ok, the beginning... It was a girl's weekend to the Southern Drakensberg mountains so friday afternoon we hopped on the Underberg Express to the Sani Lodge Backpackers in a valley in between the mountains. After a much deserved PB and J party we played cards and went to sleep.
The adventure began the next morning as we took the most extreme ride up a road called the Sani Pass, which is the only road from KwaZulu-Natal into Lesotho, but it wasn't just a road. This was a roa
d that only a four wheel drive vehicle could go on and each of the turns were named things like "reverse bend" or "windy bend" or "grace bend" because each turn was scarier than the one before. This road was like Highway 1 in the outside lane on steroids. i have never held on tighter in my life. The road consisted of rocks and when a car came in the opposite direction i did a little prayer for my life, lets just say it wasn't a road trip to sleep through. We had to show our passport multiple times and after an hour of holding my breath we finally made it to the top. The top was the Kingdom of Lesotho, on a platau high above South Africa.Ok, so you know how you have all these pictures of what Africa is going to look like in your head? Well where i live at the university doesn't look like that at all, but let me tell you when i got into Lesotho, it looked like that. Shepards herding sheep and cattle, wearing cloaks and no pants. People riding horses around and huts with grass roofs made of cow dung (aka poop). It was exciting.
We walked to the highest peak in Lesotho and had a picnic lunch with some of the shepards, all of whom were very young and spoke only these words in english: "Sit" "Photi" meaning photo and "Laugh" because they liked to hear us laugh. It was a little culture shock, but also very cool.
After the picnic we went to the healer's hut of the village or the witch doctor's hut, Fertalina. There we had homemade beer- disgusting and homemade bread- delicious. There were kids everywhere who were adorable in there we learned more about the country. The women are the educated ones of the country, 95% being literate whereas only 45% of the men. I thought i was going to be touristy, but it wasn't at all. This was where she lived and our guide told us that they go to a different hut every time, to spread the tourism money around but they all welcome us into their homes. It was awesome.Next stop on our trip was the highest pub in Africa, because... why not? We had a much needed beer before the equally scary trip down the mountain back into South Africa. On the way we stopped and drank from the waterfall supposed to keep you alive forever, i don't think it will work, but it was delicious. Upon returning to our hostel we learned a new card game from a British couple, Dirty Girty, and enjoyed being inside during a thunderstorm, even though the power flashed on and off.
Day two of the weekend adventure started off pretty mellow, beautiful and sunny, leaving us completely unaware of the craziness that would come. This day we decided to hike up the mountains in the World Heritage Park to view some of the cave paintings done by the Sans Bushman of the area more than 10,000 years ago. We hiked up the mountain leisurly looking at birds and seeing baboons. We got to the paintings and analyzed how cool they were and how they lasted for so long. We picniced underneath a rock with hundreds of paintings of little men as the weather started to mist. There, our guide informed us there was nothing he was afriad of more than lightening... which will come into play later.The rain started to come down a little harder and soon we were caught in a monsoon and a thunder and lightening
storm that was straight out of a horror movie. It took us four hours to hike up the mountain and all of a sudden we needed to get down. Our guide told us we didn't have time for the path and that we needed to get lower so we started to go straight down, at full speed. I fell probably 50 times, laughing as hard as i could because of the rediculous situation we had gotten ourselves into. The guide ran ahead and we baralled down the mountain slipping on mud and grass and eventually sledding down sections on our butts. We had to three rivers holding hands as the current was so swift and the water up to our waists. i laughed the entire town of the absurdity of it all, hoping my camera would survive the monsoon.Eventually we made down in a record hour and half, of course, just as the rain came to a stop. Realizing what we just did was insane and just in time to catch the bus back to Pietermaritzburg, i almost forgot i still had school the next day.
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