded me of of one of my old school teachers.



Some close ups. It is amazing that these pictures have survived for so long.



Another panel with figures.



Walking back along the Senqu River. After a few stops to catch my breath, we eventually made it back. I must admit that my shortness of breath made me wonder if I was heading for another heart attack, but as I had no chest pains, I realised it must have been the altitude and the thin air I was not acclimatised to.

....
The walk was tough and the distance was probably half-way to the mall on the other side of town. Would I do it again? For sure, but only if it is snowing.

Pastoral scene - Lesotho

A typical pastoral scene in Lesotho - a blanket wrapped herdsman tending to his cattle. This picture was taken on the back road, between Mohales Hoek and Malealea.

Lesotho - first impressions

We entered the Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho in the Southwest, at Tele Bridge, which borders on to the Eastern Cape. It is there that we first saw that Lesotho is a totally different world, to our own country that co,letely surrounds it and I guess, fell in love with the land and its people.

One similarity though is the taxis - when it comes to speeding and stopping in awkward places we are on a par - though I will be bold enough to say that ours are probably worse than theirs, when it comes to aggression.


As you start climbing from the river valley at Tele Bridge you see the first of many huts, probably very similar the the early stone structures. The older ones have walls built of beautifully dressed sandstone, while the inside walls are plastered with a mixture of clay and cow dung. Where corrugated iron has replaced thatch the roof sheets are held down with rocks, to prevent them from blowing off in the high winds that sweep through the country.


Taxis are an important mode of transport in the country - other than donkeys, horses, wheel barrows and of course feet.


The land is badly eroded eroded from over grazing. Wherever you go, whether in the river valleys or on the highest peaks, you will come across herdmen looking after their livestock.


We found that the people are warm and friendly. Wherever we went someone was smiling and waving at us as we drove past. Here a couple of women are headed home with firewood they have just collected.


Many of the Basotho people still wrap themselves in their traditional blankets when going out during the day, a custom that is unique to the Basothu.

The village of Mt Moorosi was organised chaos. Music blaring from radios, traders selling their wares and shoppers looking for a bargain. Believe it or not this is a main road - no wonder the speed limit through the towns is 50 kph.

If you happen to miss the speed limit sign, which is quite possible as there often aren't any, you may hit a rather nasty speed hump in the middle of the road, if you are not careful. As you will see in the picture below they are also not well marked.

The road to Mount Moorosi, where we spent our first two nights, followed the Senqu (Orange) River as it wound its way through rather hilly country.

Journey's end on day one was Mount Moorosi, which was the scene of an epic nine month seige and battle between the the Baputhi tribe and the British forces in 1879. It is a heroic and tragic story that I will be covering in a later post.