Post - 5

On the 7th November we spent a long day driving from the Drakensberg mountain range to Lesotho, a country surrounded by South Africa. As Lesotho was never collenised back in the day along with South Africa it has a very old school way of life. I found the place to be very, very mountainous and beautiful and so I hired a guide to walk me and three others around their village in Malealea to get a sense of what life is like. I was shocked to discover that they have no criminal justice system, just a chief who decides the course of punishment. For example, if a persons donkey ate all the neighbours crops, then the chief may ask the owner of the donkey to give the neighbour a bag of wheat in compensation. The chief also has the say on issues such as giving out areas of land or on funeral arrangements.

The villagers also live with a tin shed and a hole in the ground for a toilet outside their one room houses and with no electricity (which was also the case for many townships in South Africa). Most children cannot attend high school as this has to be paid for by the families who often cannot afford it. We also took a walk to the nearby pre-school where children were learning English songs and where places such as these would be closed down back home due to the staffing ratios and limited space! The walk was so interesting and I would loved to have spent much more time with the Bosotho people to learn more about their culture and way of living.

After the walk of the village, it was time for all of the hot rockers to ditch their climbing helmets and reach for the horse riding hats (which were compulsory). Lesotho is most famous for its pony trekking so we were riding big horses. The views around Lesotho were spectacular and seeing it all on horse back with the friends I'd made was great. It was incredible cantering though the fields and having lunch with a local band playing at a local waterfall. In the afternoon we had a very bad thunderstorm with torrential rain which never stopped until later the next morning. The original plan for Lesotho had been to stay two days so we could pony trek overnight but because of the weather we left the following morning back into South Africa. I think this day, for the whole of the truck, was the lowest point, with no covers on the windows of the truck (it needs to be scrapped after this trip) and the wind and rain coming through the window, we spent the entire day in our sleeping bags cold and wet! Not fun.

Never mind, with every low I was sure there would be a high point. By now, most will be aware that I did something I swore I would never do - a bungy jump. It was the most adrenaline pumping thing I've ever done and the views were immense.

After this, the next stop was Mossel Baai, along the famous garden route in South Africa. I can see why it's so famous, it is a very beautiful part of the country with coast lines that go to infinity. It is just a shame that this country has such poverty which is very often hidden for tourists. Whilst in Cape town a British tourist woman (just married) had been killed in a local township which reinforced the problems remaining.

The next climbing venue on the cards was a place called Montagu. It turned out to be a nice climbing area, with some wonderful climbs but some pretty polished rock. I also got on a bike whilst I was there and within 30 seconds I had fallen off again with a nice face plant dismount - and I thought once you had ridden a bike it was easy to get back on! So I forgot how to ride a bike but at least I had not forgotten to do somersaults on a trampoline at a kids play ground - lots of fun was had.

Now in cape town and living in what I believe to be a concentration camp-site (there were no cooking facilities but enough wooden ironing boards to ensure that the whole of the hot rock team could iron clothes - that's if they even wash their clothes first). The beach near the camp-site however more than made up for the site. A surfers heaven.