South Africa, Lesotho & Swaziland
Travel Report
Butha-Buthe and Roma
Morija and Thaba-Bosiu
Semonkong to Malealea trek
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Travel Notes
Mafeteng
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Northwest Lesotho
Semonkong to Malealea
Soundbites
The Malaelae Band 1
The Malaelae Band 2
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Travel notes from Mafeteng
Hi Everyone,
We crossed the northern border of Lesotho at the Caledonspoort border post late on Saturday evening. We had travelled from Bethlehem to Fouriesburg in a local minibus and for a couple of rand more the driver dropped us and a few Lesotho's at the South African border post. We walked across the bridge and over the Mohokare River and into a country almost completely opposite to SA. A couple of girls from Butha-Buthe were also on the bus and crossed the border with us. There was no transport on the other side of the border so the four of us walked down the dirt road in the dark until a minibus passed by and gave us a lift into town. The two local girls invited us to stay at their house, which was an interesting experience. The whole family were there and they seemed to be overjoyed to have guests from so far away staying in their house. The Mama made us breakfast in the morning before we walked back to the main road to find a bus to the capital Maseru.
I had never planned to visit this country but Rebecca, the Aussie girl I have been travelling with for the last couple of weeks, suggested it. I didn't know much about the country and there was very little information in any of the guidebooks. It is a small country, about the size of Belgium with a population of roughly two million and is completely surrounded by South Africa. It is a mountain kingdom and is known locally as The Kingdom in the Sky, a very apt description. After crossing the border I felt I was back in the heart of Africa, a long way from the commercialism of SA. It is a land of oxcarts and tribesmen on horseback, a land where the traditional way of life effortlessly merges with the modern world. It is rare today to see such a sight, so often the modern way of life destroys the traditional. Here it is normal for a man to ride to the bank, wrapped in a blanket, tie up the horse outside and deal with a man wearing a business suit and using a computer.
We didn't stay in Maseru, there is nothing of any interest in the small, but congested city, so we changed minibuses and headed about 35km out of the city to Roma and stayed at the Trading Post run by the Thorn family. The day we arrived it rained and there was a heavy thunderstorm that evening, very unusual weather for the time of year when winters are generally dry, sunny and cold. We used Roma as a base for three nights and went on a couple of day trips exploring the surrounding countryside. We went off to Morija, 40km south of Maseru where there was a great little museum with a collection of artefacts started by the first missionary's when they arrived in the country. Morija was a very small place with some interesting old sandstone buildings and a laid back, relaxed atmosphere. Back at the Trading Post were an American couple who had hired a car and the four of us went out for the day, first visiting some bushman paintings at Ha Baroana. Unfortunately the paintings were not that impressive due to vandalism and graffiti and I left feeling disappointed. We next drove to the national monument of Thaba-Bosiu. This was the mountain stronghold of Moshoeshoe the Great, the first king of the Basotho people. It is a flat-topped mountain with steep escarpments on all sides and only a few easily defended passes to the top. Today there are only a few ruins left on top of the mountain but it is still used as the royal cemetery. We walked across to the cemetery where the graves of Moshoeshoe the Great, who died in 1870 and Moshoeshoe the Second, who died in 1996, lay amongst others of local chiefs.
The Thorn family have a number of trading posts around the country. Shops in this country seemed to be called trading posts, which added to the frontier town feel to the place. Mr Thorn was driving up to one of his trading posts in the town of Semonkong in the heart of the mountains and offered us a lift. The drive was spectacular as the dirt road twisted its way through the mountains crossing through a snow-covered pass before dropping down into Semonkong. Semonkong was a fascinating town almost cut off from the rest of the world. Everyone was on horseback, horses tied up outside shops, cattle, goats and sheep roamed along the dusty streets and donkeys plodded past carrying sacks of maize. We stopped here at a guesthouse for the night from where we arranged a three-day trek across the Thaba Putsoa Mountains to Malaelae in the west, a trek of about 50km. That night we organised a local guide and also hired a packhorse, quickly named Dobbin (who farted up every hill), to carry our backpacks and food supplies for the journey. We set off the following day at about 10.30.
We climbed out of Semonkong through a valley up onto a plateau overlooking the town, passing by small villages and terraced fields and herds of cattle and goats grazing. The views of the mountains were breathtaking as we climbed up through a pass, the southern slopes of the mountains covered in snow and ice. On the first day we had two rivers to cross, they weren't too deep, just below knee height, but the water was freezing cold. The second river we crossed lead us to a tiny village where our guide asked the chief for a hut for us to stay in for the night. There were only about two dozen huts in the village, most of them traditional round stone huts with a thatch roof. The only way to reach this village was either by foot or on horseback, we were in the middle of nowhere far from modern civilisation. The second day took us through the highest pass and we descended down to another, far larger, village were we spent the night. On our last day we had another river to cross after only walking for half an hour. We were out of the high mountains and walking through the foothills, it all seemed easy now until we reached the edge of a gorge with a large, fast flowing river in the bottom. There was no bridge and we had to wade across, the water coming up to the top of our legs, it was a tricky and very cold crossing. A couple of hours later and we reached our final destination of Malaelae.
Lesotho has been my favourite country I have visited on this trip and it is with sadness that I'm heading back into South Africa from Mafeteng and travelling on to Bloemfontein in Free State. I will miss the smiling, friendly Basotho people.
Regards
Geoff.
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