My blog posts have been decidedly scrapbooking heavy recently. Taking the guided study critique class definitely had my attention drawn to scrapbooking and it was fun for me to share the changes to help me process what I was learning. I’ve created 27 layouts since January – compared to 89 for all of 2012. I’m definitely on a roll. The class is over and while it’s nice to have a small break I’m hoping it will reconvene soon!
I promise, however, that my life is not ALL scrapbook, scrapbook, scrapbook. The last two weekends, in fact, have been filled with great weekend trips. They have been the kind of trips where I reflect on just how great my life is here. First a group of friends made the 9-10 hour drive out to Sehlabathebe National Park in the south east corner of Lesotho. When we arrived our views started out like this:
Fog. The same problem I had the one other time I’ve been to Sehlabathebe in October 2011. Unlike last time, however, the park staff said it would be okay to hike out to the waterfall. (Last time they told us that we would get lost in the fog and that they wouldn’t come find us.) The hike was not as difficult as the park staff made it out to be last time. This time they pointed us towards a rock that looks like a surfboard on top of a mountain and said it’s on the other side of the next hill. We ended up on top of the wrong mountain at one point, found a “phantom” waterfall and then eventually the right one:
We got back from our hike just in time for really heavy fog to roll in. So heavy that we couldn’t see the house from 10 meters away. So we spent the afternoon and evening hanging out in the living room with the fireplace blazing, cooking, drinking and playing games. (I taught some unwilling participants to play Bohnanza, I love that game!) Since we weren’t able to hike out to the rock formations on the other side of the lodge on Saturday afternoon we made plans to get up early for a sunrise hike. This ended up being one of the best things I’ve ever done in Lesotho because it started with views like this:
and then turned into these views:
Some of the most stunning panoramas I have ever seen. It was a photographers DREAM. I took so many pictures trying to capture what I was seeing and I’m so glad that we got up early to do the hike. I was in AWE. We returned around 8am, packed up and made the 9 hour drive back to Maseru stopping for this last group shot on the way out of the park:
Sehlabathebe is remote even by Lesotho standards and in a country that isn’t exactly a hot spot for tourism making the park a place that very few people in the world are ever going to see. There are no villages near the waterfall or the lodge. I wonder if people who live in the nearest village even know that the waterfall is there? How did they find it in the first place? It was Lesotho’s first national park – established in the late 1960s – so obviously someone had the foresight to protect the land. I’m really glad that I made the trip again out there to get the views that we had this time. I think it is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been.
