Reply To: Trip Report – South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho

[davefl]

So we pick up on my last night in George. I decided to forage locally for food and ended up at the Rendevous restaurant at the Outeniqua bowls club. If you can find this you’ve done well. Even with Google Maps it’s a bizarre place to find. Great reviews but not even a sign on the building. If you’re not a local you’ve not much of a chance of stumbling on it. Steaks and service were great, the random conversation with a young SA man who was about to leave for Devon to join His Majesty’s Navy to be a marine was somewhat of a surprise.

His pronunciation of “Devon” as “Dayvown” was the most amusing part.

Next morning it was a drive to the start of the Montagu Pass (road is currently closed) but the old Toll House is accessible and it is a lovely experience. The cost of your tip gets you pancakes and coffee for breakfast if you’re in the mood but otherwise it’s an interesting place to look around and the stories/history told by the guide are worth the excursion up the mountain.

Today was a driving and hiking day. The Big Tree loop was surprisingly quiet on a Sunday morning (I was the only one there but I discovered a couple of days later that there’s an identically named Big Tree Loop near Tsitsikamma which is more popular). I stopped off at an antiques/curio place called Smokkelhuis which was supposed to be open until 1pm on a Sunday but as is the way was closed when I arrived (memories of USA trips here). The Garden of Eden loop trail was drizzly and boring, and with the noise from passing traffic reminded me of my local trails in Manchester at the side of the M60 – pointless and loud. On to Robberg Nature Reserve hike where I spent an interesting couple of hours hiking the Witsand trail until the rain started to come down (for the 1st time on the trip)

Tonight’s stop in Pletttenberg bay was the Lala Panzi guest house where the host insists you join him for beer/wine when you arrive and regales you with stories of his mining career in over 100 countries. A lovely place to spend an evening. Local food is Barrington’s pub where a great deal of the produce is grown in their garden and the beer is produced on site.

Next day off on a Segway tour of Tsitsikamma national park. I love any opportunity to ride a Segway howver this one was pretty boring compared to ones I’ve done in the past being just a couple of forest trails with no views but just being on one and riding around makes me happy. For a beginner it’s a great intro to the machines with no hazards to avoid. It was supposed to rain all day so we went out kitted in full wet gear but only a few spots were felt. Tsitsikamma can get 0.5-1M of rain per year, so expect to get wet. It’s also the only Segway tour that’s required me to wear a hairnet for hygene purposes to protect the helmet and also a hi viz jacket.

Final stop for the day was the famous Storms River Mouth rope bridges. I’d seen pics, didn’t realise how packed it would be with coach parties but I managed to cross not only the bridges but hike to the top of the viewpoint which only a very small percentage of all visitors get to. It’s not a crazy hike but it’s steep and most visitors just go to the bridge and return on their coach. The weather was gorgeous and the promised rain vanished.

On exiting the national park I had to open the boot of the car which was searched to make sure I’d not attempted to steal a monkey or baboon!

Lodging for the night was the Tsitsikamma Village Inn which I’d booked last minute. I thought it was a tiny place but turned out it was huge, built in 1888 when the first N2 road had cut through the region. Old Colonial style, enhanced over the next century and restored to rather interesting condition. I’ll ignore the paper thin walls you could almost see through never mind hear people breathe in the bathroom next door but the HFP folks wil be interested to know that whilst there are no stealable hangers, there was a cafetiere with a jar of ground coffee and wierdly a decanter with what I assume was whisky and 2 shot glasses. The experience was pretty much spoiled by 2 coach parties and a dick who thought it was fine to fly his incredibly noisy drone all over the grounds at head height. The restaurant and pub were completely booked out with the coach parties so I ended up eating at “Marilyn’s Diner” next door which is an Elvis/Marilyn Monroe themed 1950s diner, seemingly out of place in that location but the food was typically american and huge portions.

At this point I felt I was done with the trip with 6 days to go. I’d originally booked 2 nights at Ado Elephant National Park in a cottage but after seeing hundreds of elephants in Kruger and Chobe I felt it was pointless to do that so changed things on the fly and booked the above in Tsitsikamma and another night in Port Elizabeth instead. I won’t name the accomodation in PE as even though my hosts were delightful, I really didn’t like the place – It felt like a posh prison cell with no privacy. The hosts are retiring shortly so would be unfair to reference them. 3 nights there and I barely left my bed. Just felt really despondent at this point.

When I departed Port Elizabeth I had 20 hours of driving ahead of me over the next 4 days and I wasn’t looking forward to it or expecting much, but how wrong I was. The 5 hours to at guesthouse named Rhoom at Burgersdorp was a fantastic drive. I was dubious abut the accomodation but after meeting the young woman who owned it my spirits completly changed. She’s absolutely inspirational. SA born, educated in London, lived in Saudi and a couple of countries, went home to SA with a mission to create jobs for the locals. Bought an old bunk house, renovated and paid it off in 3 years, then started a farm and is planting 20,000 garlic bulbs this year, next plan is to build a 32 cottage retirement home on the bunk house land. Just one of those people you look at and say wow!

With renewed vigor I was off to the Kingdom of Lesotho having no idea what to expect as there is almost no recent information available on the internet about this small country apart from some “world’s most dangerous roads, Sani Pass blogs and there was no way I was going to tackle that on my own in a crappy Suzuki saloon, it’s very much 4×4 territory for the experienced driver.

Nothing could have prepared me for that day. After 2.5 hours of quiet and scenic SA roads I arrived at the Tele Bridge border crossing. I played the dumb tourist and crossed with no issues in a matter of minutes. Within half a mile I nearly got wiped out by a taxi cutting through a bend on the wrong side of the road just like my experiences in Bosnia & Montenegro. So with defensive driving mode engaged I carried on for the next 3 hours.

I can only describe it as driving through Arizona, Colorado, Iceland, Bosnia and a smattering of Wales and Scotland all in the space of an afernoon. Jaw dropping scenery, and possibly the best driving roads of my life. Did I mention you need to avoid people… lots of them all over the road, plus cows, horses, goats, sheep, donkeys, rock falls and more as you plough on bend after bend, view after view through spectacular mountain scenery. Lesotho I love you.

After driving on the perfectly paved A4 and A5 for 3 hours I finally arrived exhausted at the village of Semonkong. Turning off the tarmac I was faced with what was basically a donkey track for nearly 2 miles through a village with hundreds of people going about their daily business, car bouncing left and right over sharp rocks and swerving around human and animal obstacles to get to my destination. 1st gear or mostly coasting downhill to the Semonkong Lodge and checked in to what is probably the most luxurious accomodation within 200 miles in any direction.

The views are beautiful, the food reasonable considering the location but then the power goes out at 8pm and doesn’t come back until after 8am the following morning. “Included Breakfast” was limited to steamed bread and instant coffee as a result. At dinner they ask if you would like the fire lit in your room before you retire to bed, I declined as it was around 23C.

To put this in context, Lesotho is (as of 2023) a country of 2.1M people, only 35% have electricity, 20% have Aids and the life expectancy is 55 years of age – but they have 1.1M mobile phones. Poverty is even more obvious than SA. Countless scenes of woman beating clothes on rocks by the river, donkeys and oxen carrying loads, cattle rounded up with sticks and horses. But as it’s a christian festival day everyone seems to be out in their best clothes and hats to celebrate. It was quite a spectacle.

Next day I leave the lodge to visit Maletsunyane Falls. So along the tarmaced A5 I go, until the turn off for the falls. Here it gets sketchy. Am I on the right road, is this even a road I ask myself at times. Well after about 25 mins of “world’s most dangerous roads” I end up at a barrier, and what looked like a closed kiosk. I get out of the car, the door is nearly ripped off its hinges by the 50mph winds. After a few seconds a 6 inch x 6 inch window opens and this guy asks if i’m there to visit the falls…..ummm yeah why else would I have nearly died getting there… after trying to communicate over the noise of the wind he swipes my credit card and opens the barrier. Driving on another 1.5km I arrive at a vision of modernity – A massive brand new (unfinished) museum, visitor centre, conference centre and restaurant that has taken several years to build. Barely able to stand up because of the wind I take some snaps of the falls, wander around the closed and unfinished complex (totally alone) and drive back down this “road aka goat track” wondering surely it would have been better to build the road before the complex, not as I was told… maybe in 2 years time the road will be built. I’ve no idea how they got all the trucks and people up there to build the complex.

I also have no idea how the Suzuki survived these two days with all four tyres intact, it just felt like they would pop at any second on the roads to Semonkong and Maletsunyane.

Another wonderfully scenic drive ensues and I get to Bloemfontain and the Tredenham Boutique Hotel. I was exhausted by this point, so all I can say is that this was a superb place to relax. Ended up paying £16 for a 12pm checkout after watching a herd of Springbok graze on the lawn at breakfast.

My final day is a 4 hour drive back to OR Tambo airport but having navigated 3 dust storms due to mining/quarrying and ploughing, all is well after nearly 1750 miles since I left Cape Town. Then 5 miles from ORT, rush hour traffic slams on to avoid a broken down truck, the muppet that has been tailgating me realises he cant stop, swerves to left, I saw him do it in my rear view mirrir so I swerve right across the white line and onto the grass verge and he finishes up level with my rear quarter panel…. f*ckk…. Needless to say he wasn’t tailgating any more as we moved off. I’m pretty sure clean trousers would have been required.

I tried to head for the Engen Skystop to fill up as mentioned on Hfp but missed the turning, ended up in the car park and had to queue for 10 mins to get out. Finally filling up after a go-around and drop the car at Avis. We’ll see what speeding fines and tolls they add to my bill over the next few weeks. It’s almost impossible to avoid the toll charges as even if you try and pay cash they tell you you’ve already been charged because of your toll disc which can’t be covered up like the ones in the USA.

On to my first flight on an A380 and in F, delightful crew, on time departure, everything works and isn’t tatty as I expected. Completely baffled why BA aren’t serving SA wine on a JNB departure but I’m not complaining as I’ve just finished my second bottle of 2011 Pomerol. Food was average by any standard but at least edible unlike Virgin’s recent UC offerings.

And there we have it, without a doubt the most amazing, packed, interesting and varied trip I’ve ever been on. Lesotho was country number 56. The only negatives in SA were the absolutely psychotic driving of the pickup trucks and Audi saloons but that’s common to almost every country in which I’ve driven. When you see a pickup overtake you. the three cars in front and a tanker by driving down the opposite carriageway in roadworks/contraflow where it’s clearly posted no overtaking, at 150 kph where the limit is 80kph you just despair of human kind. The other thing that really annoyed me were the “car guards”. These are guys that put on a dirty hi viz vest and expect you to tip them because they’ve waved you into a perfectly visible open parking space, or “looked after” your car whilst you’ve spent 2 mins in a supermarket.

P.S. After a couple of hours in a virtually empty Concorde lounge at LHR which is typically a nice place to be I boarded my final flight to MAN which arrived on stand 10 mins early. Welcome to Manchester, where it was grey, cold, and the jet bridge won’t attach to the aircraft. After 10 mins of messing around and another 10 mins waiting for the Menzies ground staff to find some steps we finally disembarked 10 mins late into the ground floor departure area (mixing with outgoing passengers) and with no supervision and being allowed to wander until someone spotted an exit door. Entering the baggage hall the carousel was already moving and the exit flap had been blocked by two suitcases which were hanging over the side, so every piece of baggage was slamming up against them and falling off the belt. Managed to grab mine before it smashed into the others and headed out for the half mile walk to the T3 pickup area for my Uber (MAN management – you’re a joke. Putting the pickup area where it is and expecting passengers to walk mostly uncovered and then stand in the rain is just absurd) – M60 was even more of a car park than usual at 9.30am due to multiple accidents at J18 so my ride was 30 mins longer and £10 more than expected.

What a typical welcome home.

Thanks for reading, and thanks to those who said they enjoyed my rambling 🙂

All galleries updated and more added to the ealier ones and moved to google because Imagebox was too slow. One final note on the galleries, I don’t tend to take pics of people directly or the poverty as it feels wrong. I wish I could just blink my eyes and record what I saw as I drove along as there’s a lot more than the pics below show.

Doha https://photos.app.goo.gl/kXshTKuM8CpMzivz7
Johannesburg https://photos.app.goo.gl/vkSpT8eR5pZoqZ9G7
Kruger https://photos.app.goo.gl/8YeX8YXcdNmMThvU9
Victoria Falls https://photos.app.goo.gl/Edkt9QYGYWQ57RQh7
Chobe https://photos.app.goo.gl/qU2MMaw8gtHZi4gLA
Cape Town and surrounds https://photos.app.goo.gl/9yH6yKCTDGBvXigt7
Garden Route https://photos.app.goo.gl/c1XrtSk5EqoyqEaD9
Lesotho https://photos.app.goo.gl/PhSREuxJmY51Xry9A