Background:
My Psychology professor takes his class each semester on a trip to Lesotho, which is the small country located in the middle of South Africa to ride horses through the land and learn about the people. About 2 months ago, our professor, Doug, was in a bad accident on his motorbike and broke his leg and pelvis, so this blew his chances of riding horses this semester. Being the wonderful and kind man that he is, Doug still organized the trip for our class of 11 students, and had two of his friends, Dave and Tish, take us instead. When we asked him why he couldn’t just come along with us and skip the horseback riding, he told us we would understand once we saw the intensity of the road going up the mountain, and he was very right, we quickly discovered that he would have been in a lot of pain.
Thursday and Friday:
We left our campus at 6am Thursday morning, and were driven 2 hours away from PMB where we got breakfast and then piled into the bed of a 4x4 pickup truck that would be taking us the rest of the way up to Lesotho. Our overnight bags were loaded into a separate car that transported Dave and Tish as well, and followed our truck up the mountain for the next hour and a half. We were all so excited to be sitting on crates in the back of an oldschool off-roading pickup that when our driver/sani pass guide, Greg, asked us if we wanted to get wet by way of the large puddle in the dirt road, we were all for it! Sure enough, a nice spray of water came up over the truck and cooled us off quite a bit, and once we finally stopped screaming and laughing, Greg asked us the same question again, except this time regarding mud. After a few seconds of hesitation, we agreed to go for it… “Why not, we are already wet!” and… “This is Africa!” So after driving for a few more minutes up the dirt road, he hit a HUGE mud puddle just right, and a wave of mud came from all sides of the truck and we were quite brown after that, to say the least.
The drive up the mountain was about 1.5 hours, and the dirt road could much better be called a rocky road. It was the roughest, most uneven road I have ever seen, and a broken pelvis would not have felt great on that. Good thing you didn’t come Doug, even though we missed you! Also, the view was absolutely incredible, and pictures couldn’t even do it justice, but I couldn’t stop taking shots of the landscapes we were driving through! The whole weekend I took a total of 300 photos because everything was just so so so beautiful that I couldn’t help myself!
Once we got to the top, we dropped off our bags at the chalet we would be sleeping at, and got our horses. The horse they gave me happened to only have one eye, so that was pretty funny, and within 3 minutes of our ride, the horses took off into a full gallop before we had even gotten situated, and two girls fell off their horses. They were ok, but a little more bruised than the rest of us at the end of the day.
We rode from 12 to about 6:30pm, and walked/trotted between the tiny little town (which consisted of about 15 mud huts, the guest chalets, and the pub- the tourist attraction since it is the “highest pub in Africa!”) and traveled through the hills and plains where the Lesotho people live and herd livestock all year long. It was mind-blowing and utterly confusing at times to see how they live, what they use for survival, and how “wild” they seem compared to the civilization we are used to. Trees do not grow in their region, only grass, so instead of burning wood for fires they burn cattle dung, and this goes for warmth and also for cooking their food. In the church we always hear about people-groups who are without a bible translation in their language, and the people who speak the Lesotho language, Sotho (pronounced soo-too), are one of these groups. Most of the people we met only spoke the Sotho language, and did not know how to read and write because of the lack of education among the livestock farming communities. But anyways, so the horses were pretty well-behaved for the rest of the ride, very cooperative for the most part and we were very impressed. My horse kindof tripped a lot, but I guess that is to be expected from a half-blind horse. I liked her a lot, and I named her Lala (the zulu word for sleep) because of her “sleepy eye” :) Also, we galloped a few times on our way back, and I am pretty sure that’s the first time I have even galloped on a horse before! That was really exciting, and I liked it a lot!
Once we got back to the camp, or town, it was almost dark with thick rain clouds in the sky, and even though all we wanted to do was sleep and rest our aching bodies, we found a little bit of energy to get dinner at the pub and sit by the fireplace to warm up (I forgot the mention how high of an altitude it was, and since I don’t know the exact number, I’ll just tell you it was WAY up there, high enough to snow any time of the year, and to get winds up to 120 mph in the hills!) I ended up falling fast asleep next to the furnace in the pub cuddled up next to becca and alyssa while a man played guitar in the corner somewhere and softly sang along. When it was time to go to our chalet, they woke us up and we walked back in the thick fog, and luckily I had my headlamp (nate, it was worth the trip to walmart to get that, I use it all the time!) It also came in handy when we quickly realized our chalet did not have electricity, so my headlamp and a few candles were our only light source. It was great! We cuddled up in our sleeping bags on our comfy bunk beds and slept SO good that night!
When we woke up in the morning, the fog seemed even heavier than the night before and made it seem like we were in a movie as we could see the people and horses moving about as we walked to the pub for breakfast. We could hardly walk because of how sore our bodies were, and we could hardly sit because of the bruises from the saddles. We drank lots of coffee and were fed a delicious breakfast of yogurt, granola, fruit salad, fried eggs, bacon, and toast. We met up with a guide who took us around the town and was able to show us the inside of the mud huts, tell us more about the lifestyle of the Lesotho people in this community, and answer the many questions we had! Some women invited us into their hut because they wanted to dance for us, so we all squeezed into the little room as they sang and danced for us for a long time. That was a wonderful experience.
When it was time for us to go, we piled into Greg’s truck once again and bundled up, preparing for a very cold ride down the mountain. We made it probably about 15 minutes before it started raining on us, and since we are so smart, we took out about 4 sleeping bags and used them to make a fort over us as we all huddled together underneath them and tried to stay dry. It worked great, and in the process we got very cozy and close with each other to say the least! Haha but we had so much fun on the ride down, riding in the truck with bruised butts and aching bodies was definitely something to laugh about, and many more pictures were taken :) We made it down safely, and back to campus exhausted but so filled with excitement and joy. I have so many thoughts to process and journal about, so many experiences and lessons to apply to my own life, and I have yet to find a free minute to even begin to do any of that! What an adventure though, it is something I will never forget, and I wanted to share the stories with all of you who I know would want to hear :)
