Our Exodus African Safari Diary Part 4

Entering Lesotho, the Kingdom in the Sky

Exodus trip: day 11

We drove away from our little bit of paradise having had not quite such a good nights sleep. We were only briefly disturbed by the bat flying round the bedroom....

The destination? Our third country, Lesotho. It was very poor, and hadn’t really got much going for it, except for the one lodge, that was our destination. Very pretty, cute cat, big dogs, so everyone was happy, but more importantly it works very closely with the villages comprising the Malealea region.
Early evening entertainment was provided by a choir followed by a band playing the strangest selection of homemade instruments.

On our village tour

Exodus trip: day 12

We all did a village tour, though in two groups. We’ve hit that point in the trip where personalities are slightly rubbing .... I think there has been a slight easing since though. We were shown around by two girls, we visited a beer brewery, only takes a day this time of year, and it tasted like it! The chief, the village shop and fast food emporium, the pre-school and the cemetery. The burial rites are fairly involved, unless you happen to be the first of twins to go in which case it all happens very quickly and seems to involve the remaining twin putting on and taking off the deceased’s clothes and jumping in and out of the hole to prove its not them!

This is Benmosi, the village chief outside his house. He is in overall charge of the village and all disputes, justice and land allocations are made by him. Anyone who visits the village has to be met by him. I assumed a village chief would have some sort of ceremonial costume, but apparently not. A very nice man.

The lady brewing beer in a day in her workshop

Back to the coffee shop at the lodge for milkshakes and lunch before B&I went off to do the cascade walk. Again we were led by Limpho, one of our guides from the morning, a sweet girl trying to earn enough to keep her 4 year old son in pre-school. She set a different pace as we headed off towards her village, visible the other side of the gorge, before descending into the gorge. Lovely scenery, though not a lot of water in the river. Until we rounded the last bend and couldn’t quite make it to the swimming hole and cascade. We weren’t going to swim anyway so we climbed up to have a

Jackie having a taste

look which seemed to leave her slightly bemused. It did however stand us in good stead as rather than retrace our steps in what would have been a slow and painful uphill slog, we just went straight up the rock! We loved it but could imagine the reaction that would have come from others!

We completed our three hour walk in two hours, which was fine by us, only disappointing in that Chantel had been keen to come but was worried about impinging on our walk to get back for dinner prep. She’d have been fine! The dinner she cooked however was delicious, it was ‘only’ lamb stew, but yum. Followed by an egg

Andy savouring the aftertaste

custard, enjoyed by everyone, including the cat. Custard is very popular in South Africa we have discovered and Brian has found a fellow ‘custaholic’ in Ali.

Exodus trip: day 13

A travel day, a long travel day, glad Stevie had had a free day yesterday. Eight solid hours. Uneventful trip to Graaf-Reinet in the Karoo in good time, so we managed to recharge our local mobile, after demonstrating our ineptness and making everyone laugh! Delicious dinner out of kudu steak, but the highlight of the overnight was the hotel cat Johnny boy. He walked in like he

On our canyon walk

owned the place, had a little UHT smackerel. Sat on my lap till the thunder when he went under the bed. It took both of us, and lots of cuddles to get him out, he spent the night with Chantel and did house visits for those that wanted in the morning.

Exodus trip: day 14

Back in the bus, but we’ve all moved around again, so at least I can type without getting carpet burns on my elbow from the wall of the bus.

Breaking news, we’ve heard from Bill back in the U.K., the man we saw in his barrel in Dullstroom early on in the trip has broken his own record!

It was a fabulous walk

And a very steep exit uphill. That made the heart beat!

Exodus trip: day 14 part 2

Our destination? The seaside, Tsitsikamma National Park. Indigenous forest forming the end section of the ‘Garden Route’ phase 4 of our trip. We all had little huts in the forest, though we could just see the sea from our porch. Fabulous rocky coastline, the sort of sea you can watch for hours. We saw our new cutest animal, the rock hyrax, so very cute. The one doing a full song and dance routine behind Chantel as she was giving us a briefing on the walks was very funny. A gentle amble, tomorrow we have all day to walk! And then the mist started coming in....

This is the village we stayed in in Lesotho, a fabulous place

Exodus trip: day 15

Don't know anything about butterflies, but I did like these colours

We were undecided as to ‘waterfall walk’ or ‘blue duiker trail’, Chantel was doing the latter, with only Andy and Ali showing any interest, so we joined them, in the rain! It did rain for most of the walk, but started in that gentle way so you don’t notice till you are too wet to put your waterproof on, bit daft, but we had a good walk. Andy was very chivalrous, standing up to his ankles in the river to help Ali across, I just had Brian poised with camera in case I fell in! Very glad we got out, despite the weather, we just kept our clothes on till we’d walked them dry!

And this great little sunbird sampling the nectar

Our highest point in Lesotho, 2001m asl, with a great view beyond

A hot chocolate in the restaurant was very welcome, though the restaurant is a bit rubbish. Service for Saturday dinner had been slow and disorganised and this was no better, by the time A&A joined us, we were moved to make way for the bus loads of people come for their buffet lunch and Storm river mouth walk!

The landscape in the remote Karoo. Unchanging for 3 hours of driving

We chilled for a couple of hours between a yummy buffet lunch Chantel had prepared after the walk, and the weather clearing slightly. At this point we nipped off to

do the river mouth walk with its suspension bridges. I wasn’t expecting to go up to the viewpoint though I should know better by now! We yomped steeply up hill to a bench with a great view over the sea and back to the restaurant. Felt like a viewpoint to me, though himself wanted to continue the path seemed to go the wrong side of the ridge so the view was inland, and we knew the path continued into a long distance path that we couldn’t do. I won, we sat on the bench before handing it over to the next intrepid explorers.

Look at these fabulous birds we saw at a lunch stop. Peter tells me they are Southern Red Bishops

On our return B realised that the bench wasn’t the viewpoint and reckons I ‘duped’ him into not

Our quirky hotel in Graaff Reitnet

continuing..... ‘whatever’, a shower and a beer were calling to me! And I managed to stroke a baby hyrax just by the path, AND I saw dolphins with our beer on the porch!

Chantel cooked our last dinner, fabulous lamb chops, they were so good. She provides lunch today and we still get breakfasts with our last two accommodations, but after that we are fending for ourselves which is going to be a real shock to the system.

Tony decides to have a go on the swings

Exodus trip: day 16

We’ve bagged the front seat to pick Chantel’s brain, we are driving east to west on the N2 to Hermanus which is most of the distance of phase 4 our Garden Route trip though we have just passed the point where we come from inland to join the N2, at the end, or beginning of the official Garden Route. We won’t see most of this again, but we have some really good suggestions for kayaking, coffee and game for our next phase. Today we are doing in one day what we will spend about a fortnight doing with mum.

And finally we reach the Indian Ocean at Jeffreys Bay and told to go and play while lunch is prepared

Here's Keith sporting a splendid hat and white legs

And here's me 'n 'er

This is Tsitsikamma from high up on the viewpoint (not actually the main viewpoint, but a bench half way up - we're not talking about it!)

Our little log cabin by the beach at Tsitsikamma

And here the unsuspecting baby Hyrax that Jackie managed to stroke. It jumped, but didn't run away. Jackie, of course was delighted

The suspension bridge at the mouth of the Storms river from high up on the (half-way) viewpoint

And here's the suspension bridges after we'd just crossed them

Dolphins we spied swimming close to shore outside our log cabin

Andy, Ali, Chantel (our leader) and Jackie on our wet walk in Tsitsikamma

Chantel balancing over rocks at the waterfall crossing

Chantel is over, I'm over and Jackie is.... er... over with just a slightly wet foot. Hero Andy who followed stood ankle deep in water to guide Ali over. Unfortunately I'd put my camera away by then and missed it

And here he is again helping Ali over a stream. He puts us all to shame

I quite liked this photo of the four of them posing

You know when you try to take a photo of the scenery in a moving vehicle, and just as you press the shutter a sign appears. Annoying isn't it

Here's one where it didn't happen. This is in the Drakensberg mountains, the scenery was awesome but, as usual, photos don't do it justice. Looks fabulous rock climbing, maybe we should dust out the rock boots and ropes and come back!

Just a couple more, we did see quite a lot of wildlife on the way, here's a wildebeest

And this is a rare Blue Crane, South Africas national bird