Inside South Africa (page 7 of 11)

Hey V...ou!!

I slip away into the night for a doubly life-saving cigarette and confide in a mixed-race cat—well, gray.

Apart from Mickael J, I don’t know any mixed-race person who’s gray!!!!! 😄

By the time they’re rewarded with a jerrycan of the precious liquid.

Good grief!!! Could water already be more valuable than black gold?

the homunculus

feces

Where on earth do you find words like that? You almost want to say "bless you!!!" 😄

Hit the road Jack

A little music in this brutal world!! www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Tiz6INF7I

Anyway, I’ve learned some good news since you picked up your travel journal again—you’ll keep causing trouble in South Africa for a while longer!! Awesome!!!😉

But a pathfinger instead of a def, that’s the decline!!!!🤪

To make it up to you, I’m offering you the diamond I just fished out in Port Nolloth. 

I hadn’t had the chance to tell you yet that I accept your gift. Thank you!!!

Kisses.

Thanks for all these beautiful words that let us experience another side of Africa! So you switched to the Japanese Nissan—should gain in comfort and, most importantly, reliability! 🙂

A moth-eaten myth and the American sent packing?

Wasn’t there supposed to be a Jeep Wrangler Unlimited? 😏 and the FJ didn’t win you over either 😇

Pioneers have already abandoned the roots of their lawn, the ones that tied them to Brittany.

😉

Hi Jean Luc,

Your writing is as wonderful as ever!

Congrats to little Abriella! I’m so impressed. And if there’s any lamb left, I’d love to try some..... and that bottle you buried in the Kalahari—still there? You’re making me want to go back to Namaqualand in the right season. A spot we really loved, both inland and along the coast.

Nice to be back in the southern part of the continent, especially since you headed east. Glad you enjoyed that novel. It’s a phrase we hear a lot here—it's a beautiful country. We don’t emphasize the other two words in the title as much. One day, I’ll go see the gorillas... in your travel journal. 😉

On the other hand, a pathfinger instead of the Def, that’s the decline!!!!🤪 I hadn’t had the chance to tell you yet that I accepted your gift. Thank you!!!

Pass me your finger so I can slip the diamond I found along the way onto it. 😏 The Pathfinder won’t be my last car—unless it becomes my coffin. 🙁 I’ll bounce back. (Thanks for the background music)

Pass me your finger so I can slip on the diamond I found along the way. 

So nice!!!!

The Pathfinder isn’t my last car—unless it becomes my coffin.  I’ll get another one.

Oh, come on!!! Because getting stuck with a Pathfinder is something anyone can do, but with a Defender, it’s just way cooler!!!! It’s kind of like the difference between a good hunter and a bad one!!!

Definitely a gain in comfort and reliability, especially on tarmac and gravel—where we spend most of our time anyway. When I’m older, if I ever get the chance, I’d love to revisit about ten of the toughest spots I’ve crossed over the past decade in a Defender or Toyota Land Cruiser to put the Pathfinder to the test. It’d probably come back a bit worse for wear, but I’m not sure it’d leave me stranded (with a bit of cosmetic prep, of course).

.. and the American sent packing?

I was this close to giving in to the buff American, even though the test drives in easy conditions hadn’t blown me away. But the spec sheet was as long as a day’s hike since it had to avoid all the Defender’s flaws. On top of that, in neighboring countries there’s often only one Jeep dealership, its modular roof is fun but not great for carrying gear, and the interior space isn’t amazing (same issue with the FJ Cruiser we’d talked about).

The Rubicon version is tempting and just as capable as the Defender in tough conditions, but when I had to admit the car was collecting dust through the tailgate, my co-pilot saw… red.

I’m not married to this one—we’ll see what the future Defender can do. We already know it’ll be more civilized than its predecessor but also more sophisticated and expensive.

I’ve got a South African buddy selling an old HDJ80, the one coveted by adventurers worldwide, but it’d need a full overhaul, and I’m no mechanic (of course, you’ll tell me it never breaks down).

Thanks for the compliment, Magryelle. Want me to grill a piece of lamb in the Kalahari when I go pick up that bottle of Sarabande? I’ll pack it in a tightly woven basket of acacia thorns—because competition. While cooking local ingredients is a pleasure everywhere, some regions have more to offer than others. Here, abundance isn’t the norm, but the ingredients carry the essence of the place. The lamb isn’t fatty, and since it’s on the menu, it’s infused with aromatic herbs. The peaches are sun-dried, and the garlic heads are small but flavorful.

When are you heading back to the Kalahari? It’s true you’re practically there already... We might head back to southern Algeria before returning to the Kalahari, but the wine will only get better with time ;)

Lesotho solo

The forecasters are predicting a week of continuous rain and storms with over an 80% probability. If it's anything like Brittany, where their colleagues tend to underestimate rainfall and overestimate sunshine hours, I should be in for a treat. Rain soaks the character too. It's the perfect time to get up close to the machinery and see if it's possible to improve how it works. Shut some valves in the Mountain Kingdom, open a few in the Karoo. Back when the Earth was flat, it was simpler: you just had to tilt it a few degrees to the west.

From home to the foothills of Lesotho, I knit together eight hundred kilometers of backroads along the 32nd parallel south. The vegetation cover shifts from brown to blond and turns green. Conifers, gum trees, alders, and poplars replace the acacias. Sheep become rarer while cows and horses appear. On the road signs, the kudu has turned bovine. In the fields, ponds overflow, and rivers run full. Faces darken.

Xhosa homesteads dot the landscape. Some are old, others modern, and many are abandoned mid-construction. The poorest live in corrugated iron, but it's new corrugated iron. I spend the night by a river determined enough to keep moving forward and spare me the relentless surf, fast enough not to host a frog concert, and inhospitable enough to keep crocodiles, hippos, and certainly sharks at bay: the Orange River, whose source I’ll be on familiar terms with in a few days.

Before entering Lesotho, I’d planned to take Joubert’s Pass, but the locals down here tell me it’s been half washed away by storms, and I wouldn’t reach the top. They were right... without a Defender.

Lesotho is Austrian green. Only the durum wheat and sweet corn are still blond—better days are needed to harvest them. Women have left the terraced fields; only shepherds run through the mountains, drenched to the bone like the land itself. Landslides sometimes cover the tracks and even the new roads, like a reminder. No one seems to care: there’s still room for donkeys and horses to pass.

I follow the Orange River before it leaves Lesotho. It’s still the Senqu River here, but it’s as wide as it will be at its mouth, a thousand miles later. In the meantime, South Africans will have exploited it as much as possible. I have a soft spot for this river, which starts in one of the continent’s poorest countries and saves many regions of the richest. The source springs among diamond mines, and the mouth pours cargos of carats into the Atlantic—I wonder if they’re the same. If so, they should be kept at home.

The road climbs relentlessly. At 2000 meters, visibility is reduced to nothing, no tracks on the ground, no signs, no guardrails, though the precipice is very much there. I have to crawl at ten kilometers an hour. The pass is at 2400 meters; I reach it in an hour after dodging two minibus taxis.

Ahead of me, a woman walks along the muddy track, balancing an enormous bundle on her head and carrying shearing scissors. She’s wearing leopard-print plastic boots, and a blanket wrapped around her waist peeks out from under a worn jacket. She motions for me to stop, leans into the window, and asks for a ride to her home. She smells strong, but my rolling den no longer smells like synthetic roses. Her village is a two-hour walk away, a fifteen-minute drive. No nose plugs, no seat cushions—let’s go! She’s returning from a cousin’s place, where she sheared a few sheep, and is carrying the fruits of her labor on her head. Her hair is naturally curly, but she’s not the type to straighten it—she doesn’t even know what France is, let alone Paris. That says it all! The scent of damp wool fills the cabin. Lydia wants to exchange phone numbers and insists on inviting me to her home. It’s a rare offer here, but I have to decline. Night is falling, and the lodge I hope to find with its doors open is still far away.

By the side of the track, five men surround a smoking carcass. The horse broke a foreleg and was put down on the spot. It’s already skinned, the pile of guts pulled out. They’re butchering it. No, guys, my car isn’t licensed to transport meat. And no thanks, a horse haunch would be too much for one man.

The lodge is open, and I’ll be its only guest tonight. His Majesty the King of Lesotho and his entourage stayed here last weekend. These are people of good taste, not snobs, choosing my favorite address in their tiny kingdom. Though I lack an entourage, the manager gives me the royal pavilion—the only one with a fireplace. It won’t be a luxury tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll drive her to the capital.

Just to be sure, I’d stopped at Semonkong Lodge. Too full of tourists. Some were returning from the falls, more crowded than ever, while others were dreading them and carrying pepper spray before a horseback ride. If you encounter more than twenty tourists in the same place in Lesotho, you’re probably at Semonkong Lodge, Malealea Lodge, or Sani Pass.

It hasn’t rained this late in the season for years in a country already generously watered. Everything is soaked, oozing, and dripping. The new roads are clogged with mudslides and rockfalls. Some sections threaten to give way. Secondary dirt and gravel tracks sometimes exist only as traces. In these conditions, the road to Kao Mine will be a chance to test the limits of the crew. Mud, ravines, washed-away fords that you cross by dancing on the stones—the challenges are varied. After catching my breath following a chaotic river crossing, an old horseman scolds me in his language, urging me to hurry up and restore the place. Three well-dressed women—those who only have one outfit for going out—take off their shoes, roll up their trousers, and cross on foot. I expected to leave some feathers, maybe even a wing, but the Pathfinder comes out intact, not a single adornment missing. It took us five hours for about sixty kilometers. Sure, the automatic transmission doesn’t have a three-digit IQ, and the accelerator pedal’s sensitivity is like that of an over-tanned mule. Let’s just say on this terrain, the Defender is a gazelle, and the Pathfinder is a stubborn calf—but with low gears, a differential lock, and off-road tires, the car balks but gets the job done.

I’d planned to continue on the track to Sehlabathebe National Park, but without even trying, I can tell the wet area after Sehonghong will be impassable.

The road from Mokhotlong to Sani Pass, built and paved three years ago, leading locals from nowhere to nowhere, hasn’t been spared. The Chinese have plastered it with signs warning of curves or that the road is slippery when wet. Some even warn of a slope over three hundred meters. In Lesotho, it’s amusing. As long as there’s room for a car to pass, rockfalls stay put but are marked with a white paint stroke. Let’s hope they get red paint before the snow arrives.

After a break at the highest pub in Africa, I start the descent of Sani Pass. Only the last two kilometers before the summit were delicate. Now it’s eight. Years of work have been washed away. A white tortoise moves at a snail’s pace, and I nearly run it over coming out of one of the first hairpin turns. It’s a city Volvo, even if it’s AWD. After a flat tire, they had to replace a front wheel with what was available: a space-saver spare! For a brand that prides itself on safety, that’s criminally careless. At the South African police post, before stamping my passport, the officer asks if I’d be willing to take a few colleagues down to the valley. How could I refuse? I’m now under good escort with these three Zulus. They assure me Sani Pass won’t be paved for another five years. Yet work has begun on the lower section. Hundreds of workers and a few machines are widening the passage and building bridges. This mythical track is coming to an end.

On the way back, I cross the former Transkei, one of those territories called Bantustans where white South Africans strongly encouraged others to regroup in exchange for a certain autonomy. It was about separate development—apartheid, whose real goal was to eventually ensure no Black person would be a South African citizen. Here, it was for the Xhosas, Mandela’s ethnic group. The hills are pockmarked with colorful homes without any more urban planning than a termite colony. On the main roads, which are fenced off from communal fields, the speed limit is 120 km/h, but there’s as much livestock on the shoulders as behind the barbed wire. It’s pouring rain; I’ve already dodged sheep and jousted with a cow, but then a ewe decides at the last second to see if the grass is greener on the other side of the road. Killed on the spot, and the bumper is dented. This isn’t Lesotho.

Just before Queenstown, I cross a border erased from maps but not from landscapes or minds. The sky clears, the rain stops, and I’m on the edge of the Karoo. Sheep are behind fences, and the landscape returns to what it’s always been, except for a farmhouse here and there in the distance.

Hi Jean Luc I just finished reading your post out loud, and even though my partner and I are crossing the loooonnnng Belgian plains, we found ourselves transported to Lesotho for the duration of the read. My sweetheart said: "Quick, let’s go back to Sani Pass!" ... for now, we’re heading back to Vannes. That’s nice too! And Africa is in October, so patience. Happy travels, Sylvie

So great to be back with "Inside South Africa" after that (way too long) break, and thanks again for not swapping those lived moments for gardening.

Hi there! Oh, Lesotho... Lesotho, the green Austria, with the sweaty wool of sheep, leopard-print boots, so much water everywhere, our poor shepherds, and the kids—do they go to school? But wait, you in a Pathfinder???😕 Did you close the valves in Lesotho? Sala antle and thanks for your stories... They go down like milk (or rather, like a Maluti beer)😉

Hello l'Africain,

Thanks for taking us along on this journey through these far-off lands! 😛 🙂

And like Yabazou said:

Thanks again for not sacrificing those lived moments for gardening.

😉

Hi there,

Thanks for this walk. I dream of Lesotho.

yes!! go for it!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, we went there for a few days during a trip to South Africa, and ever since, I’ve been dreaming of going back.

Reading "A Road Trip Around Lesotho" while crossing the flatlands: a rollercoaster effect?