Trip report: Southern Africa

Day 6: Thursday - Return to South Africa

It was lovely to sleep in a proper room for the night. The weather had cleared and was beautifully sunny. We got up slowly and headed for breakfast, to be greeted by the soothing sounds of sub-bass - whoomp, whoomp, whoomp...

I filled my boots - it was a good spread of breakfast. We shared a table with a young guy from the government's Regional Development department in Maseru, the capital. He often travelled around this part of the country in his clean, white, new Toyota Hilux. I apologised for the state of our Land Cruiser, and more specifically the smell. The cow dung from Kwa-Zulu Natal was starting to mutate.



We check out and head west towards Maseru - now on lovely sealed roads.



These dry stone wall enclosures for livestock are very similar to the same seen in the Lake District in northern England or in the mountains of North Wales - the scenery is similar and so are the farming opportunities.









Carrying heavy loads on your head - must be great for the posture. Up at this altitude the ultraviolet in the sun is fierce whatever your skin colour. Many of the women of Lesotho wear face packs of mud, probably as a form of sun protection:





Having missed the impressive double-arch of Katse Dam, we detoured slightly to look at Lesotho's other big dam, Mohale:



We drove up to the control building and were met by a lady who may have been their PR person. She showed us plans and models of the dam. This and Katse dam are part of an initial phase of a major dam building program in Lesotho, whereby Lesotho can provide their own power rather than buying it from South Africa (which with its regular load-shedding can hardly afford to share any) and can also sell fresh water to South Africa.

She hopped in her car with a security guard and we followed in ours across the face of the dam to view a sort of inlet valve house:





We drop in altitude. Getting close to Maseru the whole vibe of the place changes - from a sleepy back-country filled with people happy to return Sally's waves, to an impatient outskirts full of trucks, horns, litter and women selling services beyond laundry. This was the nice bit - I didn't get the camera out for the other bits:



So we turned west, away from Maseru and back into farming country, chased by impatient mini-bus drivers desperate to get that next customer before the other guy. The Land Cruiser was happy at 100km/h, but some of these mini-buses must have passed us at 160km/h. Some overtook doing > 100km/h in 50km/h zones, passing at pedestrian crossings.

We arrived at the Van Rooyens Gate border crossing for South Africa. There was general confusion. We pulled up to the border guards, sat lazily on plastic chairs in the median strip. They ordered us to reverse back and park in the disabled parking bay. We returned on foot with our papers, they gestured obscurely to a window where pedestrians were being processed. We had been joined by a young guy in glasses with a new VW who was similarly confused, and being a South African frustrated with the badly managed crossing.

However, it still took us only a few minutes to get out of the country - I suspect many a traveller crossing an African border would be jealous of the speed and lack of corruption.

We were now in the hot dry plains of South Africa again:



Just across the border an unofficial rubbish dump smouldered, its razor wire perimeter fluttering with plastic bags in the hot wind.

I hadn't intended to be here. I had intended to driver further south and cross elsewhere, but here we were. I had no waypoints for campgrounds in this part of the country, but the GPS does have a database of points of interest. It showed a country club / campground just the other side of Wepener.

I guessed Wepener might be like the other small South African towns we had visited to the east of Lesotho. I was wrong. It was a dump. We didn't stop, but drove out the other side and onto the dirt road heading for the campground. After 10 km it was apparent this campground had gone bust - no surprise, it didn't look like much of a tourist location.

I did another search on the GPS and found another campground listed 30 minutes south. We returned to the tarred road, to find they were re-surfacing it. A substantial wait was in order since they resurface long stretches of the road at a time, with traffic controlled at either end by women with radios, flags and a sliding barrier. On approach to road works there is usually a woman whose job is to wave a warning flag all day.

We enter Zastron and stop to do some grocery shopping. It has a bit of a wild-west feel about it. Sally asked me to look for gluten free food. "You'll be lucky" I said. The store mainly had large 25kg bags of maize and flour. For regular food like bread there were only 3 or 4 different types on offer - and there was no way there would be any gluten free products on sale.

We headed for the campground. The owners were lovely. They had three types of accommodation on one site - a B&B / guest house, a set of self-catering lodges (like motel rooms) and a campground. Some guys were checking into the lodges. We were the only ones camping. The campground had numerous camping sites, plus a nice toilet / shower block and central cooking area. Since no-one else was present we parked right up against the cooking area to use as our own private porch:



However, the weather started to look ominous, doing its best to reproduce a scene from Ghostbusters. We struggled to eat in the mounting gale and horizontal extreme rain that accompanied the arrival of Vigo the Carpathian. Just as we had arranged our drying washing to avoid the worst of the incoming rain, it would change direction and start from the other side.



The camper turned out to be fairly waterproof (thankfully) and the storm died down during the night, so we did manage to get some sleep.

Stay tuned for attempts to locate better weather...