Equestrian (South Africa/Lesotho, Part III)
Two sun-baked days later, stopping for lunch in the grasses atop a mountain plateau, I stopped to take notes while crouching in the paltry shade offered by a nearby bush. There hadn’t been much not worth mentioning, the sheer rampant joy of being alive could not be crushed by the saddle ache of a newly broken in rider with a belligerent horse.
After being rested and fed in the canyon lodge in Semonkong, we revealed our characters to our horses as they then did for us on the first mountain paths. No cars had ever been there, no electricity. The land was pristine and unspoiled, and I was getting a good look at it. My mount was stubborn and an extreme distaste for rocky, steep mountain cliffs earned him little respect from his fellow horses or our guide, but we had climbed some huge mountains together already. Marshy grassland, rocky ravines, mountainside villages. The children would shout out meek “bye-bye” calls in response to our hello greetings in Besotho; “Dumaela”. We came upon majestic waterfalls and smiling faces in untouched lands.
The sun was scorching us, our muscles ached from adapting to riding 8-10 hours a day, and some of us were caked in mud from encounters with the marshes. Natalie fought to control her powerful horse as he panicked in the sinking mud, getting stuck and eventually resigning himself to lying there, snacking on the nearby grass. Mmm, grass.
Andrea was fighting with her “Freespirit”, me with “Slow n’ Steady”, Andrew was turning pink, and none of us would even consider backing out.
As the sun set that night the clouds loomed, and the thunder on the mountaintops echoed my hunger. I sat in a small thatched roof hut huddled over a small bottle of bourbon and a candle. The table was set, and albeit two days on horseback into the mountains of Lesotho, with only bare essentials and a single change of clothes, the rainstorm came while we feasted on diced apple and onion spiced with masala, stuffed in gem squash and served with chickpeas on rice with hot sweet chutney, accompanied by South African wine.
The journey continued with a trumpeting call of roosters announcing it was time to hit the trail. Still raining, I finally had an excuse to use the poncho I’d been dragging around with me on travels for nearly two years. We saddled up and I immediately saw some major things going for the day. I switched mounts with our guide, who still struggled with my stubborn mount. My legs had adapted. I felt refreshed. We were greater skilled, and with a confident mount and confident rider we climbed up and down obstacles with little incident, surprising ourselves. The sun broke through mid afternoon and we made the steep climb to Malealea lodge, where we would spend our Christmas Eve. Truly unique, the local villagers sang and performed and we sampled local yeasty alcohol and celebrated together as family. Andrew proved somewhat of a Canadian folk hero, the end of the night came wrapped in my naiveté as I could not believe he carried a bottle of maple whisky with him all the way from Yellowknife.
We continued for three days more in intermittent sun and rain, we slid in the mud and lead our horses down treacherous sharp rocky gullies. We crossed rivers, the rapidly flowing waters from the rainfall reaching our knees on horseback. We rode through villages, chuckling at spray paint English signs on tin roofed shack walls “haircut.com”.
We danced with villagers and some other riders to music powered by a single solar panel and copper wire and stumbled upon huge gardens of marijuana surrounded by corn and potatoes and tiny cheeping baby chicks. “Chicklets?”
The road seemed easy to me then. I was relaxed on my horse, even hours into riding each day. It became more about the experience and the environment, the people. We spent a night in a village with a woman chief, who graciously offered us her home, and as we put together a meal in her tiny hut, trying not to get mud on her pink blankets, there was a knock on the door and the entire village greeted us in a concert and traditional Basotho dance. Sometimes situations like that can be such that you do not realize the true honor and significance until weeks afterwards.
When we finally returned to Semonkong, weary and dreaming of a hot shower, it was hard to part with my horse. We’d come through a lot together, and I wished I could better show him my gratitude for how well he had literally carried me through.
Our exit from Lesotho and back into South Africa was comparablysmooth to our rambunctious arrival, and as we lay in the pickup truck riding to the border with an old Besotho man, we were ready to seek out some relaxation along the Wild Coast of Southern Africa.
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