Nicky swings by Lesotho

After 2 weeks of safari-ing in South Africa we collected Nicky in tropical Durban and dragged her back to Lesotho via the Sani Pass (the first time ascending the pass for Matt and Jeepy). It was a short visit to Durban, just time to visit the lovely botanical gardens and watch the many colourful wedding parties who go to have their pictures taken there. We headed out of Durban to settle in for the night in the Drakensburgs ready for an early ascent of the Sani Pass. This will go down in history as the place Matt cooked and ate his first veggie BBQ! The clouds and rain that were threatening luckily had cleared when we woke and the journey up the Pass was as spectacular as ever. After a yummy breakfast at the top and some watching of the very cute and rare ‘ice rats’ that live up there we set off on the 9 hour drive back to Maseru. We were lucky enough to come across a large number of the elusive Bearded Vultures, indigenous to Lesotho and apparently under threat with only 50 breeding pairs left. They were huge, about the size of a toddler when sat on the ground and then with a 3m wing-span when in the air – awesome!

During the week, whilst Matt worked, Nicky and I set off to the Malealea lodge for 2 nights. It was a very stormy few days, lots of rain with spectacular thunder and lightning. Despite the storms we managed to fit in 2 lovely pony treks to the Pitseng Canyon and to the bush paintings. The lodge as always was super relaxing, so relaxing in fact we barely made it beyond 9pm both nights! Cards and chatting can be pretty exhausting!

We used the excuse of dropping Nicky off at the airport to spend another lovely weekend in Pretoria with Greg and Elonah. We visited the zoo and had a delicious meal out as well as the boys taking a trip to 4x4 Megaworld. How much fun can you fit in a weekend?!