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!