African Adventure Installment THREE

African Adventure Installment THREE
(written by Ryan - hooray!!)

So, African Adventure Installment number 3 marks my first foray into the world of blogging. I promise to do my best to adhere to the high standards of witty and readable commentary that Liz has set for this blog and that all of you readers enjoy. So now, back to Semonkong...

Throughout the night I woke up a few times to the sound of rain on the thatched roof and wondered what that might mean for our next day, but the experience of being in a bed was still so refreshing after our 40 some odd hours of travel that I didn't give it much thought and easily drifted back to sleep. Around 7 am, when my alarm went off it was still raining, so we decided to sleep in. When we awoke again at 9 am to still more rain, it was time to make a plan. We self-catered some more breakfast (eating some trail mix while still in bed) and decided we'd wait for the rain to slow down, and then hike to the waterfall. By 11 am or so, the rain had slowed, so we decided to go for it. After talking to Sean, one of the guides at the lodge, we were warned that we'd be in mud up to our knees so we decided to take one of the world-famous, sure-footed Basotho ponies to the falls. With no industry to speak of, other than the odd toursistthat turns up in Semonkong, one of the ways locals make money is by renting out their ponies. It costs about $10 US to rent a pony and a guide, so we gladly paid our money and Sean told us to come back in about 45 minutes after he'd had a chance to arrange for a guide and some ponies.

It had started to rain a little bit as we met our guide Emmanuel,
and dressed as best as we could for the weather and the time in the saddle, we climbed on our ponies, and made our way down - or up as it were -the trail that led to the waterfall. First, I'll tell you a bit about Emmanuel. He was not the talkative sort. I tried to ask him some questions about himself, his life, and his job as a guide, but I got little reponse. After I have given up on the chit chat, and we had covered some more ground in silence, he asked me if I smoked. "Well, no," I said. But he asked again, this time providing some more detail. "Do you smoke? The Ganja?" Having become pretty used to this question from Jamaicans, I laughed and said, "Nope, I don't smoke that either." This began the longest sustained conversation I had with Emmanuel, as I informed him that we call Ganja Pot, or Weed. I guess since he realized he would only be guiding us to the waterfall and not selling us any marijuana, he stuck mainly to horse commands - telling us "up" or "down" which either meant right or left depending upon the direction of the trail.




The ride was unbelievable - something to make me feel as if I were living out a National Geographic article. There is only one road that leads into Semonkong, and once you're off of it, you're in the middle of a world of herd boys using whips and stones to direct their sheep or cows, and of shepherds riding ponies, draped in the traditional wool basotho blanket who greet each other at a distance with loud, guttaral chant-like salutations both exotic and a little frightening.

The path to the waterfall was about 3 miles, and was indeed muddy and at times treacherous. The wet rocks made going quite slow, and I could feel the ponies doing what I hoped were controlled slides down inclines and choosing their steps carefully as we crossed flooded creeks. The trail wound through small clusterings of rondavels, and sparse cornfields, and soon we could see the "smoky" gorge in the distance. Semonkong means "place of smoke" in Sesotho (the local language of Lesotho, with Basotho referring to the people of the country) , no doubt named for the clouds of mist that pour up and out of the gorge.

We had been warned that we might not be able to see the waterfall because of the smoke, but after a harrowing trek along the edge of the gorge as the weather turned miserable, the rain began to pound and the wind picked up, we took up another vantage point, and the rain drove away the mist revealing the amazing 206 meter high waterfall. It was incredibly beautiful, and is surely one of the most striking natural sites I will ever see. We snapped a couple quick pictures, jumped back on our ponies, and made our way back to the lodge.

The weather was now much worse, and we were not dressed very well. The thought of hypothermia continued to creep into my mind, and I began to give my pony some goading kicks in the ribs with my hiking boots to make him trot. There was no love lost between me and the pony. On the outward leg of the trek he stopped whenver he liked to munch on grass, fought at the reigns, and took a few of his own detours, so I figured not only would going a little faster be better for our falling body temperatures, but then the pony and I could say our goodbyes a bit sooner.

Liz's pony, however, was competetive, and as soon as mine would trot past hers, her pony would start to trot to catch up. This was my devious plan, but Liz didn't like the bouncing, and every time I surged past her, she would exclaim in bouncing voice, "Why is he TROTTING!?" It wasn't until later that I confessed my plan. It was all for our own good though. What kind of husband would I be if I let my wife get hypothermia?

We arrived back at the lodge a bit cold, but with no hypothermia, and spent the rest of the afternoon in our beds reading.

(Liz's shoes on the portable heater...trying to dry)

Eventually we decided to pull ourselves out from under the covers and made our way to the bar for some tea and kit kats (the food of choice, it turned, for the trip). By this point, the rain was still pounding and the creek had climbed over the small bridge leading to the lodge.

It had even managed to sweep a donky off the bridge (but NOT the one picture above) and downstream.

(Bridge to Lodge closed due to flooding over the top)

While we drank our tea and continued to read in the bar, we began to talk with a man who turned out to be the German ambassador to Southern Africa. He was a very interesting man, and we spent nearly two hours talking to him about Africa, HIV, and his life as an Ambassador.


Soon, it was dark, and we self-cartered another terrible meal from a box, and went to bed.

The next day we planned to head back to Maseru, this time by the local bus. We knew the bus ride would be an experience, but it proved to be almost as much of an adventure as the previous day's pony trek. We had asked a couple of times when the bus left, and were always given the answer of, "Oh, around 9...or 10." This mystified us, but we soon found out that the bus leaves when it's full, since it costs too much to run an empty bus to Maseru.

We had also been told to get to the bus stop early so as to get a good seat on the bus. Doing as we were told, we got a ride from one of the guides to the bus stop and arrived at 8 am, planning to wander around the town a bit before getting on the bus. There wasn't much to Semonkong proper, just two streets lined by shanties, that intersected forming the center of the town, which also doubled as the bus stop.

There wasn't much to see, so we decided to get on the bus.

There were two buses parked, and a few people already on one, so we walked up to that one and handed him some money in exchange for two tickets, which were just two small pieces of paper on which he scrawled our names. To make sure we were getting on the right bus I asked him if the bus went to Maseru. Not confident that he understood me, I asked again: "Maseru?" "Maseru,"he said. "Maseru?" I asked again, just to be sure. "Maseru," he answered. Sensing this could go on for awhile, I decided to trust him.

The bus was rather dirty, the floor covered in mud from the rain of the past few days, and a few discarded pieces of chicken. The few women that were already on the bus were rather quiet other than the occasional tubercular sounding cough. Liz decided that the window was too dirty to take pictures through, so she climbed out of the bus to wash it off using a baby wipe and splashes from her water bottle. This lightened the mood as the women on the bus laughed at the strange white girl and jokingly motioned to me that they'd like their windows washed too!

From our now clean window we watched the day to day activity of the town, including the lashing of a live goat to the top of the other bus.

Around 9 o'clock (having been on the bus now about 30 minutes) only a couple other people had boarded, but several different men had climbed into the drivers seat at various times, so we wondered if we were getting ready to go. Well, it turns out that just about anyone can climb into the driver's seat if he wished (I didn't think to give it a try myself) because we sat around on the bus for another 2 hours as the same 4 or so guys climbed int the seat only to get back out.

Eventually, a man wearing a velvet, leopard print cowboy hat, whom I began calling Wild Bill, climbed into the seat, fired up the engine, and blasted the horn. This brought a lot of people hurrying out of nowhere to get on the bus, and we were on our way.

Not long into the journey we passed a piece of heavy machinery with a dead battery, so the bus stopped and several men climbed out to help. They loaded to very large batteries on the busy, and we were again on our way.

To me, this sense of helping out was fascinating, and occured throughout the bus ride. There are no actual bus stops on the road to Maseru, but those who wished to get on the bus would stand on the side of the road looking as if they wanted to get on the bus (having a suitecase of some sort helped). There was one man who would give a loud whistle when he stopped one of these potential passengers, the bus would stop, and another man would jump out (the door of the bus was kept open during travel for such occasions as these I suppose) and take the person's bag. Another man would then follow the person into the back of the bus to collect payment and issue a ticket. As far as I could tell, only the ticket-taker and driver were employed, the other men were just being helpful.

We made our way back to Maseru, picking our way slowly down the mountains in the old bus which I'm sure had dubious brakes, but six hours later we made it. Dropped off in a decidedly sketchy part of town, but Paul arrived quickly to pick us up and take us back to their apartment. About as fast as we could we went next door to the Lesotho Sun hotel to lay by the pool, drink coke, eat a kit kat, and recover. We had to be rested up for another round of the train game that night after all...