Lesotho, Africa-Part 1

In our travel quest to see as much as possible while we are living in South Africa, we decided to travel to the small country of Lesotho, Africa.  When I would tell local South Africans that we were going on vacation in Lesotho, most of them would say, "why?".  The chance to visit another country is not so easy when you live in America as it normally means a flight and the overall costs are higher.  Ultimately we figured "why not" cause we will not likely have another chance to see this country after we move from South Africa.   Located 5 hours from our home in Pretoria, we embarked on another family road trip to Maliba Resort in the Drakensburg mountains of Lesotho.

The street markets in Botha Bothe, Lesotho were just opening
and I am not sure about doing our grocery shopping here.

We planned out our drive to stop in Bethlehem on the way there to eat some lunch and stock up on groceries as we booked a self-catering house within the resort and they had mentioned that there is no place within Lesotho to get necessities so we needed to do that before we crossed the border.  After a small detour, because you can never fully trust the GPS, we found ourselves at the Lesotho border and quickly made our way through.  They were quite surprised to see American passports on the Lesotho side of customs.

They had more formal shops, including a KFC, but I am glad
we stocked up in South Africa.

After driving through the town of Botha Bothe which was a cultural experience all in itself, we made it along the winding mountain road to the National Park entrance where the resort was located.  We paid R80 ($8) to gain entrance into the park and also met with surprise that we were Americans. 











Our house in the resort was one of 4 along the river with 4 bedrooms and beautiful view of the mountains from our back balcony.  That afternoon we spent it playing in the river behind our house as Adalyn loves to explore for treasures.

The next morning we set out on the easiest hike the resort had which was 3.1km to a natural pool then another 3.2km back down the mountain.  The kids have done great in the past with hiking so we tried it again.  Adalyn loved seeing the animal foot prints and "using the map" to guide us.  We spent some time exploring the pool and had a snack.

We only saw 4 other people during our hike and
glad one could take a family photo for us.

We also had to wash up a bit in the pool as the dirt on the river bed hike to the pool was more like brown powdered sugar.  It would stick to your legs and seemed to get everywhere.  Strangely the hike on the other route back to the resort did not have this type of dirt.

 On the way back down we took the other trail which had some impressive views of the mountains.  Since you can't have an outing without some issue, Grant decided that for the last 1500 meters he was going to scream the whole way down and nothing could console him.  Adalyn also suddenly had a multitude of aliments that required us to stop every 50 meters to address whether she was going to make it, so dramatic she is.  Of course once we arrived back at the resort after hiking as fast as possible so the screaming could end, Grant was fine and happy once again, though Adalyn insisted she still needed about 4 band-aids.

During our hike we passed some of the resort's horses and the kids enjoyed petting them.  The next day on our shorter hike we set out to find the horses grazing along the mountain.  It was fun for the kids to just stop and listen for the horses then take off in that direction.  Luckily we could see them from the resort's balcony so we had a pretty good idea where they were.





The resort was lovely, fully done up in traditional African style and one would never guess that a 5 star resort exist there.







The staff were very accommodating and seemed to enjoy visiting with us.  They said the resort gets visitors from all over the world and they were normally full year long.  

In the winter, June and July, the mountains are covered in snow which I bet would be beautiful.

The resort also provided a guide that took us on a community cultural tour which is in the next blog.