The road into Lesotho begins winds steeply uphill shortly after you cross the border from South Africa. This tiny land-locked country is sparsely populated, very rural, and very poor. But the scenery is pretty impressive. On the sides of craggy mountain peaks perch picturesque villages consisting of rondavels - round mud huts with thatched roofs.
We'd left Joburg at some ungodly hour that morning in order to miss the traffic and be on the ski slopes by lunchtime. After breakfast in Bethlehem (worth the visit just so I can say I've been to Bethlehem), we arrived at the border about 9, and for the next hour we drove through the mountains of Lesotho.
The ski resort itself was quite an extraordinary sight - in amongst the deserted, barren hills lies a white strip of snow. It does snow here, but this slope was maintained by a series of snow cannon. The slope itself was perhaps 600m long - not exactly Val d'Isere. We found our swiss-style chalet, which was comfortable enough, got our ski gear sorted out, and tramped off to the slope.
I hadn't skied for about 5 years, but it soon came back. I spent a fair amount of time teaching beginners, and then on the second day switched to snow-boarding for a bit more of a challenge. Conditions were surprisingly good considering how old the snow was. I must admit I did feel slightly smug that I was actually better than most of the people there. The South Africans tend to be very good at most sports, and very competitive, so this was a rare feeling for me!
The apres-ski was of course great fun - a very small bar packed with drunken South Africans. At one stage a group naked run in the snow took place - I stayed in the nice warm bar thanks very much.
