Pretty, but also pretty dangerous!
Make sure you’re well informed, well prepared and well stocked before tackling the dirt roads of the Eastern Free State and Lesotho. The world is postcard-pretty, but also completely isolated, says Amanda van Blerk.
The Eastern Free State and Lesotho have great dirt roads and mountain trails, but don’t just take any road and expect to come out unscathed on the other side. Just ask Herman Tolken and Andrew van Wyk from Vredendal in the Western Cape, and Waltie and Trichia van der Walt from Mokopane in Limpopo. Their “quick afternoon drive” outside Clarens turned into a long, cold night in the mountains. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the Van der Walts also had trouble with their vehicle, right there in the middle of nowhere. At least the group could support each other, and luckily for them the farmer couple Bees and Amanda van Blerk rushed into the mountains with their Isuzu KB 300 single cab to help. formations. On the opposite side of the river is Lesotho with specks of thatchroof rondawels and houses against the mountainside. The deeper you go into the mountains, the less sign of life there is. Our immediate neighours are guest farms, with one of them, Old Mill Drift, a short distance away. It’s the closest you’ll find to untouched wilderness in this busy tourist area. It’s beautiful as you move further and further into the bundus with the Caledon flowing to the right of you. You also often see snow on the Malutis. It’s here where the four adventurers’ trouble started. You could even say that the beautiful landscape played a nasty trick on them.
Beautiful, but... You could say the Eastern Free State is both famous and infamous: Famous for its incredible natural splendour, and infamous for its low temperatures. Nature lures you in, but the cold can be unbearable. My husband and I farm here next to the R711 between Fouriesburg and Clarens, and we know these parts like the back of our hands. The Caledon River runs all along our farm. It’s a world rich in history and sandstone
Nature calls
Herman and Andrew and their wives Dienie en Zelda are staying over in one of Clarins’s many guesthouses. Herman and Andrew don’t feel like browsing through the quaint town’s shops with the ladies and decide to go for a drive; maybe even put the Land Cruiser through a 4x4 test or two. The mountains beckon and they take the R711 between Clarens and Fouriesburg. Next to the road they see a Mercedes ML with Limpopo number plates. As any good West Coaster would do, they stop to chat. And wouldn’t you know, Waltie and Trichia in the ML are also looking for some adventure and beautiful scenery, and they decide to join the guys. From the R711 they turn off to Old Mill Drift. If only they made a U-turn at Old Mill their wives wouldn’t have been angry or worried. But the twin-track winding path looks too inviting, and after all, they do have the right set of wheels and time is on their side. Old Mill Drift’s owner isn’t there. They talk to the caretaker and yes, he says, he doesn’t mind if they drive where they want to drive. He confirms the road runs over the mountain to Clarens. What he doesn’t say is that no four-wheel drive ever goes there and that the route is now only used by baboons and donkeys. “Just keep right and right and right. The tar road is on the other side of the mountain,” the caretaker instructs, and gives them – thankfully – the owner’s business card. That card would later save them.
The road less travelled
The caretaker didn’t lie: There is indeed a road running over the mountain in the direction of Clarens, but the last maintenance work on this road was done in the early ’90s. You might find a baboon or two here, maybe even a few donkeys, but a person in a vehicle? Definitely not. (On the other side of the mountain, on the way down, there is a 4x4 route that you can drive with a guide, but there has been loss of life and there is more than one 4x4 wreck.) The road that the Vredendallers and Mokopaners take is not much more than an eroded strip that indicates that there was once a road here. It’s definitely not a road for an afternoon drive to Clarens. But how could they have known? After all, they did ask. At first everything goes well. The road is rough but manageable. They leave Old Mill behind and wind from the one farm road to the next. At the first right-hand turn-off, up the first steep mountain, the former owner tried to play Thomas Bain. Here and there is cement road and there are sharp hair-pin bends laid out. But >
that was decades ago, and with the earth that’s eroded in between the concrete your vehicle now basically has to climb stairs. But the two vehicles continue to crawl up the mountain. Luckily they miss the left-hand turn-off further up the mountain and the valley’s hills are less steep. It’s untouched here high up against the mountain. There isn’t a house, person, or vehicle, only the odd Lesotho cow grazing, and angora goats and sheep. After taking the wrong turn-off and continuing for a few kilometres, they completely go off the narrow path. The sun is setting fast and it’s too late to turn around. They are completely lost but they stay calm and decide not to drive any further. No one can drive here in the dark. Luckily there is cellphone reception and Herman and Andrew can at least let their wives know they’re safe. It’s an icy cold night in the cars, without blankets and food. And very little water...
Bees to the rescue
By dawn, it’s drama upon drama. It’s freezing, the ML’s battery is flat, and they don’t have jumper cables. And you can’t push start the automatic Mercedes and the Vredendallers don’t want to leave their new friends in the mountain. They phone the number on the business card. Old Mill’s owner, Yvonne McCarthy, isn’t home yet but gives them the number of someone called Bees, who knows the area well. Bees is busy counting and taking care of his cows when he gets the call: They’re lost in the mountains and can’t explain where exactly they are. Can Bees please get a helicopter to bring them jumper cables? But in these parts there are no helicopters to call and Bees has also never been on call for a rescue mission in the mountains. But he hears the panic on the other side of the phone and he knows: today the cows will have to wait. Bees saved Waltie’s number as “Man in the mountain”. He informs the Man in the mountain that they must wait. We’re going to look for them and bring the cables. Old Mill isn’t far from our farm and Bees knows this part of the world. But the people in the mountain can’t tell us exactly where they are. Waltie, the Man in the mountain, says they are on a plateau and the river is below them. He send coordinates, but it’s an address somewhere in Soweto. The cellphone reception is also not so great anymore. Maybe the battery is a bit flat, like the car’s. They can be anywhere in a 60 km2 radius. It can take ages before we find them. We’ll have to move, otherwise they’ll spend another night there. Bees talks to the Man in the mountain again: “If I haven’t found you in two hours I’ll turn around and send an official search party.” The Man in the mountain warns us that the road is very bad. We know that, but I wish I knew that they had nothing, absolutely nothing, with them. Then I
The deeper you go into the mountains, the less sign of life there is.
would have made sandwiches and some coffee and we would have just left half an hour later. But in our haste we threw the cables on the back of the bakkie and I grabbed my camera for early-morning photos in that unspoilt part of the world that I love so much. It’s quarter past seven when we head towards the mountains in our Isuzu.
Tracking time
We hit the road past Old Mill, and outside the farm’s border we start looking for vehicle tracks. Here and there we see clear tracks. At the turn-off right, however, it disappears completely in the tall, whitefrosted grass. We call a Basotho who’s busy carting around wood for the winter. No, he hasn’t seen any lost souls. We crawl on to where the road forks to the left and right in two twin tracks. No tracks here. While we’re looking at each exasperatedly, a Basotho on a donkey appears out of nowhere. Bees asks in his best Sotho if this man maybe knows about a vehicle and people in the mountain. Yes, says the man on the donkey, but they’re not on this side. We need to drive back to the last homestead and take the road up the mountain. His people in Lesotho phoned him to say there were people who took the old mountain path to Clarens and they’re way up top. Bees has a light bulb moment. He now knows where they are. We turn back and tackle the road up the mountain. I don’t think anyone has ever done a difficulty grade for this route. It’s almost impassable but we know two vehicles have gone up before us. What type of vehicles, we don’t know. We can only speculate. It has to be something with good ground clearance... Something like a Land Rover, Land Cruiser, or maybe a Geländewagen. We slowly crawl up and down the hills, through the ravines and around hair- >
pin bends. Ouhoutbos obstructs the view and in many places we drive blind so Bees hangs out of the window to see the line he’s driving.
We see you!
Around the hill of the hundredth valley, Bees sees something shine in the distance. Yes, it’s them! We slowly drive over another hill, then another one, and another one. We move on through ditches and turns. And then we see both vehicles. But how on Earth did the Mercedes ML get there? And how is it going to make it all the way back? We greet everyone and the guys connect the cables. Waltie has since phoned a mechanic to ask what to do with the flat battery and the jumper cables. They make sure the ML’s lights are switched on so the sudden surge in electricity doesn’t damage the computer system. The Isuzu moans and groans and soon the ML is alive again. Everything goes smoothly and we expect to be home in about two hours. But it wasn’t going to be that simple... The Vredendallers and Mokopaners were going to drive back in our tracks. We say goodbye and start crawling back home. At the tip of the second valley, Bees stops to pack some rocks. “For the ML,” he says and I see the hurt in his eyes. He has never packed a single rock for himself or for the Isuzu – and we’ve driven many really bad roads. I help build a track for the ML, and we continue. Bees later pulls to the side of the road in a clearing to see if the ML is coming. The Merc and the Cruiser are driving carefully but comfortably over the packed rocks, but against the slope the ML struggles. Bees goes to help and leads it out easily. We greet for the last time, and at one o’clock we walk into the house. An hour later the Cruiser comes past on the highway, but not the ML. Bees phones them. There are more problems. The ML has a flat tyre and there’s something wrong with the spare tyre. Waltie is waiting at the ML and the Vredendallers are going to get the wheel fixed. For the strangers in our part of the world it must have felt like the nightmare was never going to end. But all’s well that ends well. The wheel was fixed in Clarens, and that night the group got to know each other better. And now they know what everyone should know: You don’t drive the Eastern Free State and Lesotho’s dirt roads without proper planning, water, food, blankets and warm clothes. Don’t be mislead by the short distances, which are often very difficult roads. Get reliable info beforehand and turn around before it’s too late and nature claims more lives.