Ts’ehlanyane National Park
• spoils and pampering • mountain serenity • luxurious R&R
‘This is the life.’ I’ve kicked off my shoes and lounged my way to the private deck of Maliba Mountain Lodge, slumping from the chaise longue through each of three different kinds of cushioned furniture (don’t you love a good armchair?), careful not to spill my gin and tonic. Ahead of me is the backdrop for today’s schedule of slothful opulence, a valley that carves its way north – green, fecund and like nowhere else in Lesotho at this time of year. This place is home to one of the country’s last remaining indigenous woodlands, rare mountain fynbos found nowhere else on the planet, and Berg bamboo that grows on the banks of the streams that pour down from the Maloti Mountains. And because of it, Ts’ehlanyane, 56 000 hectares of protected mountain terrain, has long been a secret of Bloem weekend escapees (families, honeymooners and groups of friends) looking for an exotic cross-border escape that offers real luxury at a very reasonable penny. ‘Yes, I think this is all that I’ll do today,’ I say as I sink into a bath (one of those with the adorable feet you only see in period movies) with a pair of binoculars, ready to do some bird spotting from the shallows. I’m stirred only for dinner, a fine three-course affair at the main lodge, complete with a boozy tiramisu dessert. Between the tiramisu and four-poster bed, and the fact that I’ve just come off the back
of a four-week 4x4 trip of eating mostly mud, it all gets a little overwhelming and I have to have a lie-down. The following morning I swap G&Ts for hiking boots and head into the mountains to the Black Pools. It’s an easy trek, thanks in part to the dry river crossings. It is the end of winter, the snowmelts are hanging on for their lives and the rains are imminent. Green mountain bamboo shuffles in the breeze. So unique is this flora to the region that the park’s name – Ts’ehlanyane – is the local word for this bamboo. Overhead, weavers and shrikes dance between the seemingly petrified trees. I realise I am the only person on the trail this morning. And, in fact, just one of two parties checked into the lodge for the weekend. It gets me wondering again. Even here, on the opposite end of the country, miles from Sehlabathebe, where access is easy, amenities splendid and staff available at every turn, it’s still possible to have a wilderness all to yourself. Of course, the season has something to do with it, but it’s a rarity nonetheless. At Black Pools a green signboard tells me I can continue in a number of directions: north-west to Mats’a Mararo or Three Cascades (5,4 kilometres) and the Valley of the Pools (5,6 kilometres); or east to the Holomo Waterfall (3,7 kilometres). But somehow, yet again, the thought of what awaits me back at Maliba Lodge has gotten the better of me. My stomach growls. I turn back and in no time at all I’m tucking into a three-course lunch on the lodge’s main viewing deck, which then leaves me sprawled out on the deck’s wicker furniture for an hour, like a bloated hippo with no shame – the only exercise I’m doing is some maths in my head, wondering if it’s at all possible to stay another day. For my final act of indulgence, I decide that I simply cannot bear my own weight any more and decide to see Ts’ehlanyane from the back of a horse, on a pony trek. The ride, on well-trained ponies, follows an easy track along the Hlotse River and is the ideal way to end an easy weekend exploring what I like to call ‘Lesotho Lite’ – the perfect nature escape for first-timers to the Kingdom in the Sky.