Monday, January 20th, 2025
World Tour Day 79
From our hostel, Sani Lodge, we took a day tour of the Sani Pass. It was a nice relaxed pace after our five days of backpacking the Giants Cup Trail. This day tour started off by driving in South Africa to get to the Sani Pass. We passed many wild flowers and mountain views.
After border control we were stamped out of South Africa and into a new country of Lesotho. The roads up until this point were paved and smooth. The Sani Pass itself, however, is another story. The pass is long and took us around 1 hour to get up, with many tight switch backs going along the mountain. There were large trucks, taxi buses, and tours like ours making their way up. We stopped for an amazing fika halfway of tea and banana bread. The views were incredible.
After the pass we drove around a highland village in Lesotho at the top. This village exists due to the many shepherds who come through. We saw Angora goats and Merino sheep in herds roaming freely with their shepherds close behind. There were rolling hills and more Drakensberg mountains. Part of our tour was getting to have lunch in a rotunda house made from rock, mud, thatched roof, and cow dung for the floor. Our lunch was beans and bread cooked over hot coals by a local grandma.
We ended the tour by getting some sodas and hanging out at the edge of the top of the escarpment overlooking the pass. The day had some rain but we ended up avoiding getting too wet and had a spectacular view. The drive back to South Africa was equally as slow as the drive up, but it was nice to see this area of Lesotho.
