We crossed from Ficksburg, South Africa over the border into Lesotho. We then drove down to the capital Maseru and had a look around. Lesotho is a very interesting country as it is completely land locked by South Africa, it is also one of the smallest and poorest countries in the world. Lesotho managed to keep its independence due to its mountainous nature. When other tribes such as the Zulu we being conquered and driven from their lands, Lesotho offered them refuge in their lowlands. This meant that any invading forces had to first again battle a displaced tribe before they could conquer the mountain territory.

From Maseru we travelled back to our entry point, and turned towards the mountains. Other than Maseru itself everything else is very basic rural with individual and clustered huts in a quite barren landscape. Lesotho is the only time we have observed a cattle drawn, one furrow plough, actually being used to break up a paddock. The farmer was wearing a blanket which seemed to be pretty much the national dress. Also as testament to the poverty we saw a vegi patch fenced with a high security fence to keep out both animals and potential thieves. The locals were very anti the video camera, and later talking to an English speaking person, we discovered they do not wish to appear in any documentaries which they considered usually were poking fun at them. Very proud people indeed. We were very surprised at one stage, high in the mountains on the side of a dilapidated mud hut, to see a Coca Cola sign. We were intrigued and stopped to see if it was in fact a shop, and sure enough discovered some very dusty small bottles of coke, no fridge but probably not necessary given the altitude.

Our objective was to cross the mountains via the Sani Pass, down to Durban then along the coast to Swaziland. However the higher we climbed the more ice and snow we encountered until we reached the Mahlasela Pass at 3222 meters where we came upon a snow plough and it was now obvious we could not proceed unless we had tyre chains, and given we did not, we instead had to backtrack to the New Oxbow Lodge to stay the night. It was an interesting time booking in and getting fed given the language problems. Neither of us had a clue what we had for the evening meal other than it was some sort of meat and vegi dish. We found a old kero heater in the room and fired it up, but left it going when we went to bed, only to wake in the middle of the night struggling for air. Not too clever! Next morning we went to set off only to find the car covered in ice, it took some time to clear the windscreen and get it started. The road back down the mountain was also covered with ice, so was slow going, and just to illustrate the danger we came upon a truck which had slammed into the canyon wall. The driver was very lucky as in another 30 metres there was no side wall, just a free fall to the bottom.

We entered back into South Africa at the Joel's drift border post, after doing battle with a immigration officer who felt we should have had visas. He could not see our point as to why it was a problem now as we were leaving not entering! We suspected he was looking for a little monetary inducement, but we stuck to our principal and were eventually allowed to go, albeit with a parting shot not to come back.

Our next stop was at the Blood River memorial between Dundee and Vryheid still in South Africa. The memorial consists of a ring of 64 replica wagons set up (laager) as they were for the famous battle. On the 15th December 1838 about 464 Voortreckers and 120 others encountered the full force of the Zulu army some 12 to 15 thousand strong. That night they prepared for the inevitable attack and strategically selected their camp site to make maximum use of the Ncome River and other natural barriers. They also fastened the wagons together with gates (veghekke) to prevent penetration by the Zulu's and faced their guns towards the most likely attack points. Next morning the attack began and was repelled time and time again, until eventually the Zulu decided to retreat, prompting the Voortreckers to counter attack. About 3000 Zulu's lost their lives (many trying to escape across the Ncome River hence the battle being known as blood river) to 3 Voortreckers being wounded.

We then continued on our journey to Louwsburg where we spent the night at the Jacaranda Lodge.