No Man's Land

After a long week of work and interviews (two things I will be posting about in the near future), Colleen, Jenn, Brad, Katie (a PCV), and I headed for Sani Pass.  Sani Pass is the main road connecting the west end of Mokhotlong District in Lesotho to the east end of Kwa-ZuluNatal District in South Africa.  It was originally developed as a donkey path in 1913 to connect Mokhotlong to Underberg, South Africa, by way of the Drakensburg escarpment.  The Drankensburg escarpment is a steep slope created by erosion and falling rock that connects the lowlands of South Africa with the 9,429 foot elevation of the Lesotho border.  The road to Sani and the pass itself is the typical mixture of dirt and rock that I’ve seen on almost every road in Lesotho.  The really interesting aspect of the pass is that it is sort of a no-man’s land, an 8km stretch of road owned neither by South Africa nor Lesotho.

Our plan was to reach the top of the pass at the Lesotho border and hike around Saturday morning before heading down the pass to Underberg for the night.  It was a great plan.  We left on time, Brad drove (probably too) fast through the winding mountain roads, and we reached the sign for Sani Pass in just about two hours.  Of course, we had to get out of the car and take pictures at the sign!

Unfortunately, our picture taking was met with hurricane-force winds that made us wonder whether hiking up there was really a good idea.  As we approached the edge of the pass, the wind refused to calm and we had no choice but to head to Sani Lodge and talk about a game plan.  Did I mention that Sani Lodge is home to the highest pub in Africa?  Perfect place to hide out from the wind and cold!  After drinking some hot chocolate, watching a hiker (who had poles for support) get knocked over by the wind, breaking a car door that got blown open a bit too far, and Jenn’s glasses being blown off her face and into the Sani Pass abyss, we decided to drive down the pass and relax in Underberg for the day.  Hiking would be put off until Sunday.

I was expecting Underberg to be a bustling town with lots of things to do.  Boy, was I wrong!  Underberg was quaint, with rolling hills of farms, paved roads, and only two good restaurants to eat in (as we were told by a nice South African woman).  Amusingly, we spent basically the entire day eating at these two restaurants!  We dropped our bags off at the Sani Backpackers, a hostel where we were spending the night, and our next stop was for lunch at a cute café called The Lemon Tree.  After the Lemon Tree we stopped at Brad's favorite place called Pucketty Farms (I was bummed to find out this wasn't an animal farm).  Pucketty Farms was completely empty, in fact paying for anything you buy there is done on the honors system.  You simply write down what you bought and put the money in a small box...weird!  We did find some ice cream for the first time since we've been here, so obviously I jumped on the opportunity to have some of that!  After Pucketty, we drove around for bit, saw a beautiful sunset, and found ourselves at The Old Trout Hatchery.

So much jam...and paying via the honors system

Colleen and I enjoying some greatly missed ice cream!

When we walked into the Hatchery we found a group of South Africans drinking beer, huddled around a TV watching rugby.  The South Africa Springbocks vs. Italia!  Turns out the Springbocks are one of the highest ranked teams in the world, so Italy basically stood no chance (at least according to Robby the bartender).  It was an exciting experience, though, because rugby is such a huge part of South African culture and we were diving right into it!  After a couple drinks (because you can’t watch rugby without drinking some beer, also according to Robby), we saw South Africa win, ate dinner, and walked out to the car.  Side note: I found it very odd that the Old Trout Hatchery didn’t actually have any trout on the menu…

Sunset pictures!

The Lemon Tree...and watching rugby at The Old Hatchery

Before we reached the car, however, we were met by Patricia Lambie.  Patricia is a sheep named after Patrick Lambie, a famous South African rugby player.  Colleen has been waiting for the past 5 weeks to hold a lamb, and here was her chance!  We seized the opportunity to hold the sheep and take tons of pictures.  I was really surprised how soft Lambie’s wool was!  I think we scared her a bit considering she ran and hid behind a bunch of chairs as soon as she escaped our arms, but we just couldn’t resist the idea of hanging out with a sheep.

Now introducing.....Patricia Lambie!

Morning view from the hostel.

 Sunday morning Jenn left the backpackers super early to make a 13 mile hike from Underberg to the top of Sani Pass.  The rest of us went back to the Lemon Tree for breakfast and enjoyed a crazy, but yummy meal of French toast layered with Canadian bacon mozzarella cheese, and syrup.  For all of the Italian’s at home, mozz and syrup was actually not as disgusting as it sounds…I was very skeptical at first!

We soon left to go back up the pass because the skies were getting dark and we wanted to make sure Jenn was okay.  We crossed the South African border into the pass and found Jenn a mile or two up the road.  Even though it was flurrying, she wanted to keep hiking.  I had been thinking all night about how cool it would be to hike up the pass, so I decided to hop out of the car and hike up the rest with Jenn.  It took us a little more than an hour, it was steep and my butt was sore on Monday, but it was so worth it!  The views were beautiful and by the time we reached the top it was snowing. Yes, snow in Africa!  I felt so accomplished and was pumped to finally reach the top; I'd hiked from 7000ft above sea level to 9000ft above sea level.  We rushed back to TTL to avoid getting stuck in the snow, but by the time we got back here it was a beautiful sunny day.

Enjoy these pics from my hike up Sani Pass!

I'm Queen of the world!

The winding road ahead

The winding road below

A frozen waterfall

Go, Jen, go!

We made it!

It’s been freezing at TTL the past few days, so I’ll probably spend a lot of time indoors sitting next to the heater writing blog posts, so stay tuned! Have a great day!