The main thoroughfare passes right through the lodge. It's a dirt track that gets really rough on the high side from the lodge. That's the track we walked in on. There are roads in that direction (which we crossed on our trek from the hills down into Semonkong), but I never explored back that way after arriving at the lodge. Cars only rarely drove on the road through the lodge; the traffic consisted mainly of Basotho men, women, and children riding horses or mules or on foot herding cattle, sheep, and other mules and pack horses back and forth to and from the small settlement of Semonkong proper. That town was reached by walking out the low side across a causeway over the stream that ran by the lodge, and then climbing the hill to where the buildings started. White and yellow flags fluttered above some of these buildings, indicating that the people there had brewed one kind of alcohol or another, and here the road widens and passes right through the town and continues on to Roma and Maseru.
Maletsunyane Falls
The lodge here at Semonkong makes a good base for activities in the area. The Lonely Planet Guide mentions that Semonkong lodge can arrange for you to do the largest "commercially operated" abseil drop in the world, something like 204 meters down the 192 meter Maletsunyane waterfall, as certified by the Guiness Book of Records.
The longest I've ever done before is 178 meters, which I did twice, in Majlis Al Jin in Oman. That one also involves a climb out, 45 minutes to an hour back up the 178 meters of rope dangling down the center of the cave chamber. The climb out of Maletsunyane was almost as bad considering it was winter and the spray at the bottom of the falls had frozen on the rocks down there so that we were literally forced to walk over bolders coated with a thick layer of ice, very slippery and treacherous. So it wasn't much easier to walk out of there than it would have been to climb back up the rope.
The cost of the abseil is around $100 which includes training ... actually that's so the guides can see who can actually drop themselves over a 25 meter rock down into a river below, which stops a number of people cold so they never make it to the waterfall with its much more daunting drop. The training also refreshes people like me who might need practice with the rack system (I've used figure 8's and stops, or shunts, but got to try a rack one day only in practice with my caving friends in one of the parks in California).
My training happens today at 2 pm. I'm taking it easy today. It looks like tomorrow I'm going for a two day horse trek to Ketane Falls. It's supposed to be quite nice, maybe similar to the riding in Kyrgistan, another $120: http://www.placeofsmoke.co.ls/advntr_ponytreks_ovrnight.htm.
The lodge costs 300 rand a night for the room, about $38. There is electricity all day here, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. (but brrrr, can't use the room heater at night). A huge breakfast is 65 rand, wine at dinner is 9.50 rand each and the best meal on the menu is 75 rand, all charged to my room.
The people at the Semonkong Lodge, Alec and Elsit, are friendly. There are no other tourists here at the moment. There's just one other guy staying here on business putting in cell phones, an Afrikaaner from Cape Town. I met a Basotho guy at breakfast this morning who is here for food distribution with an NGO. He lives in Maseru, I'm not sure where he is staying here in Semonkong.
I took Tuesday the 19th easy. I basically had a bath after breakfast in the morning. Nice hot water. I went for a stroll at noon and at 2:00 I turned up for my abseil training. They had me do three drops. The first one I basically learned how to manage the rack. The second I learned how to stop the descent and add more bars to the rack. And the third time they weighted the rope to simulate what over 200 meters of rope weighs and how that will affect my going down the 200 meter drop. The drop itself was good simulation. It was down a 25 meter wall into a pool of river water. So going down you had to step into the cliff and then go with it, and all you saw was water below. I don't really know what the real drop will feel like. Usually it feels ok once you get going. At Majlis Al Jin you have this ten meter chimney you drop into so you don't really get the sense of height like in an airplane until you are already into it, and then it's like oh wow where the fk am I. For the actual falls, I'll be cognizant from the start. At any rate, they belay you from the top so you're really on two ropes, and what could possibly go wrong ;-)
I walked into town. What a cowboy place. Horses all over, some interesting characters riding around on theirs. One guy galloped through town going one way and when he galloped back half an hour later I got his picture. There was a Pep shop there, a kind of African Walmart, and here it was so out of place. I got some batteries there, actual alkaline ones. They were hard to find, the Chinese shop didn't have them. On the main drag almost devoid of motorized vehicles, where horses were tethered here and there or being led or ridden, I found a colorful area where there were flags flying. White meant beer and I suppose yellow was wine. These shops were flying white and I sampled the brew. There were a lot of old men hanging about who came up to talk to me and try and cadge a drink. Cadging was common here, people passing on the trail might pour out all the English they knew: "How is it?" followed by "Give me money." Pragmatic skills obviously lacking here.
In any event, here were people sitting around drinking this muddy swill, what they call pombe in Swahili, not flavorful, a little fizzy where it was still fermenting, obviously effective judging from the demeanor of the people there, I drank half a glass and gave the remainder to a man who had been making gestures toward his mouth, and moved off to get my batteries.
That night at the bar I enjoyed a sherry with two South African businessmen there at the time, and I offloaded pictures from my camera onto my computer and then went to a table for dinner, where I had wine and then retired early to my room. I would sometimes go to sleep before electricity went off at ten, which was also when the small ineffective (but something, at least) heater in the room would go off and it would get quite cold, below freezing. Due to the early bedtime, this morning I was awake in my room at 6 a.m. with a candle on (electricity doesn't come back until 8). There was a knock at the door. It was one of the friendly staff there, returning my camera as soon as he saw I was awake. I had left it at the bar. Amazing, but this incident says something about the Basotho people, whose character I was finding disarmingly engaging compared to others I had met in Africa on my most recent trips to Kenya, Uganda, and Mozambique. The people in those places were also friendly, but in Lesotho you felt almost among friends.
Ketane
July 17 would be an interesting day. I had agreed to go on a horse trek to Ketane Falls. It would take 7 hours on horseback, probably about the same time walking. Horses were part of the environment in Semankong, indeed in all the mountains of Lesotho. There was nothing that unusual at there being two horses waiting for me after breakfast. I was assigned a guide named Metanany, who turned out to be a very nice person, my favorite Lesotho companion on all my treks.
After breakfast we mounted and headed out. How can I describe a horse trek. It would have been possible to just sit on the horse and let it walk and it would have arrived at Ketane after perhaps 7 hours. Metanany had me go ahead and he told me if he wanted me to change direction. Metanany had a whip which he used to get the horses to move if they flagged. I couldn’t make mine move beyond a walk so I told him I thought I needed a stick. He agreed and we stopped by a tree and someone who happened to be there cut us a branch. I retained this for the rest of the trek and I was able to get the horse to do what I wanted it to. I was pretty happy with a walk though, it was comfortable. A trot was jarring. I had to grip the horse with my legs for trotting and my shins got bruised on the buckles, and the inside of my legs were chafed. Once I realized we weren’t in a hurry I was happy with the walk. Of course some of the landscape was vertical, so there were times when we had to lean back in he saddle, and precarious moments when the horse lost footing in the steepest parts of the trail. It was a formidable walk in that respect, for the horse of course. For me it was a kind of break where I got to just ride.
When we reached Ketane village Metanany got the key to the guest rendavel from the chief ‘s family and we moved in. It was only around 3:00 when we arrived there, a nice time to end the trek. We bided our time while the sun went gradually lower in the sky and observed the life of the village.
In one corner of the village, where it dropped into a gorge, some kids were threshing wheat by pounding it on the ground. Eventually they corralled a couple of donkeys and holding them by their necks steered them around the husks to make them palatable to animals I suppose.
The lodge regularly organized treks here, so there was a trunk in a corner of the rendavel containing pots and pans and cooking gas. Metanany spent some time boiling water for papa, the millet concoction that was a staple morning and night here. I wanted to get going and see the falls, but he was in no hurry. I thought he was wasting time over prolonged waiting for water to boil on the weak gas primus stove but of all people I trekked with in Lesotho, Metanany turned out to be the most professional and most accurate with his timings. Eventually, as the sun was getting toward the mountain peaks, he walked me over there, an easy tramp over a relatively flat traverse of the back of a gorge and then a steeper drop down to a viewpoint of the 128 meter cataract. There are pictures here:
The people in that village spoke some English There was a lady there by the name of Georgina. She reminded me of my own grandmother when she was alive, a sweet and gentle person. Georgina asked me if I “used beer”. She had some for sale, so after dinner she brought me a big bottle. I suppose she knew where the shop was in that village and got it from there and added a couple of rand to the price. That price was 5 rand cheaper than at Semonkong lodge, and I was quite satisfied to get the beer and drink it alone in the doorway of my rondavel, sitting just inside in the candlelight to be out of the cold breeze, but still able to see the stars clearly overhead in the night sky, and savor the silence. This village was quiet all night.
Horse Races
I slept warm and was up at dawn next morning and located Metanany where he was saddling our horses. I found the trek in a bit more than I bargained for because I had asked Metanany at one point if we were halfway there, and he had said "less" when what he meant was we had less than half the distance still to go. So my first day I was in a hurry and trying to trot the horse, which caused it to jar a lot and made me saddlesore. Plus it was a mountainous ride, and we were having to lean back in the saddle while the horse struggled down the paths, and sometimes the horse would lurch in a near-stumble. Plus I had brought too big a pack, thinking there would be a pack horse for it, when there were just two horses for the riders, so I had ended up carrying the pack on my back. All this caused me to not enjoy the first day's ride as much as I did the second, when I was now used to the horse, some of my stuff was now in the saddlebags where the food we had eaten had been previously, so my knapsack was much lighter, and I had a good idea of the distance back and realized that we could get there in 7 hours at a horse's walk. So I relaxed and enjoyed the ride back.
One nice thing was that we took a different way on return because we wanted to swing by the village of Sennagay for the monthly horse races held near there. As we approached the village we fell in with other riders on their way to the races. Metanany pointed out that the horses wearing blankets were the race horses, and the riders (on other horses) were blowing whistles and keeping up loud monologues proclaiming this to be a great day and that it should be one of enjoyment and celebration (Metanany's translation). The commotion was bringing villagers out of our houses, and it did feel festive riding down the trail to such accompanyment.
But the races didn't start until an hour or so after we arrived. At 1:00 the crowds started gathering an by 2:00 the horse owners had formed a circle and were starting to organize who raced against whom. Metanany was one of the organizers, so he was enthusiastiacally involved in the proceedings. Basically the owners put their money up, 50 rands to enter, and if there were three horses in a race, it was winner take all, and if more than three, second place got his money back. Once the first race was organized things started to happen. The horses appeared and trotted in a circle so that people could view them and place their bets. The crowd around this activity was amazing, mostly men, dressed in characteristic blankets and boots, but with a variety of hats. Most had the thick balaclava pulled up on the head mid-day, but some wore felt hats, and one had a great jackal skin on his head, similar to a 'coon skin cap'. The event had a wild west rodeo flavor, and people were animated, enjoying themselves.
The racers then trotted off. The races were some ways out of town in an area with a relative flat, though to start the race, the horses disappeared behind a hill and it was only when clouds of dust rose from the far side of the hill that we knew each race had begun. A few minutes later the horses would appear at the crest of the ridge, and some minutes after that they drew near and charged across the finish line, riding up from there and into the crowd. The race committee chair holding the money presented it ceremoniously to the winner, and the runner up followed to get his note back. That one out of the way the next heat was organized.
Metanany had the horses saddled before the races had finished but didn't want to leave until the last race had been run, so we watched the last one from the saddle. Then we headed up the track where the race was held, as this was the trail home. We arrived back at the lodge within the hour I had a hot shower, made new friends at the bar, and had a good meal, then went to sleep savoring all the good things that had happened that day and looking forward to my 204 meter abseil the next.
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