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1/2/2011
Today was our trip through the Drakensberg mountains into Lesotho. Driven in a 4x4 by a lovely, old South African chap, we took in the stunning scenery of the mountains, meadows, plant life (including the nickname of the cricket team - the Proteas), lakes, rivers, waterfalls, foliage, livestock, baboons and ice rat!
In the car with a couple of Dutch girls and a German we crossed the border and headed to the top for an experience with the locals.
It was an extremely bumpy ride zig-zagging up the mountain ranges but worth it for the views and to see how the people of Lesotho live. It was cold and overcast at the top and all the people were wearing throws or robes to keep warm. They are very poor and we learned so much about them such as how they live in clans, stay in round huts where they perform pretty much all of their daily work and how they have a leader who assigns shepherds to look after the sheep and cattle.
75 per cent of Lesotho is mountain and SA pays Lesotho 20 million rand a year for its water.
Our lunch was prepared for us back below but we were eating ham and egg sandwiches at 3,500 feet on Black Rock Mountain. Some of the other tourists were giving cigarettes or an apple to some of the poor locals who were asking for money or anything they could get their hands on really.
We then got to visit a woman in her hut and she made us some delicious sweet bread and a pretty vulgar beer that all the local guys come in to drink. She charges them 20p a mug.We were told how the hut provides her life, it's where she washes, sleeps, eats, trades and essentially works selling bread, tobacco and fermented beer, as well as imported Castle lager.
The locals outside were playing a hand-made instrument which was pretty terrible in all honesty but that's it with these guys, they don't know everything that's in the outside world as they haven't experienced it so they are quite happy with what they've got - like the shepherd we saw drinking a castle whilst watching his sheep in the rain and wind talking to his mate.
The dodgy beer we tried is something the men drink lots of as it fills them up and the spinach or salad they grow up the top keeps their teeth in great health. The dagga (weed) salesman eat the bread as they are travellers and need the carbs for energy when on long walks to their prospective buyers.
Following this we had a drink at Africa's highest commercial pub where I had a cider and Jack a mulled wine. The weather was still sour compared to how nice and warm it was on the way up.
The 1982 Land Rover did a cracking job getting up the mountains, amazing how such an old vehicle does so well! We had to go through difficult terrain such as dirt, stone and broken roads, some with water flowing through in the wind and rain.
The Dutch girl with us it turned out used to live in Malawi and she had learnt to dive in Mozambique at Libelula before Ian and PJtook over. Not many people we have met have been up that way.
The South African guide of the other truck was a skinny guy with big ginger hair and beard and was accusing English girls of having big white and fat legs (after seeing how pale this German girl was) and insisted it was because we eat so many potatoes. Clueless!
For tea the boys splashed out at the restaurant nextdoor to the hostel but I cooked a huge pack of spaghetti with tomato puree and sweetcorn. Allcan say about that meal is thank god for SA's creamy sweetcorn in a tin!
In an honesty policy, the hostel provided chocolate cake and you had to come forward and pay so I had just one piece but it wasn't great. We were joking around how we were just going to drink all the booze and cake and blame it on the 'meerkat', but after seeing baboons we could have made that up! Me and Mike paid off our bill but naughty Jack ran away. We played a couple of games of s***head and chilled with the Dutchees until about ten.
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