A death-defying drive to the roof of Africa – and all for a swift pint
AS THE car pulls up outside Malachite Manor, owner Carrin Pieterse suggests why we’re better off taking an organised tour to the Sani Pass than attempting to drive ourselves.
‘The number of people who have stayed here, tried it themselves, then chickened out halfway through is immense,’ she chuckles.
‘Some have even asked for help turning the car around.’
It’s fair to say that the Sani Pass is no ordinary road. It connects the towns of Underberg and Himeville in South Africa to Lesotho. And it does so mainly travelling in one direction – up.
Sandile Mzolo, from Roof Of Africa tours, reckons he’s driven the road nearly 10,000 times in the past seven years, but he still ends up wrestling with the four-wheel-drive vehicle over the muddy, squelchy first section.
Heavy rains the previous day have turned the dirt track into a glorified bog. The bits that aren’t heavily corrugated are slippery, and we haven’t even got to the South African border post yet. That’s at an elevation of 6,450ft, and what follows is a death-defying climb up through no-man’s-land to the Lesotho border at Sani Top.
Reaching the summit at 9,425ft requires nerves of steel. Precipitous switchbacks and tight bends hang over the gorge.
Sandile calls the journey an ‘African massage’, and while the car suspension certainly gets a good workout, the clattering, juddering ascent is hardly conducive to relaxation.
The pseudo-road was first carved along the Drakensberg mountain ridges in 1958. It follows a crude donkey track that wool traders from Lesotho would brave in order to sell goods across the border.
Now the traffic coming down from Lesotho is in the shape of minibus taxis, colloquially known as ‘two-mores’ – because the drivers will always find a way to cram in two more people despite being full.
In the less hairy moments during the struggle to Sani Top, there’s a chance to take in the wildlife. Troops of baboons scurry along the rock faces, guinea pig-esque dassies look mightily cute next to waterfalls, and majestic antelopes roam the hillsides opposite. But they’re not what the Sani Pass is about. It’s about wincing at tight turns on sections with names such as Haemorrhoid Hill and Suicide Bend.
It’s about hoping that distant claps of thunder don’t mean we will later face a significantly more scary descent. And it’s about emerging in Lesotho’s mountain kingdom amid a thick blanket of cloud.
At the top is the Sani Mountain Lodge, which boasts of being the highest pub in Africa. And after that journey, a glass of Maluti beer is certainly required to calm the nerves. The driver had better abstain, though – he’s got to get us back down safely…