Heather and Anita at Thaba Bosiu
Friday was a public holiday to observe the King’s Birthday so in addition to a shortened workweek I had lots of time to explore over the weekend. On Friday my roommate Anita and I ventured to Ladybrand – a town about 10 minutes into South Africa. Honestly, it was a lot smaller than I was expecting. People at the Foundation had talked up that a few people do grocery shopping in Ladybrand because there’s more selection. I guess that there is, but there’s not much else. In fact, I think Maseru has more in terms of actual shops but less variety in terms of product.
Saturday we ran errands in town. I’ll leave our taxi adventures for another day.
Finally, on Sunday, I come to the topic of this post – a trip to Thaba Bosiu. Thaba Bosiu (which means Mountain at Night) is where King Moshoeshoe the Great moved his people in the 1860s to make it easier to defend the country against South Africa. Anita & I hired a taxi for R200 roundtrip to take us to the Visitor’s Information Center there and wait while we hiked up. Then we paid R10 each plus R20 for a local guide to take us to the top of the mountain. It’s a 30-minute hike (harder than it looks from the bottom, but still not too difficult) to the top where we saw the ruins of King Moshoshoe the Great’s home during that time, Qi’Loane Hill (where the shape of the Basotho hat comes from) and a natural spring. Altogether it took about 3.5 hours round trip and was well worth the excursion to get out of town.
