Lesotho - Is Nice

So I am now in Lesotho, but by the time you see this I will not be here anymore, hopefully.

I came to Lesotho last week, in order to renew my South Africa visa, and now I shall try to get a new one this afternoon, while traveling back to Cape Town, again, to spend Christmas with some friends and by the sea. It should be good.

I spent the last week hiking around the Kingdom in the Sky. Its a beautiful country with small villages still run by chiefs and the entire population is invloved in the farming. From early ages the kids are trained to take out the cattle or sheep and heard them thru the mountains, while the parents seem to spend more time with keeping the house together, and working with the plant crops. The entire county is very poor, and the kids are constantly asking for money or sweets or whatever else they see you have, and sometimes the parents do to which is sad. Everywhere I went the main form of transport seems to be horse, which is abnormal to my view of the world. But it works and very quickly one adapts to getting out of the road to make way for a herd of pack mules and farmers on the horses.

I visited some fabulous landscapes here, seeing the highest waterfall in Southern Africa, along with a few other not so famous waterfalls, searching the mountains for the Spiral Aloe ( a unique form of aloe plant that grows in a spiral and is only found in Lesotho, but is hard to find as most are dug up to be sold) I also hiked for three days across maybe a third of the country, staying at the houses of chiefs in certain areas. This was fun as everyone says you need to hire a guide for the trip, but I don't have enoguh money for one so I had to hike along attempting to speak to the locals in Sesotho to find out where the 'road' went and where the next village was. This was okay until the final day as i arrived back in a semi-civilized area and the people led me to the Bus, forcing me to walk twice as far and up real big and steep hills, with uncertainty to the location of my final destination.

But all in all Lesotho is nice, and I hope some day to return and hike the rest of the country, maybe with a map next time. Today I shall be returning to South Africa, if they let me back in, and traveling to Bloemfontain the capital of the Orange Free State to stay with a friend and hopefully hitching a ride back to the ocean tommorrow. I hope it all works.

I wish I could write more, or just more often, but I have been living in the mountains, miles away from the nearest phone, let alone computer, plus my time at the Internet Cafe is almost up. So I dont' know, Enjoy.