19/01/19 Today’s departure is at 6am. It rained all night and our tents are soaked, and bit of water leaked inside. I am glad I am not sharing the tent so I could stay in the middle and avoid the wet corners.
We had breakfast inside the hostel building and left on time.
I have more scratches than I thought on both legs and arms from falling yesterday. Betadine should take care of it.
Bushy bushy is the expression used when we need to go to the toilet on the way. The truck stops and we find a hidden bush. Luckily enough so far we could always wait for a petrol station or a supermarket stop.
Today we are crossing the Lesotho border. Lesotho is one of the poorest country in the world and is the only one entirely located 100% above see level by 1000m. The kingdom has only one border, as it is located in the middle of South Africa. The Basotho people live out of grassing and farming mainly.
We arrived at Malealea lodge and cooked spaghetti bolognese, one of the campers favourite apparently. The lovely locals welcomed us with songs and music. I am always surprised by the joy and happiness of the locals, despite living in poor conditions, they always welcome you with a smile. I suppose many of the people in the western countries who always complain about their lives don’t realise how lucky they are to have a roof on their head and food on their table everyday, or how easy it is to buy what they need from a big supermarket on the corner.
20/01/19 While Jane and Andrew went on an early hike, Chris made me French toast for breakfast. He used a different cooking method than the one I learned but the result was surprisingly very similar. I had a chat with Timan, our driver about politics and Kenya where he is from until Jane and Andrew came back.
After lunch we all went on a 5h horse riding trek. We stopped by a waterfall and by an area where we saw aboriginal paintings. I could not believe how strong the horses were. This was not the typical one hour trail on relatively flat ground you expect on a touristy horse ride. This one was definitely not for beginners and kept going steep up and down on very rocky and narrow paths. The horses could easily twist an ankle of fall but they just kept going, despite the weight they had to carry. No wonder we use horse power to measure engine power these days! They are amazing creatures.
On the way back a stupid fly got into my ear and I had a really hard time trying to take it out. I hope I got every bit…
My butt hurts like hell and we are all walking like ducks after the ride. 5h on a horse when you are not used to it is hard on your knees and your butt. I know it will be hard to sit for a few days.
Chris cooked us a typical african meal for dinner.
21/01/19 We left at 6am to cross the border early and drove through the Golden Gate national park to reach Drakensburg.
The weather forecast is really bad for the next day when we hoped to hike in the mountain so we changed our itinerary and decided to leave Drakensburg day early for Pretoria to do more animal encounters and game drives close to Johannesburg.
We arived at the camp site around midday to catchup with Francois, a local guide and we agreed that it would be better to spend a night in Pilansburg to maximise our time in the park and do sunset and sunrise game drives to have better chances to spot animals.
