Apparently people from Scotland have never heard of S'mores.

DRACHENSBURG AND LESOTHO!

We got picked up mid-day Friday to go to Drachensburg, a small town 3 hours north of Durban. We ended up going in a van with a Scottish family and an energetic driver named Rafael. Expecting another run-down hostel, you can imagine our surprise when we arrived at a magestic log cabin in the middle of a farm lined by green hills with horses roaming. It was incredible! See the pictures! The next day we got up and went on a 3 mile hike in the Ukhahlamba (no idea) park and learned some history of the Bushmen Zulu’s who lived there long ago. This is another one where I must refer you to the photos. We got some excellent insect photos, and a great one of a lizard I might consider submitting to NG. The scenery was incredible, with canyons and hills on either side of our walk. So fun! We also came across a suspension bridge over a small river, and for fun I decided to go across the bridge… underneath… and have the funniest picture of an ‘oh shit!’ moment of me hanging from the bridge across the water. We got a treat in the weather too, we had sunlight and blue sky the whole day!
Later that day, we went horseback riding up in the hills of Drachensburg. I had this brown horse, a lazy girl named Flash, and our guide had to keep coming back and yelling at Flash to go. Apparently I am not a horseman. It was a great day, and we had tea at the top of a large hill overlooking all of the countryside. We even went down and got to let the horses run. What an excellent transition it is from trotting to running! It was almost surreal and seemed to go in slow motion as I stood in the stirrups trying to hold the reins and not fall forward as the horse was hurtling through the field. When we got back and got off the horses I was expecting to hurt and walk funny, but for some reason it wasn’t that bad and Flash definitely seemed to be more excited getting back than leaving. We got some pretty neat photos of the whole thing, check them out!
Saturday night was probably the best night we have had so far, we played a bunch of games with the Scots and made a huge campfire and had s’mores. Apparently s’mores is an American thing, no one but us had had them before, and an Indian family living nearby were just as impressed as the Scots and Rafael was. We rocked out to different tunes on Andy’s iPod and all-in-all had a great night.
On Sunday, we got up at 8:00 and headed to Sani Pass, the no-mans-land between South Africa and Lesotho, a small kingdom-country within South Africa. Sani Pass. Just the two words make me cringe. Sani Pass is a road that goes up a valley to Lesotho. If you could even call it a road! It was like a hiking trail, and there were rocks and gouges the whole way up it. A normal car would not make it up it, the only things able to get up it were large 4x4’s. It took roughly 2 hours to make it up Sani Pass to Lesotho, and apparently the whole thing was like 14 km’s. At the top, we got our passports stamped and officially entered the Kingdom of Lesotho. See the photos for this one, the immigration office was a shack with a fence. After taking pictures, we were told by our guide that it was quite illegal and we could have gotten arrested so that we needed to put cameras away haha. “What cameras?” became our motto of Lesotho customs and we hightailed it into the country to see the border towns. The people lived in mud and rock huts (see photos) with stone and mud floors heated by a large stone fire pit in the center. It was quite an ingenious system where the whole floor became heated through an in-ground fire in the middle. The whole area was quite sad in its simplicity and in all honesty I would go quite crazy there. My photos are quite limited for this in the fact that it just felt.. wrong. The only ones I have are of houses, and the one lady who our guide knew and introduced us to. There were other tourist buses and they went right up to the people and took pictures. It just didn't seem right so we went and talked with people, leaving the cameras in their cases. After the town tour, we went to Sani Pass cafe, situated at 9400 feet and making it the highest pub in Africa. The pub sat on a bluff overlooking the whole pass and provided one of the most amazing views of the valley into South Africa. After lunch we headed back down the pass and home. The ride down was much easier than the ride up, and it took much less time. Once down, we met up with Rafael and headed home, exhausted after a long and adventurous weekend.