After our wonderful holiday in June, we decided to tackle Lesotho again, this time entering Lesotho via Sani Pass. Sani Pass a well known pass open only to 4 x 4's, so for those of us who own one, it is a challenge waiting to be ticked off!
We (our family, Roland and Caron, and my folks) left on Thursday afternoon and descended en mass on my very hospitable and generous in-laws, Selma and Bruno, who stay in Howick. This gave us the perfect location to begin our trip to Sani Pass, via Underberg. What I have not yet mentioned is that SOMEHOW Roland persuaded Carl that they had to try and CYCLE up Sani Pass. Yip - cycle!!! It is a 22km long pass, with an ascent of 1100m. Despite my best efforts to dissuade them from such madness, they left at 7am with Caron and my dad and drove to the Sani Pass Hotel and began their intrepid cycle from there, while Caron and Dad seconded in the car. This meant that mom, the kids and I had a far more leisurely start to our day because we gave them a 2 hour head start. The big bonus about Carl having accepted the challenge of riding meant that I got the opportunity of driving up Sani Pass. If Carl had been in the car, there would have been no way in hell he would EVER have let ME drive! Despite the fact that we both have a 4 x 4 course under our belts. Mom was very encouraging and we crept our way up slowly but surely. There were enough cars also doing the Pass, so I was hopeful that if something had gone wrong, a true gentleman would've helped the damsels in distress.
Our timing was perfect and we met the other group at the pub at the top of the pass only about 15 minutes after they arrived.
Did they make it? I know you are all asking! They did about 16 kms, but the last 6kms got so incredibly steep, and energy was flagging, so they loaded their bikes onto the car and drove the last bit (naturally, Roland snatched the wheel back from Caron who had been managing just fine up until then....). Once in Lesotho we drove another 160kms or so to Afri-Ski (which took about 4 hours, the road is so awful). It was a big relief to arrive at the relative luxury of the Chalet at Afri-ski (no snow this time, sadly!). Despite the length of journey, it was absolutely beautiful as my pics will testify.
Saturday was spent reading, relaxing, eating and sleeping (girls and Ali) and cycling (Roland, Carl and Dad - did they not have enough the day before, I ask you???). 
On Sunday we went home the usual route via Calendonspoort. We all stopped off for lunch in Clarens, a lovely quaint, but very touristy town in the Free State. Seeing as our whole weekend had been about the drive and not the destination, we went through the Golden Gate Nature Reserve, yet an0ther spectacular part of the world which all South Africans should do before they die! This lead us to Harrismith, at which point Carl joined Roland, Caron and my folks to go back to JHB, and I headed South again to Howick for the night.
On Monday, I went with the kids down to Selborne, and this time was accompanied by Selma and Bruno, as well as Carl's sister Laurie and her two girls, Anna and Erin. The weather wasn't fabulous - very windy, but at least not raining. And being real Vaalies (well, we are, Carl's family aren't) we still went to the beach, and spent the rest of the day picking sand out of unmentionable places. The house at Selborne is looking lovely, but the golf course is looking so dry - they are in the middle of a drought there. A real crises for the normally sub-tropical South Coast.
On Friday we packed up and I did the mammoth 670km drive back up to JHB.
All in all, we did 2100kms over the 10 days, of which I drove a big chunk of that. If I don't get behind the wheel of a car for a few days, that'll be fine by me.
