I thought an attempted 'coup' was just something from one of my favorite movies...Club Paradise!

For those of you alert news followers, you might have heard of the attempted coup in Lesotho today, crazy because we were just there! (stayed in Maseru where all the craziness happened)

Here is a link to the story as the BBC reported it!

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28994193

I remember thinking that they needed some better marketing for their tourist attractions... I guess that moves lower on the list of what Lesotho needs!

Lesotho & the Free State Province-Beautiful Mountain Country

We got the chance to tag along on a work trip with Greg to another of the small landlocked countries within South Africa.  This country is called Lesotho (sounds like Lesutu when they pronounce it).  It was a beautiful little mountainous country with friendly people.  They all wear these traditional blankets and are known for these little straw hats with a symbol of their famous mountain on top.  They need the blankets because its COLD!  They even have a ski resort called Afriski (we did not make it there this trip but plan to go back).

We stayed in the capital city of Maseru, which really didn't have much to do, it had the big hotel (with baby casino) and one mall which was at the bottom of the big hotel hill.  The kids and I walked there one day and brought umbrellas...to walk back up in a crazy hailstorm, we missed the big hail while we were having lunch inside-luckily!

Here is sunset from the hotel

We tried a few restaurants and were happy to head out exploring once Greg finished his work.  I want to do marketing for the country because there were no brochures or anything in the hotel that tell you where to visit!

We heard about the village of the former King Moshoeshoe and put it in the GPS.  We ended up in the middle of a field with no village in sight.  Katie was kind enough to look out her window and say, "We could just call and ask for directions from the phone".. see photo below....

Luckily we found it and were the only visitors at the Cultural Village, we got our own private tour from the guide who was delighted to tell us many, many details!  These are some of the traditional huts used by early tribes.  We planned to hike up the mountain too, but decided to save that for another trip.  After we left the village we headed in the direction of the two dams that are high in the mountains, but the driving is very SLOW and takes forever, so after a few hours and not getting too far, we crossed back over the border into SA and instead headed for a nature reserve in the Free State Province to spend the night.

Our chatty, friendly guide.

We even found a pile of hail from the previous day's storms to let Charlie & Katie have a snow/hail fight! They are standing on the pile of hail.

We hit gold at the Meiringskloof Nature Reserve, amazing stone chalets to spend the night and cool caves to explore!   The house reminded us of Myev's family farm house in CT (made of stones) and it also felt a little like our beach house.

We only bought 3 bags of tiny wood in town, didn't last the night..so that stone house got mighty cold!  The girls were brave and slept out in the big room with the dying fire, we had a small plug in heater in our room.  Felt like a VERY long night!

A pre-sunset hike to one cave.

The kids kept scampering up this rock face between our cottage and the one next door.  This place actually put the Leary's famous backyard rock to shame!

We had dinner at this cool farm restaurant that could have been in rural Vermont, here is Kelly by the fire!

We planned on a big breakfast in the morning & some hikes, but the house was so cold, we skipped the breakfast and just did the hikes- 2 caves to explore- one that was giant

Giant Cave

 and another called the "Bushmen's Cave" where people from long ago drew pictures on the walls.  There pictures blew away the modern day grafitti that was on the walls!

Looks like an antelope-see the horns?

We hiked down and Greg and Charlie re-enacted the Lion King scene with baby Simba...

We look forward to a return visit in warm weather so we can enjoy the outdoor swimming pool that has an amazing rock face as its backdrop!  We also think we would appreciate the cool stone on a hot summer night!  We headed for home and it was about a four hour ride back.  We were happy to be back but were happy to have seen more of SA!

Pony Camp-just add gloves!

Our house is in Waterkloof Ridge, very high up, also down the road from Fort Klapperkop, an old fort built before the Boer War.  It also has its own stable and the kids got to go to pony camp for three mornings of their vacation. (Charlie too)

The first day was a little tricky for all, you start by cleaning the stables and in South Africa, they think that if animals eat grass, its not a big deal to pick up their POOP with your HANDS!  (Kelly was also told this on her field trip where they picked up zebra poop!)  Stable cleaning here means picking up the manure, turning over the horse's woodchip bedding, and cleaning up any hay that has been tossed out of the feeder.  (from my Illinois horse days, I remember shoveling everything out and putting in all fresh straw!)

The kids didn't love this part-especially Charlie, I guess he refused to pick it up with his hands!  For days 2 & 3, the kids all went with gardening gloves, which made the stable cleaning chore much, much better!

After the stable cleaning, they got to go to the pasture, lead their horses up, brush them, saddle them and go for a ride, in the ring and on the final day, an outride along the road into the Fort, where there are AMAZING views of the city.  I got to ride with them too!

Charlie's horse Fouraz!

The bonus part is here the kids really got to do everything themselves, after all the saddling, combing and riding, they even got to play with one of the horses, which meant running around in the ring and feeding him carrots!  They also got to paint the same horse with paints one day and the next day they got to give him a bath, both very cool activities!

Kelly's horse Chocolate (who stepped on her toe)

Washing the pony!

Katie's horse Robyn

Katie & Charlie on the outride-look at the views!

Kelly riding near the water treatment plant-barbed wire a constant in SA!

Once we had gloves, pony camp really was an amazing experience for the kids, they got to do it all!

Swaziland! Tardy post..internet challenges!

I'm behind in my posts, we lost our internet for over a week, it was a royal pain...much to report!   We broke in our new car for the adventure.  Greg says he should have jumped when I was taking the picture!

Our car is another Toyota, a Fortuner, in the states it is comparable to a Highlander.  Wanted a new car so it would cut down our chance of breaking down somewhere in Africa.  This car is a 4x4 and the dealer has a 4x4 club where they will teach us how to drive it, a good idea for all the tricky roads here!

To break in the new car, we headed on a weekend trip to Swaziland, a tiny nation that is completely landlocked by South Africa, it has its own king!We had to a border crossing to get in & out.  Getting in was smooth, getting out was trying, Greg didn't appreciate their system where everyone shoves and cuts in line!

After entering the country, we visited a cool Glass Factory on the way to our game park.  We had lunch and watched the peacocks that wandered around.  Charlie liked the playground and Katie climbed a few trees.

The place we stayed was incredible, called the Hlane Royal National Park, we stay at the Ndlovu Camp, which is a cool cottage, with a thatch roof and no electricity. 

 They come in at night and light the paraffin lamps for you!  We got there in time to make a reservation for the buffet, that they have in this giant outdoor pavilion, also lit by gas lamps. With no dinner to worry about, we played a family game of monopoly!

Our dinner was amazing! Cool foods to try, even homemade Malva pudding for dessert, which is really moist chocolate cake, covered in warm, creamy sweet pudding! Then they put on a traditional Swazi dance around the fire for us, the girls even got to join in the dance at the end.  Charlie slept through all the drums! 

The entire camp is set next to a waterhole, so we could hear the hippo in the waterhole and we also got to talk to nice people from all over Europe that were visiting the park on their Africa adventures.
Lying in bed in the morning, through the big windows in our room,  I could see a pack of warthogs come to the waterhole for a drink, then we also saw rhino arrive!

Kelly made a fabulous breakfast and we had it outside at the picnic table.

 We were reminded of wild Africa by two critter visits, one on a nearby tree that people passing by stopped to point out, it turned out it was a very dangerous, poisonous twig snake.  The snake expert that was passing buy said they are very aggressive where most snakes leave you alone.  If you look closely at the photo you can see his red tongue sticking out!

While we were eating I saw something run down the path very near, it was a warthog and one of the kitchen workers threw a trashcan lid at it!  After we checked out of our lodge, this warthog was wondering around the camp!  He was kneeling down to dig up some stuff in the dirt!

We did our own game drive out of the park, here is brave Katie getting out to open the gate to get into a different area...not many volunteers to get out and open the gate!!

We see our first wild giraffes-amazing!!

Our final stop was the Swazi candle factory on the way home they make amazing animal shaped candles, the kids liked getting a chance to shape their own candles.  Charlie was thrilled that the worker made him his own elephant head!

A wonderful trip, we can't wait to return!

"We don't have earthquakes in South Africa" or so Kelly's 'Invigilator' (exam proctor) told her!

For those of you who might have heard on the news, we did have a tremor here today...a good distance from here was the epicenter, but we felt it!

I was sitting in my office chair plugging away on a flyer I said I would do for the church social committee's upcoming event, when the security cage-in photo- starts banging and everything is shaking.  I first looked to see if Charlie rode his bike into the gate, but he was across the room!  Colleen came downstairs and said she felt it too.  I was sure it was an earthquake...I did a quick internet search, no news, then on the local radio station they started talking about the tremor.  I thought of the girls at school and also Greg in the embassy with many floors...Kelly felt it and was taking her math exam, they weren't sure if it was kids running on the floor above them, but she asked if it was an earthquake she got the response above, followed by, "if we did I'd die"??We hope her exam proctor is just a volunteer and not a teacher!  We cracked up when she told us they call it an "Invigilator"-Greg thinks it sounds like a villan!  Katie never felt the earthquake, she was probably reading her book somewhere and never noticed!  Greg said they felt it at the embassy and the computers were going nuts.  We did here one poor guy near the epicenter died when a wall fell on him.

Here is Katie hard at work on a geography project due this week, school ends Friday for the term and they get about 5 weeks off-everyone excited for a long break!  Kelly is in the back making Auntie Julie's famous Chocolate Chip cookies (thanks for the lessons Maureen).  A new family is checking into the embassy and we want to have these at the airport to welcome them!

Charlie making forts with the couch cushions, the blue thing in the background is his secret fort under the stairs! (in the foreground is his bow and arrow set-always good to have close at hand) Our loaner pet hamster returned home today, so now Charlie is lobbying for his own hamster and a dog!