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Cartwheels over Lesotho - The Teaser
March 11, 2010
It's been weeks since we came back from the road. With so much to do in Cape Town, including flash training sessions for the Argus Cycle Tour, I've only had moderate amounts of time to sort out the many pictures taken and throw a few ideas on paper. But it is all taking shape. Some might remember that in early 2009, Marie and I set out for a memorable road trip up the West Coast of South Africa, into Namibia's incredible Namib Desert, across to southern Kalahari and bac...
Cartwheels over Lesotho, Part 1 - War and Peace in the Karoo
March 26, 2010
The Karoo has not always been hot. Long, long ago, it lay covered in ice for a hundred million years. Then, two hundred and fifty million years before this blog post was written, the area turned into a basin and as the millennia passed, featured various water bodies, some as vast as inland seas. Enormous coal deposits were formed. There was ferocious volcanic activity and lush forests emerged for life to thrive in. The Karoo was a happening place. Today,...
Cartwheels over Lesotho, Part 2 - Once Upon a Time in Nieu Bethesda
April 16, 2010
From Beaufort West, we drove steadily east and as our morning unfolded, the Karoo's unflinching dryness mellowed out and slowly gave way to encouraging traces of vegetation. By the time we'd reached the town of Graaff Reinet, two-thirds into our daily leg, green had appeared all around us in a surprising display of tenacity. There had been much rain recently and we were witnessing its almost instantaneous effect on the landscape. Roads were flanked with high fluid grass w...
Cartwheels over Lesotho, Part 3 - The Ladybrand Disappointment
April 25, 2010
We packed up early and left the Vleihuisie with a tear in the eye. Then it was back over the hills and onto N9, direction Ladybrand. Reaching Middelburg, we branched off to the east towards Burgersdorp and Aliwal North, which we reached in good time. We were now ready to climb off the western flank of Lesotho. Aliwal North marked our passage from the Eastern Cape to the Free State. Our old friend the Orange River flowed through town on its winding way to the Atlantic O...
Cartwheels over Lesotho, Part 4 - Thy Mountain Kingdom Come
May 4, 2010
Like most storytellers, I enjoy the occasional temporal digression. It keeps me (and hopefully you too) sharp and focused. So let's rewind a bit. The last post recalled the end of our stay at the Golden Gate National Park and was leading up to a second incursion into Lesotho, a full crossing this time, to culminate both metaphorically and geographically with the infamous Sani Pass ascent. That story will come soon. But we had already ventured into the Mountain Kingdom bet...
Cartwheels over Lesotho, Part 5 - Differential Lock on the Sani Pass
We attacked the next leg with dreams of grandeur. Just like Sossusvlei had been the apotheosis of our 2009 Namib trip, Southern Africa's highest mountain pass was going to be something to write home about. Located in the Drakensberg mountain range, on the easternmost flank of Lesotho, the Sani Pass leads from Basotho Highlands to South Africa's KwaZulu Natal province, in a long climb and a hairy descent that drops pretty much straight down from one of the highest roads ...
Cartwheels over Lesotho - Space addendum to Golden Gate
May 16, 2010
On the 20th of February 2010, around 19:20, while camping in South Africa's Golden Gate National Park, Marie and I were busy preparing our evening meal in the rapidly darkening valley. I happened to glance up at the sky, as I often do for no particular reason, looking for planes, for birds, for friendly or threatening clouds, for signs of times to come or navigational clues in a complicated world... Then I looked again. Ascending some 30 or 40 degrees to the east from a...
Cartwheels over Lesotho, Part 6 - Flash Flood on the Road to Rhodes
May 17, 2010
My mosquito bites soothed and Himeville left behind, we drove southwestwards, keeping the dark Drakensberg walls to our right, through rolling hills and immense fields. This was Zulu land. We had already noticed around Himeville that the locals were friendlier, more self-assured. The Zulus are a dancing people. It seemed to show. We took two shortcuts. The first one, a long and rather straight dirt road across vast fields, was pleasant and efficient. So we got back on ...