Countries Within Countries

Lesotho

Once we decided to visit home for a week, we had a couple of days to kill before we flew out of Johannesburg, just enough time to pop into Lesotho to snowboard at Afriski. We called Hertz to apply for a permit to cross the border with their rental car, but it was Friday and it takes two business days to process. So we decided since Africa is fairly lax with paperwork in general, we would wing it and see what happens.

So we arrived at the border and it was empty. This should be relatively easy! We got our stamps and the border security told us to pull the car up for inspection. And what was the first question he asked …

“Is this a rental vehicle?”

Ugh.

We told him it was and he asked for the cross-border permit. We told him that we applied for it and were waiting for the email. He said they only accept paper copies. So we said the phrase that starts it all which we learned from Trevor Noah’s book…

“Sir, is there anything we can do?”

In typical African fashion, he said he was thirsty and if we could help him out, he could get us across. So in exchange for a “drink” we gave him PJ’s registration which he put in the system. Coons gave him a sly handshake with 100 Rand (~$7) and we were on our way in Lesotho. After an hour and a half driving through Lesotho, we rounded the corner and saw a long strip of snow surrounded by a lot of dirt. We made it!

At Afriski, we were able to snag a couple of bunk beds in the Backpacker Lodge, and we made reservations for dinner at their Sky bar where they have live music every night. The food was great, the drinks were cheap, and the music was classic acoustic American. We were stoked for tomorrow.

We started the morning off snowboarding. The single trail they made was about a mile long and we hot lapped it on the t-bar until the afternoon where we decided to switch to skis. The weather was so lovely, similar to spring skiing conditions at home, and Coons went full tank top (one of his favorite things to do)!

As the sun started to set, we watched an overrated demo show over mint hot chocolates before our dinner reservations. At 8pm, there was a quiz night, so we teamed up with three South Africans to win it all! The South Africans were part of a bigger group that invited us back to their cabin to continue the party, and we stayed up chatting over snacks and brews like we were in college again. It was a great day!

The next morning we grabbed breakfast and headed back to Joburg. We dropped our big bags and laundry off at Westmoreland Lodge for safekeeping and headed to the airport to drop our car and wait for our flight.

After our whirlwind week visiting friends and family, we were back at our second home, Westmoreland Lodge in Joburg. Ian, our mechanic, hit us with a phrase that was becoming all too common:

Your car still isn’t ready.

Eswatini

Still determined not to let the absence of PJ derail our trip, we rented another car to visit Eswatini. Fun fact: for their 50^th anniversary of Independence in 2018, Swaziland changed their name to Eswatini which means “land of the Swazis.” This time, we did apply and receive a permit to enter the country – albeit after several hours at the counter on a Friday of a long holiday weekend. The border crossing took two hours longer than expected, and of course no one asked us for a permit this time, but we finally arrived at Legends Backpacker Lodge, navigating the last hour in Eswatini through the rain and thick fog.

In Eswatini we visited three parks: Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary, Hlane Nation Park, and Malolotja National Park. The first nature reserve was close by and we did two small hikes where we saw zebras, springbok, and some huuuge crocodiles. We saw the warthogs cross our trail and they were so close to us!

The second day we ventured to the most popular park in the country, Hlane, to do a rhino-specifc game drive that had us driving around looking for white rhinos so we could get out and walk up close to them. We were the only two people on the midday tour and had the truck all to ourselves! After driving around for almost an hour, not seeing anything and getting a little worried, we came upon a mom and her enormous three-month-old baby. We nervously hopped out and followed the guide single-file to get a closer view. While they certainly knew we were there, they thankfully stayed put in the shade.

We hopped back in the truck for another five minutes before stopping to walk a little into the woods to find another set of three. All of a sudden we heard a noise behind us and looked back at the safari vehicle to see two more in front of the truck. We were surrounded! We slowly walked back to the rear of the car with the guide and got back into the car once the rhinos walked further into the woods. What a humbling experience to be so close to these humongous creatures. On the way back, we encountered a huge group of about 14 more rhinos, one of which was sitting right in the middle of the road. Once he saw us coming, he begrudgingly got up and walked over to the others, and it seemed like he wanted to charge us for a second. We left the park safely with our guide and then we did some self-driving where the coolest thing we saw was the marabou stork. This bird looked pretty menacing perched up tall in that African tree. The park must have been big because we didn’t see a single elephant, giraffe, or black rhino in the park (driving around in the heat of the day didn’t help either).

The next day we left Legends and went to Malolotja. We walked 1,000 feet down in the hot sun to this two-tiered waterfall that wasn’t all that impressive due to low winter water levels and then all the way back up. We wanted to go to another set of falls but it was closed because of endangered species nesting, so we hopped back on the road for a much quicker border crossing this time.

In total, we spent less than a week in these two countries combined, and although that wasn’t the plan, we think we did some of the coolest and most memorable excursions. This is now the fourth continent we’ve skied on. And we walked with white rhinos! Despite all the car trouble, we certainly have made the best of a crappy situation. It’s things like this we’ll remember forever!