Globetrotting

At the end of January, we went to Lesotho for a weekend. We left relatively late on Friday, so we did not go very far into the country that night – in fact, we stayed at a small apartment in the (tiny) capital city of Maseru, which is just behind the border with South Africa. On Saturday, we went further into this remote and very mountainous country. We first paid a very short visit to Thaba-Boisu, which is regarded as the birthplace of the Basotho (the people of Lesotho) nation. It consists mostly of a hill, which we didn’t climb since it would have taken too long, and a tourist complex that showcases a traditional Lesotho village. The complex, however, was not open, so we could only look at the village from the outside.

After Thaba-Boisu, we went to the Malealea Lodge, which is a former trading post that has been converted into a community-oriented, very well-run lodge. We stayed in a small round hut there, which was very nice. In the afternoon, we went on a horse ride to see some of the bushman cave paintings in the surroundings, which was both a very nice way to see some of the beautiful, largely unspoiled countryside, and to get to see the paintings too. In the evening, a local choir and band performed at the lodge, and there was a barbeque dinner.

On Sunday, we had to go back, but we spent the morning still driving around the country. This country really feels so far away from the world, and quite poor. The Basotho have quite an interesting choice of apparel: They wear strange, pointy, woven straw hats, and wrap themselves in colorful woolen blankets – even though it was obviously summer when we were there! A very large proportion of the population, at least as per our impressions from driving through the countryside, are shepherds.

The last stop on the route were some dinosaur footprints, of which there are quite a few sites in Lesotho. Again, in very authentic Lesotho style, there is just a hand-painted sign leading you to the site from the main road, with a tiny hut where two people sit that had second-hand dinosaur books and pictures, and one of whom lead us around the hut to the back into a small stream where there were the big flat rocks that had the footprints in them – very interesting as well.

Some pictures follow.