Durban – We hardly knew you.

We sailed into Durban, South Africa, Friday evening as the sun was setting, had dinner on board, went to bed early to be outside on the dock at 7:15 AM with passports, ready for a twelve hour trip to the landlocked kingdom of Lesotho. There are only seven roads or paths into the kingdom. We entered by Range Rovers climbing up a steep dirt trail full of switchbacks to a nearly ten thousand foot plateau. We were just ahead of winter snow. It was us, some Merino sheep, shepherds and a village of thirty hearty souls. The photo below is looking into Lesotho, at the border with South Africa, from the dirt track we traveled. Yes, the road in Lesotho was perfectly paved, unlike the the previous thirty miles or so we just traveled.

The redeeming value of the crushing ride was spectacular African mountain scenery. This area has been inhabited since the beginning of mankind and is filled with ancient cave paintings. The weather was spectacular in the high seventies. The guides were even impressed! But what a long, rough day. Three hours each way in a bus to meet the 4X4 and then two and a half hours each way in the 4×4 to the village. Once is plenty.

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I am totally exhausted sitting on this bench in a dark hut with the only light coming in through the open door. I am leaning back resting against the wall when the guide proudly announces that the walls are built of clay and cow dung, as is the hut floor. There is  small circle of rocks which are not covered with the flooring material. This is where they set up the charcoal fire, directly on the rocks which we then learn extend under the clay/dung to cover the entire floor. The continual cooking on the center open circle causes the rocks to radiate the heat out under the entire floor. This is really useful when it is minus 30 and two feet of snow outside. We didn’t even notice the dutch oven as we sat there looking at the crafts.

The staples are lamb and bread as shown above. It’s an ancient bread recipe made from hand ground high mountain wheat and local yeast and sweetened with Sorghum. The bread was unbelievable! Tasted like a great sticky bun without the sticky.