Lesotho

I'm now massively behind on recording my adventures. Oh well.

The day after that hike to see the Bushman paintings, we took another hike, this time along a gravel road to Lesotho. After passing a group of baboons, we parked the car at the South African border control and had our passports stamped to exit the country. Then we hiked up a steep path for several hours, apparently in no country at all. Whatever country it was was beautiful, especially the way the mountains peeked up above the clouds.

Along the way, we saw some kind of antelope trying to run up a hill that was too steep for it. It practically fell down twice which was hilarious to watch, but it made it on the third try. We also saw a snake.

At the top of the pass, we reached the Lesotho border control. We explained that we were planning to be in the country for two hours, and the guy who stamped our passports said we could only drink tea, no beer. We stuck with the water in our water bottles.

The country of Lesotho is an enclave of South Africa (that means it's entirely surrounded by South Africa, in case you didn't learn that word in 6th grade, or have forgotten it in the meantime), but the rural part we were in looked extremely different from South Africa. There were a lot of rocks and no trees, so the houses were made of stone with thatch roofs.

It's incredibly windy in the tops of the mountains, so the Basotho people traditionally wear blankets. Lesotho is about a third the size of Indiana, in area and population, and a random guy who talked to us at the border said that he's from a different area that's much warmer.

These guys tried to have a conversation with us, but we didn't understand much of what they said other than their names. Even though I don't know much Zulu, this made me realize how much I appreciate being able to at least greet people and introduce myself in Zulu. It was unpleasantly paralyzing not to know even a single word of SeSotho.

The people here were shepherds. Incidentally, this landscape was not very inviting for hikers who need to go to the bathroom.

There were a lot of these apparently unfinished stone buildings. I wasn't really sure what they were doing, but we found this one useful for sheltering ourselves from the wind while eating lunch.

After exactly two hours in Lesotho, we had our passports stamped again and made the long trek back to South Africa. We drove back to Pietermaritzburg, which was a bit challenging as it got dark, foggy, and rainy, because there don't seem to be many street lights in this part of the country. As we walked back through the gate of our campus, I enjoyed the feeling of coming home, which was somewhat surprising considering how far away I am from the place I generally refer to as home. I was also surprised by how welcome and familiar Zulu sounded, even though I didn't understand most of what was being said.