VOLUPTUOUS PEAKS

Pikachu eyes a voluptuous peak

IN JULIA'S WORDS

9 April, Tuesday

Route A1 that plods and clamours through Butha-Buthe, to Mokhotlong and on to Sani Pass is woven through the sexiest of landscapes – well, sexy to those who delight in buxom women. It’s a raunchy eyeful of breast after voluptuous breast-shaped peaks, many topped by proud nipples. 

The place we’ve stopped – Sani Pass Lodge – throws me through another notch in reality, this time in place not time. The pub on the cliff’s edges is none other than the pub on the cliff’s edges of Rhossili, a village in south Wales. 

Rehana notes that I look more Welsh here: my hair wind-scrambled blondish floss, my eyes a brighter green. It’s Rhossili’s pub in the smell of pub food and booze, worn wooden tables, the cliffs outside, and crooner’s tunes played on the big-screen TV - those of Bonnie Tyler and Stevie Wonder.

A man who should have had a bit part in My Big Fat Greek Wedding just came to tell us it’ll snow here tonight. Just as well we declined to camp. We’re in the backpackers quarters instead.

And hopefully the forecast is right, and we shan’t be inching our way down Sani Pass - the steepest 4x4 route in the world - not only on brutal roads, but on icy ones too. 

Vegetation at the top of Sani Pass - heather or fynbos?

IN REHANA'S WORDS

Tuesday April 9, 2013

I’m not at all stiff from my hour-long pony ride yesterday and for that I have to thank the St James netball team. They invited us to train with them yesterday, and although we only joined them for the last 15 minutes or so, the bossy teenager in charge gave us a proper workout.  There were enough squats in her routine to chase away the stiffness threatening my thighs.

What a village! I’m so glad we’re up here in this mountain village. The high school girls are as eager to learn from us as we are from them. They ask us such brilliant questions about ourselves, about our reasons for coming to stay in their village. One of the girls interrogated me about the kind of friends Julia and I were, where we first met and how we knew that we wanted to take this trip together. She didn’t seem very convinced by my unprepared, halting answers. Every woman we passed on the ramshackle roads stopped to talk and teach us Sotho.

We realised yesterday that the stone building in front of the lodge was the primary school, and their day ended with beautiful music. St James truly is the singing village. They should post themselves on Youtube.

Elias and Rehana at the end of the ride

My pony ride was fun. It’s been years since I was last on a horse, but it’s like riding a bicycle. I found my seat quickly. The land wasn’t flat enough for anything faster than a trot and most of the time Elias and I had to cajole our horses up steep slopes and down them again.

The people of St James live uphill and downhill. There’s no benefit to either location: if you live downhill and visit a friend up the mountain, you have to go up and down again and so do they when they come a visiting. 
The kids scamper up and down the slopes to get to school, and so do the goats, the sheep, horses and donkeys. I didn’t see any gogos going up the mountain to the village above; social lives must be badly constrained when arthritis sets in.

We left St James this morning and set off to our next destination: Sani top. The road was awful and we switched to 4x4 mode halfway. What a car we have: willing to take on boulders and dongas and corrugated ruts. The landscape was spectacular, scrubby like the fynbos slopes of the Cape mountains, with lush patches of bright green in places.

The road followed a river, which rewarded us with waterfalls to admire along the way. I say “us” but this isn’t true. Whoever is driving is forced to keep her eyes on the road, looking out for sharp boulders and dongas. And the earthmoving equipment the Chinese workers were using to repair the road. There were sheep and goats on the road, with minders wrapped in blankets and balaclavas.

A Chinese road builder and his colleagues on Sani Pass

There’s an icy wind blowing at the top of the Drakensburg. We booked a campsite at Sani Mountain Lodge but quickly changed that to a backpackers’ room. The pub has two roaring fireplaces and we're hunkering down, taking Pikachu outside for briefs forays in the icy landscape when we work up the courage to go outside for a smoke.
I'll say it out loud: I’m chicken and proud.