Sooo. Let's get this started...
Work knows I like cruising around and I tend to try and grab most of the SADC projects. So I was recently assigned to a project at a mine up in North Eastern Lesotho...
I've been in Lesotho on various occasions, but most of my trips have been in the North West with the exception of a few trips up and down Sani. On the occasions I've done Sani, it has always been straight up, spend the night, and then straight down again. Also, I've had a love-hate relationship with that pass. Sani is weird. You get it on a good day and you wonder what the fuss is. The last time I drove it (prior to this trip) was a week or two after serious snowfalls closed most of Lesotho, and so when we tackled it it was completely iced up. I'm dead serious - we almost died on the way down. The only thing one can do in scenarios like that is to try and control the slide so that your truck's ass does not swing past the nose. And to try and not fall off the mountain on the hairpin bends... There is a recent video posted by Snow Report on Vleisbroek showing a cruiser battling with this sort of thing. The link, for your watchingness, is here:
https://fb.watch/m0xafFcTto/
In any case, I had some demons to exorcise with Sani pass and Liana had never been to Lesotho, so we decided to take a tour down to Lesotho, do Sani, look for some snow. And then on the Sunday she could fly back from Pietermaritzburg and I'd head back to the mine... And so we did.
We took a few days to drive down. Itinierary was:
Day 1: Pretoria -> Clarens
Day 2: Clarens -> Himeville
Day 3: Himeville -> Sani Top
Day 4: Sani Top -> Pietermaritzburg -> Sani Top
Day 5: Sani Top -> Letseng
Day X: Letseng -> Pretoria
Day X being undefined as it would depend on the day I finished my project.
It's been an interesting trip. A list of the passes done during this trip are as follows:
ZA - Lichen Pass
ZA - Oliviershoek Pass
ZA - Lower Lotheni "Passes"
ZA - Sani Pass Up
ZA - Sani Pass Down
ZA - Sani Pass Up
LS - Kotsiphela Pass (Black Mountain Pass)
LS - Tlaeeng Pass
LS - Khalo La Lithunya (Pass of Guns)
LS - Mahlasel Pass
LS - Moteng Pass
Day 1 : Pretoria -> Clarens
Not much to say about this. We took the generic drive which was Pretoria, through Joeys on the N3, exiting the N3 at Villiers and then Frankfort -> Tweeling -> Bethlehem -> Clarens. Nothing much to report on. Road is all fine except around Tweeling, where Bogans like Desmond (I think his forum nickname is "malkoppie") have really stuffed up the road. A very long stretch is under repair and you drive on the dirt next to the road.
Arriving in Clarens, we checked into a chalet called "The View". Awesome spot. It's on the Northern border of the town. Thereafter, we had a few beers at various spots around town before having dinner at the Grouse and Claret.
Heading home, we got a fire burning in the hearth / woodstove thing in the chalet. Really nothing much further to report...