GABBY - This morning we woke up and all of the clouds from the previous
day had dispersed. The morning was
clear, the sky was blue, and we actually had visibility of the surrounding
mountains. Ben and I got started on
making breakfast and preparing lunch. Ben
has become an expert at sandwich making, which allowed me to fully concentrate
my efforts on making a scrumptious and filling breakfast. Everyone seemed pretty keen on fried eggs, so
I began cracking each egg. I had
realized (a little too late) that there was no spatula to be found in any of
the drawers. I found a sort of wooden
spork, which I used to flip the eggs. It
turned into a complete and utter failure.
I got so pissed and frustrated that I cracked an egg so hard on the oven
and let the raw, yellow and clear slime run down to the floor. Without a word, Ben began cleaning up my
emotional egg mess. We are starting to
really understand how the other functions under pressure. I really do need to be left alone sometimes,
and it was really helpful for him not to start smothering me with questions or kisses. We cleaned up the kitchen and eventually were
able to get the less than perfect eggs onto everyone’s plates. After breakfast it was a whirlwind to get
ourselves and the 4 French out and onto the saddled horses. Eric had warned us that it would be a long
day and wanted to get us started quickly.
I found Jackie and stroked her facial hair before jumping on her back to
begin riding. Jackie is an aggressive
horse and has a tendency of wanting to lead and/or gallop quickly away from the
pack. She is really only supposed to be
ridden by experienced riders of that I am not.
She likes to be the 2nd horse following directly behind the
leader. We followed Eric closely,
leading all of the horses farther and farther away from the comfortable
Sehlabathebe Lodge. On our way up into
the mountains, we saw some beautiful, vacant stone huts built into the side of
massive boulders. As we continued up, we
came to a road where we were able to overlook a Basotho village. We passed by young children, who gazed at us
with wonder and curiosity, unsure of what to make of us until we spoke the
universal language: smile and a wave.
Cheesy, I know, but it’s so true!
Most of the people were friendly and responded with the same
action. After a while of riding next to
villages, we began our descent into a canyon.
We crossed the river a couple of times until we arrived at the Bushman
cave paintings, a highlight of a 3 day trip.
We all stared in awe at the ancient cave paintings, which were drawings
of cows, sheep, and humans. We didn’t
spend a whole lot of time there as we were all getting pretty hungry for lunch,
so we continued on.
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| Paradise Lunch Spot |
Eric brought us to a
beautiful spot with shade underneath a cliff overhang just up from the
river. We chowed on some of Ben’s
special sandwiches and splashed around in the freezing, cold water. Eric got us moving again after we had
explored the river and boulders surrounding our quaint lunch spot. We had another 1 ½ of riding until we reached
the Chinese shop in Sehlabathebe. After some
sporadic galloping and subsequent groans from the peanut gallery, mainly French
Eric whose back had become seriously sore, we reached the shop. Ben and I each enjoyed a luke warm Coke from the
shop and bought some famous Lesotho socks!
Steve had told us about these socks, which are basically glorified
soccer socks. They were high socks with
a shoelace at the top to keep them from slipping down to your ankle. We bought 5, all different colors and left
satisfied with our purchase. They also
had beautiful Basotho blankets there, but they were expensive and probably not
real (according to Steve). While we were
sipping on Cokes, we saw a couple sheep herders herding hundreds of sheep down
the dirt road. When we began to ride
again, we passed the sheep herd. As we
passed the sea of wool, the sheep herder in the back cracked his whip hard. That got our horses moving a bit so that we
passed them in no time. I was riding right behind Eric for most of the time
until Jackie decided she wanted to be on the opposite side of the road. Eric said it was fine as long as she didn’t
wander off. Well, wander off she did,
more like canter off she did. She had
spotted a farm on the right hand side and felt inclined to start cantering up the
dirt road to the top house! I had
absolutely no control of her. While
Jackie was up at the top house, I saw French Eric’s horse take off and get up
on his hind legs. He managed to hang on,
but all hell had broken loose. Trigger,
Pascaline’s horse took off and followed Jackie to the top house. I tried to keep it together and guide Jackie
and Trigger down on horse, but they were not having it. As soon as I would get her going the right
direction, she would continue to turn so that she was facing the completely
wrong direction. I had to jump off the
horse and guide her down the drive to the main road. It was embarrassing for sure. I asked Eric why she had taken off like that. He told me that Steve used to own that farm
and had some of the Khotso horses staying there in Lesotho. Jackie was one of those horses, so she was
familiar with the farm and wanted to hang out there. She’s a really smart horse, but super stubborn
and not for someone as inexperienced as I am.
We were all getting very hot, tired, and sore by that point, but still
had another hour or so until we reached the lodge again. We had basically done a giant loop, which was
great because we got to see so much more.
We climbed some tricky mountain passages and ascended to a flat
plain. We walked and walked, stopping
for pee breaks until we finally reached the lodge again. It was an absolutely incredible ride, but it
was long! We were riding for about 7
hours in total, which left my tail bone a bit worse for the wear.
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| Check out those Lesotho socks! |
All of us sat outside, enjoyed drinks and each
other’s company. Ben and I took a load
off by resting and taking baths before beginning to conquer dinner. We ended up cooking steak on the braii and
enjoyed the remains of the potatoes that took 2 days to cook. I whipped up a simple salad with an oil,
salt and pepper dressing. We were so
blessed to be with such a great, easy-going group of people. We really had a blast with them throughout our
entire trip. We ate, drank and were
merry until about 9:00 when we all passed out with exhaustion.
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