LESOTHO – THE “KINGDOM IN THE SKY”

Lesotho – a small country and one of the poorest in Africa – is completely embedded within South Africa.  It is located to the west of Durban on its Indian Ocean side.  Upon entry at Tele Bridge (I was charmed by the fact that all entry transactions were notated here by hand) in the southwest corner of Lesotho, you immediately go from a First World South Africa to a Third World enigma.

It showed up initially as a mosaic of rutted and washed out dirt roads, ramshackle scrap tin homes, half clothed and barefooted children, barely maintained traditional Besotho “beehive” thatched roof houses, and many incomplete building projects that seem to have been held up for a long time.  I don’t think they have mortgages here.  Most people were walking, and did not bother to hitchhike.  Most did not seem to have any destination in mind.  Most at first did not seem employed, or employable.

After about five miles, the road comes to a junction and there is asphalt paving once again.  An immediate objective is the small town of Quithing, location of a dinosaur museum with rare footprints of the long extinct prehistoric creatures.  Carbon dated measurements from the site date back approximately 180 million years.  [ These riverbank turned-to-stone imprints represent the last tells of creatures we are told inhabited nearby lands such as the: sauischaian, tyrannosaurus, ornithischian, edmontosaurus, afrovenator, cryolopausaurus, camarasaurus, brachiosaurus, gifaffatitan, euhelopus, torvosaurus, eustrettospondylus, diatnitzkysaurus, and megalosaurus ].

The museum itself is quite simple.  It was also uncharacteristically easy to find.  The curators seem more interested in selling curios and mementos than telling the remarkable story involved in their rare collection of tracks.  Only half a page of trivia dedicated to the dinosaurs is posted on site.  Characteristic of the people of this nation however, is the young guide who was responsible for unlocking the dinosaur building.  He was humble, polite, patient, quite modest, very quiet, not very knowledgeable but still had a sincere desire to be of service.

 

I drive away from Quithing, anticipating first-hand pleasures galore from this “Mountain Kingdom.”  A puff piece promoted by the Lesotho Tourism Development Office promised “remote and rugged countryside spectacular in all its guises.”  Wonderful fishing, hiking, abseiling … and thin, cool air from “the highest country in the world” (somebody forgot to tell them about Nepal and Tibet).  Rock art galore.  A laboratory for artists and craftsmen.  Recreation challenges unmatched, particularly for off-road sports.  “Reaching those spots  is a challenge in itself for many …”  I am a bit amused to say afterward, at least part of this is true!

The country is at first spectacular.  There are multiple elevated bluffs, impossibly fashioned rocky outcrops, flat-topped verdant mesas, and for a counterpoint either high alps or broad lush green valleys laced with corn and sorghum.  Shepherds tend lazily to their gatherings of cattle and sheep.  The copper bells of the cattle are especially soothing.  It is almost as if you are traversing a cross between the American Southwest and Switzerland.

Yet for the next two days, my experience afterward was as if playing “Hide and Seek” with an entire country.  The road signs are either non-existent, misleading, or posted in the wrong places – as in, well away from the roads.  As a result, many wrong turns are taken.  I am told this is due to childish pranks, and the removal or juvenile theft of signs.  And then I commit the ultimate traveler’s sin … yes, backtracking.  This is almost obligatory in this country.  Every gas station and grocery store becomes an informal guide post.  Tourist information kiosks are unknown in Lesotho, even in the capitol city of Maseru.

The roads in the southern end of the country are superb.  You can easily motor along at 110 to 120 kilometers per hour without worry on almost new asphalt.  However, as the old joke goes: “First the bad news.  We are completely lost.  Now, for the good news.  We’re making excellent time.”  Directions, once received, have to be verified often.  Each subsequent version often contradicts its predecessor.  Taxis and beat up older model cars comprise most of the traffic.  They usually travel about one third your speed.

Getting around them, especially when they cluster in tight convoys like old World War II Liberty Ships, can be a real challenge.  You begin to see the wisdom of letting somebody else lead though, when in pothole territory.  In the old days, miners used to take canaries into the tunnels with them.  If the bird fell over dead at some point, the miner knew there was a gas leak.  He then beat a hasty retreat topside.  If you see the car 30 yards in front of you pop two feet up into the air, you know they have hit a speed bump or pothole. You slow down, thanks to them serving as your mine canary.

You soon learn this go-it-slow approach is related also to a desire to save gas, the vehicle often having barely usable brakes, obvious noises indicating an engine rod has been thrown or the rings are shot with resulting black puffs of smoke emanating from the exhaust, or the shocks are gone.

The shocks are gone because Lesotho is pothole and speedbump hell.  You can be driving along at normal freeway speeds, and suddenly with no signage or warning hit a small lip and find yourself airborne on a dirt road.  Within seconds, you are weaving frenetically between deep rain-washed ruts, rock debris, soft and crumbling dirt shoulders, and mud puddles of suspicious depth.

One road, leading to the Kome Caves (allegedly one of the top eight tourist attractions in the country), did this for seven cage-wrestler-crazy miles.  Suddenly without any obvious reason at the next village it resorted to pavement once again.  Then immediately devolved into a steeply reclined (no exit or going in reverse possibility here) four wheel drive track that only a sadist with a death wish could admire.  To call it sinister and diabolical would be to offer up that the Marianas Trench might be “deep.”

For probably the first time in my life, after arriving at the caves in first gear – knees shaking, neck rattled, and fairly ready to wet myself -- I chose not to visit.  Who needed more misdirection, additional cost, and wasted time to see six huts dug into the hillside?  If these caves were anything like the “it’s just around the corner” directions for getting there, little treat was in store after all.  Time was becoming a commodity.  I had already learned: if it looks like it will take you an hour in Lesotho, count on three.  Plus optional backtracking. Not so optional given the usual lack of signage.

Great care is taken to avoid Maseru.  I have no yen whatsoever to visit another smog-choked, trash infested, and traffic gnarled major city (despite the fact it is much more modern here). It is therefore bypassed to visit Thaba-Boisu.  “Sacred Mountain.”  The starting place of the Lesotho Kingdom.  Burial place of all seven of the nation’s kings.  The site was inhabited dating back to 1824 – a time when competition for land and resources was primarily between black tribes.  The mountain is really a mesa shaped fortress, with six well-hidden pathways to the top and only one major (read: obvious) entry point, the very steep Rafutho Pass.  From this vantage point of safety the kingdom expanded outward over the next four decades.

Why this particular mountain, in a mountainous kingdom?  Primarily because it was easily defended.  Vertical sandstone walls up to 50 meters high protected the redoubt on all sides except for Rafutho Pass.  Hand built rock walls were added there, to reinforce control of entry and exit traffic.  13 on-site springs also provided water for up to 4000 people (who lived on the site from 1824 to 1905).  Corn and other crops had to be brought up daily from the valley floor below, however.

The Boers – who seemed to war with everybody at one time or another – later collapsed the growing Bosotho Kingdom of Moshoe-shoe the 1st and were about to annihilate the tribe in 1865 after a series of cattle ownership ... uh ... disputes.

The Dutch say the Bosotho tribesmen stole their cattle.  The Bosotho (singular of Lesotho) say the cattle were there by nature all along, and eventually domesticated by them.  When the Boers arrived and chased the tribes away through the force of superior firepower, they are said by my guide Edgar Moiloa to have acted as if there had been a vacuum in cattle ownership.  So to the Bosotho, what was “rustled” was merely being taken back and restored to rightful ownership.

3500 Boers attempted to take the mountain.  In a battle of guns versus spears and tossed or rolled stones, the primitive technology won out.  Nine Boers lost their lives, and eleven were wounded.  All at Rafutho Pass.  Later, King Moshoe-shoe appealed to Queen Victoria to further safeguard Lesotho.  A British Protectorate ensued and lasted nearly 80 years.  Independence followed in 1966.

Thaba-Bosiu has more than a protective girth of sandstone around it.  It has a vista that is … well … to die for.  There is a sense of peace and contentment I marveled at here, not often experienced in epic journeys.  It was my good fortune in terms of schedule to walk half the perimeter of the mountain, visit the Moshoe-shoe homestead (rough circular and square stone buildings, much like those of the American Navajo Indians), and the tribal graveyard in the middle of the elevated mesa.

The gravestones were very course and rough for the most part, except for the father of the current royalty, King Leslie III.  His father Moshoe-shoe II has been interred on the mountain top since 1996 in a marble memorial.  The casket and fittings had to be flown up the mountain by helicopter. Moshoe-shoe I had the type of rough hewn, above ground and rock-piled crypt one would expect for a great warrior king.

At the base of the mountain, is the cultural model village of Thaba-Bosiu.  It has a beautiful cluster of designer beehive-type thatched roof huts, along with protective fencing and a tribal interpretive center.  It was nearing completion but not yet open at the time of my visit.  From there, I attempted to motor off north and east to visit yet another set of caves, at the Liphofung Nature Reserve.  Here, a large sandstone overhang utilized by the ancient San peoples for shelter protects cave art, sandstone mortarless homes, and various layers of archeological deposits bearing witness to a way of life long since sighed into history.

I had originally planned on spending three days in Lesotho and exiting via the fabled Sani Pass – on its eastern border, opposite Durban.  However, when these plans were made known, I got the old raised eyebrow query and ominous looks of great concern.  Apparently (aside from the admitted beauty of the location at nearly 10,000 foot in altitude, and the stunning vistas offered by its multiple hairpin turns) this is not something to be attempted in an underpowered rental car.  I was told the last 30 kilometers to the pass degraded into a rough and pitted gravel track, negotiable only by four wheel drive vehicles.  So much for tourist guides.  No details like that were specified anywhere I sought transit info.

So I opted for an early exit from the 30,000 square kilometer country at its northern crossing at Ha Belo Matla-keng for the return to South Africa.  Despite delivered promises of grandeur within the country and the obvious friendliness of its people, I had grown increasingly frustrated with brain jarring drops into unmarked potholes, and road maintenance trench slits left uncovered that kept the driver constantly on edge (and proved consistently worse than potholes).

Also constant speed bumps (many of them unmarked: almost as if it was a private local joke about which visitor would get bounced the highest?).  And again the lack of signage (no matter what the reason)).  Poor directions so you had to backtrack constantly were another reason.  It became obvious in short order many Lesotho citizens did not know their own country (despite its small size) well at all.  In the final analysis, one can not reasonably enjoy a destination for long, being set on edge for too lengthy a time and lacking anything short of a helicopter for safe delivery to its major attractions.