For more photos to go with this section - you may need to cut and paste it into your browser to get it to work:https://picasaweb.google.com/tree2222/SouthAfricaUmkomaasPietermaritzburgDrakensbergSaniPassLesotho?authuser=0&feat=directlink

Saturday 27th: We had breakfast at the B&B and went to meet our transport to the Sani Pass which was a lift with a parcel company called Sani Pass Carriers. They picked us up outside the Greyhound bus office at 10am and delivered us to Underberg at around noon.

The owner of the Sani Lodge Backpackers hostel happened to be at the carrier's office when we arrived with a van load of his family so we jumped into his people carrier. He was on his way around Underberg and Himeville looking at gardens - every year they have an 'open gardens day' and several locals open up their gardens for everyone to come and view.
We tagged along for the last couple of gardens which were actually pretty impressive - the 'lady of the house' was so proud of her garden in both cases which was funny as the black gardener was obviously responsible for doing a huge amount of the work!!! It started raining as we were in the second garden so we abandoned the viewing pretty swiftly and headed to the hostel.

The hostel is in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by mountains and not much else. We had lunch and then once it stopped raining we headed up one of the nearby mountains along one of the trails marked out by the hostel.
This hostel is really good - they have lots of hikes marked out anything from a couple of hours to a whole days hiking and they have a tour company which organises pony treks, 6 day hikes to Lesotho, 2 day camping treks etc - loads of stuff!!
We organised to do the day trip up to the Sani Pass and into Lesotho with them for Sunday.
In the evening I taught a few people to play Yaniv - the card game I learned from the Israelis in South America - so we played that for most of the evening which was really good fun.

Sunday 28th: We were joined on our tour today by 12 Indians!! It was a really interesting tour and the guides were really knowledgable and enthusiastic which was great. They told us all about the geology of the mountains and also the plants and animals living there. The road is really steep and bumpy heading up through the mountains and is only passable in a 4x4 vehicle. 

We drove a few km into Lesotho and had a picnic lunch - the view across this part of Lesotho was pretty bleak - kind of brownish and mountainous with very little vegitation due to the high altitude. 



We then visited a local woman in her house. She's baked some bread in a pot over a fire in the middle of the hut and prepared some maize beer for us which I made the mistake of trying ....yet again!!! The hut was pretty much the same as the ones I visited in Coffee Bay - no electricity and the fire in the middle of the floor, but this woman was also running a shop from her hut which is how she survived, apart from the money she was earning allowing tourists in to visit her.


The woman was 34 years old and was pregnant with her 7th child from the 3rd different man. The first one went off to work in South Africa and never came back, not sure what happened to the 2nd one and the current one also was working in SA so she rarely sees him. There is apparently not much work in Lesotho so it's not uncommon for the men head for SA to work.

On the way up the weather was pretty good so we were able to see all the way along the valley and get some good photos, but after lunch when we arrived at the 'highest pub in South Africa' the mist rolled in and we couldn't see more than a couple of meters in front of us and then it started to rain!! 


The drive down was pretty trecherous as the road was really muddy from the rain, but we made it down in one piece. We even saw baboons by the roadside too which was a bonus :o)

In the evening I played cards with some of the other people again and we chatted around the open fire - proper mountain shack stylie!!