Snow in December

During December 1995 I decided to do a trip to Lesotho, especialy Sani Pass and the eastern region of Lesotho. Sanet would accompany me on this trip and the intention was to camp most of the way , something which we had done quite often by this stage.

We left Pretoria on the Saturday afternoon. Herklaas and Sanet followed in my car, the first stop was Standerton were we stayed overnight at my mom's place. The weather on Saturday was superb for riding, not a cloud in the sky and no wind. The ride to Standerton was uneventfull and I rode in my typical "summer dress" - a short sleeve shirt and a pair of jeans.

Overrnight it clouded up and by the Sunday morning it was raining. We set of early and wanted to make it down to Hiberdene on the South Coast were Sanet's folks live while it was still light. The rainy start did not bother me too much, after all - I had my waterproof riding jacket and It would most probably clear up by the time I reached Perdekop. How wrong could I have been in my assesment.

By the time I got to Perdekop the streams of water was running across the main road and one of these streams almost managed to succesfully knock my feet of the footrests (It is an interesting combination when you can hardly see where you're going doing about 110 km/hr and you hit a mini river in the road). The rain got worse and luckily Sanet and Herklaas followed in my car with the rest of the gear. I pushed on through the rain - I was soaked by this time and figured it didn't make any sense to turn back. Little did we know but the rain was one of those cyclone type jobs that come through once every couple of years. By the time we reached Mooirivier the road between Durban and Pietermaritzburg was closed. We were forced to take the alternative route via Highflats. Luckuly the rain eased up. We made it to Hiberdene after about 8 hours, I was tired and wet and desperately in need of a warm bath and some rest. We would wait a few days before we headed of to Lesotho.

Lesotho is also referred to as the Mountain Kingdom mainly due to the fact the most of the country sits on top of the Maluti and Drakensberg Mountain ranges. A hilly country where most of the rural population still use Basoetoe ponies for their main means of transport.

We headed for Lesotho after about four days of drying out and giving the weather time to clear up. The plan was fairly straight forward (at least so we thought at this stage). We would enter Lesotho at Sani Pass, camp on the Sani Flats the first night, and then slowly make our way down to Quacha's Nek after filling up with petrol at Mokhotlong. We decided not to stay at the Sani Top Chalet since we had a tight budget to run on and wanted to camp anyway. The weather held up and we set off. Herklaas followed in "Ou Grote" (The landrover). The idea was to use the Landrover as a support vehicle in case something went wrong with the bike, we also put all the camping gear, firewood, food and drinks on the Landrover.

The first day's going was good and we made it to the top and set up camp about 10 kilometers after the Sani Top Chalet (no longer on the flats). We asked permision from one of the tribal elders to camp on their ground and made sure that we picked a spot far enough from the huts not to disturb the locals, and not to be disturbed by the locals.

The next morning we set of for Mokhotlong, a quick refuel and we would start to make our way down south. We would be able to make sufficient progress during the day to get close to the Quacha's nek customs post.

Our support vehicle decided to pack it on on the way back, on one of the uphill streches which lasted for about 3 kilometers the Landrover started dying - the symptoms was typical of fuel starvation. We checked the known fule filters and found nothing wrong but she still wouldn't go.

It was not a pretty sight as we made it to the Sani flats and we could see another stormfront rolling in. Luckily we made it to the Chalet before the front came in. Somehow Herklaas managed to get a ride with a friendly couple from Pretoria who passed the broked down Landrover. The decided that he would be better off at the Chalet and left him there with us.

The next morning I was of to an early start. The customs post at Sani Top opened at 7 am and the South African customs post at the bottom opened at 7:30 am. The 8km ride would take me close on 20 minutes chasing a bunch of Toyota 4x4 Hilux bakkies (Pickup trucks for the Americans, Ute's for the Ausies) down the mountain. It was an interesting excersise since it started raining again overnight and the road was slippery as "snot". Once I cleared the SA customs post I still had a few kilometers of wet dirt / clay road left to ride before I made it to the main road. This turned out to be an interesting excercise. By the time I got to the Sani Pass hotell golfcourse it was clear to me that the slippery road had everyone on it concentrating - this was enforced when I saw a Landrover in fulltime 4x4 approaching from the front running sideways on the slippery concoction. My reaction to this sight was as follows: - "O fok !" after which the bike promptly dissapeared from underneath me. The chap in the Landrover was concentrating so much that he did not even notice the GS hitting the dirt next to him.

I picked up the bike and carried on to Underberg. I bought some spares (condensor and points) which we though might be playing up in the Landrover (since we checked all known fuel filters) and started to make my way back up the pass.

About halfway up the pass a truck broke down on one of the narrow sections of the pass. All traffic was pretty much stuck and nobody was going anywhere fast - unless you were on a bike. I paid for assistance with some cigaretes and got two of the locals to help me manouver the bike around the truck without sending it off the mountain. (this was about 10 am) and proceeded up the mountain. Wet and dirty I decided to call it a day when I got to Sani Top. We had a couple of beers and settled in next to the fire. By now the weather had cooled down significantly (especially if you take into consideration that it was the 21st of December - mid summer). We would go and retreive the Landrover the next morning.

The Sanit Top Chalet is not what you would rate as a hotel or even fall in the same class, but it was comfortable. The local staff was friendly and helpfull. That night one of the local staff that goes by the name of "Looksharp" and knows almost no English made the following forecast "Snow tonight". Yeah right madala we thought, maybe you had too much of the local brew. It's mid December in Southern Africa, and anyway it doesn't snow down here - Wrong ! once again. That night we had about 2 inches of snow. Not enough to ski, but enough to make it "moer koud" to ride in.

By now our trip was nearing the end. We just had to retreive the Landrover and make our way back to Hiberdene. Herklaas got a lift from another friendly South African couple who dropped him off at the Landrover and I followed on the GS. We attempted to replcae the points and condencer but with the limited tools we had were undable to do this. We decided to strugle back to Sani Top and down the mountain from where we would be able to get some assistance. Halfway back it dawned on us that there was a third petrol filter inside the fuel pump which we had not yet checked, and luckily the GS's plug spanner fitted nicely on the cap to get it removed.

We were not too surprised when we found that the petrol filter was almost completely blocked - or as the Afrikaners quite often put it - "So toe soos 'n kleios se gat!"  We hurled the filter into the distance and all of a sudden the Landrover had a new life. We managed to make it all the way back to Hiberdene without any further mishaps.

I still enjoyed this trip, even though we did not manage to complete our intended route - I guess that's a valid excuse to go back.

All Images (c) Lodewyk & Sanet Steyn unless otherwise noted. All images contain embedded Digimark watermarks.