Another world emerging 1000 km away
I have lost count the months without writing a post, the reason is mainly due to the lack of a reasonably decent camera that can capture the daily life through my eyes.
Now that I've recently acquired one, I pretend to write something about the last month of my experience in Africa.
Nothing best to bring this blog back to life than the story of a trip to Lesotho!
(Did you just went googling it? Well I did it some months ago because I confess I have never heard about it before...)
Now I know some interesting facts about it: It is one of the four countries in the world which is an enclave - totally surrounded by another country; (the other three are San Marino, Vatican and Monaco). Also, it is the only country in the world which entire surface is above 1000 m and on top of this, more than 80% of Lesotho is located above 1800m.
Having in consideration it's Winter in south hemisphere, you can have an idea of what were the temperatures there... I'll only say I've never imagined to see snow in Africa.
The trip started in Maputo on a friday after work. Two or three hours after the initially planned time, the group of 7 people made it to the road and completed the about 1000 km without a stop longer than 15 minutes. With a meticulous driver rotation and a good set of pillows and blankets in the backseat we were able to cross the border with Lesotho just after an astonishing sunrise, on Saturday morning.
The border post, between two majestic nude mountains, was empty but full with the surprising question: "Where are you guys from, and what are you doing in Lesotho?", clearly they don't receive many visitors.
We drove in without any major incident other than the odd confirmation of an innocent joke someone threw to the air some hours before, related to the color of the stamp - "It'll be pink this time!"
Well, it was purple, but it's a contrast anyway.
That Saturday in Lesotho was all about driving through the country and letting ourselves be surprised by the amazing different reality those people live in. We were told that a major snowfall has been marking this winter but right now everything has melted already, showing only (absolutely beautiful) brown bare mountains. Due to the weather conditions and altitude, the agriculture here is very poor, so they live mainly on livestock production and water exports. The landscapes were full of donkeys, horses, sheep and goats.
The objective for the day was arriving to Katse dam by the sunset, road market by the crossing of a huge mountain range that made our old car stop due to lack of power in the engine. But nothing that a little of man-push doesn't solve.
It is also interesting to see how the people live, dress and move. The colors of theis clothes set an amazing contrast with the Brown of the mountains, joining this to the fact that they move on the top of horses or donkeys makes one think twice before realising we're not on a movie set. The children, always very unite and happy, run constantly to the cars shouting, smilling and saying hello.
On the way back we needed to put gasoline and the answer to our question about the location of the fuel station was: "Yes, just go up on the gravel road and you'll find the gas station". This station was not more than a 20 year old boy whose part-time job was to sell gasoline to the community. He was very friendly and talkative filling us with the proud on his country.
With gasoline in the car and pure air in the lungs, we made the trip back to Maputo, one of the toughest so far and also traced by some adventures. I'll not go into details because the post is getting long, but just say it involved an empty gasoline tank in the middle of (an almost equally empty) road.
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