Sauna rhythm is ideal for Lesotho

If you want to learn about a country, try getting naked with the locals in a sauna. That wasn’t the plan when I sat myself down on the hot wooden bench behind a large woman wearing nothing but a shower cap. But we got chatting, as naked people do, when she asked why I was in Lesotho.

She is a lecturer in accountancy in one of the tiny kingdom’s two universities, and soon we were discussing the #FeesMustFall campaign in South Africa.

"I don’t understand South Africans; they want everything for free," she tutted.
Lesotho’s youngsters get free education up to tertiary level, but pay back the cost when they get a job after graduation. Now rampant unemployment is making that difficult, and many of her accountancy students graduate with no hope of finding work.
We threw even more water on the coals and sat in quiet contemplation.
The next day, six of us women squeezed into the rather small sauna at the Avani Lesotho Hotel & Casino, and one told interesting tales about her job with the tax department. What happens in the sauna stays in the sauna, but suffice to say that SA has Lesotho completely surrounded, and our financial shenanigans seem to be contagious.
To witness another sort of monetary madness, the Avani is ideal, because every night its casino is full of Chinese people playing blackjack, roulette and baccarat with as much energy as they expend in their day jobs.

 

 Lesotho is steadily filling with Chinese immigrants as their construction companies build infrastructure. They built Maseru’s convention centre and an industrial zone full of factories, and were involved in building the excellent roads to Mohale and Katse dams in the considerable Lesotho Highlands Water Project.

Gaming VIP manager Linky Engelbrecht gave a casino lesson, explaining the rules, enticing us with free chips and sharing insider tips on how not to lose our stash.
I enjoyed the element of intelligence needed for blackjack and pocketed a profit of R350 — about half the amount that one punter lost on every spin of the roulette wheel.
Lesotho is more of a business destination than a tourism magnet. The country’s attractions remain very much undersold — including gorgeous mountain scenery, skiing and other winter snow sports that take in excellent hiking and mountain biking, the longest abseil in the world with a 204m drop and the chance to trek with the country’s famous ponies.
It’s also pretty cheap — my handmade straw hat with the distinctive pointy top shaped like Qiloane Mountain cost only R85.
You don’t even need to change money, because the rand is legal along with the maloti, and worth the same. Almost everybody speaks excellent English, too, since school lessons are taught in English.

To really enjoy Lesotho, leave Maseru far behind, because this is outdoor territory. One morning we set off for Mohale Dam, up five hairpin switchbacks, including God Help Me Pass.
The roads are tarred, but I still felt queasy as we negotiated bend after bend through spectacular scenery. The driving is not always as good as the roads and we passed a buckled car abandoned and unsalvageable at the bottom of a hillside.

 

I watched cows being herded, sheep and goats grazing on rocky inclines, and shepherd boys wrapped in blankets with stark white gumboots to keep their feet dry in grass wet from the mountain mists.
Our group passed thatched rondavels, men sitting idle by the roadside and a child bowling a tyre alongside the road for fun. I spotted a few blanketed men on ponies and felt as if I’d entered a picture postcard.

When we finally reached Mohale Dam, a vegetation line showed where the water sometimes reaches in this huge valley. Now, the mountain walls were dry, with an enduring drought lowering the dam to only 39% of capacity.
A stern woman conducting a short tour took us into the underground service tunnel.
The structure is an engineering marvel, with water channelled through a hydro power station to generate electricity, then flowing to SA in exchange for much-needed money.
Plans to enjoy a boat trip on the dam were scrapped because of the whistling wind, so we ate burgers and chips at Mohale Orion Lodge, where the speed of service was suitably glacial.

 

 

As the land flattened out again, we passed hawkers at the crossroads selling carrots, and our Joburg guys are missing a trick. At Thaba-Bosiu Cultural Village a series of replica huts recreates the settlement built by Lesotho’s founder, King Moshoeshoe 1, on the adjacent mountain. About 4,000 people lived on the plateau from 1824 and repelled repeated incursions by rival tribes, Brits and Boers for more than 40 years.

You can hike to the top to see the remnants of the fortifications and the king’s grave. The king had 140 wives, but they lived with his warriors and he just borrowed them occasionally.
My favourite huts are built entirely of loose stones pieced together in a 3D jigsaw puzzle to create solid, impenetrable homes. They are amazingly intricate, tall enough to stand up in and with viewing holes visible only from inside.
Close to the cultural village is a rock that looks uncannily like the face of a lion, predictably called Lion Rock. There are dinosaur footprints in the vicinity too — and there’s a dinosaur named after the country, the Lesothosaurus, a lizard that roamed 200-million years ago.
The countryside feels as though not much has changed for centuries, although now only chickens and goats roam wild, not Lesothosauri.

Because tourism is very understated, Willem van Heerden, the resident manager at the Avani Lesotho, is working with Lesotho Tourism Development Corporation to develop day trips or overnight visits to further-flung attractions.
He hopes it will boost his hotel’s bookings and, vitally, pump more foreign money into local communities, craft centres and restaurants.
My friends in the sauna would be delighted to hear that.