Lesotho, Glandular Fever and Horse The Band

I've spent the last week in a place called Lesotho (leh-soo-too), a country that is completely enveloped by South Africa. The entire country is essentially one big mountain range, with the lowest point in the country at 1400 metres above sea level, and over 80% of the country above 1800 metres. Temperatures get really cold, and in the winter it snows.

Anyways,the reason why I went is because I was in Cape Town and was pissed off at how expensive everything was and still shocked at how developed the city was, so I decided to take an overnight bus up to the cheapest least developed place in the area: Maseru, the capital of Lesotho.

After a night on the bus, I was dropped off at the border to Lesotho at about 10am. I had no idea really where I was going or how to get in to town or whatever, so I walked through the border/customs etc, and then decided to try and hitch into town. Turns out I didn't have to wait more than about 5 seconds before a guy named Malbe picked me up in his truck and drove me in to town. He asked where I was going and when I said I didn't know, he invited me back to his place for some home-brewed "sarghom" beer and food. Obviously I didn't say no. We got back to his place and I found that a few of his friends/relatives had already been drinking for a few hours (it's only about 11am at this point). Malbe's brother, who would only tell me his name was "Love" insisted that I put on a traditional Basotho blanket and hat and get a picture taken.... "to show america the cool Lesotho" haha, so the picture here is of me, "Love" on the left, and the village chief in the middle...you see America! Lesotho is fucking cool!

That night I took a minibus taxi into a village called Malealea that Malbe said was especially nice and beautiful. It took the usual amount of time that it takes to go 80km in Africa...which is about 4 hours on 3 different minibuses/trucks. When I got into Malealea it had already been pouring with rain for about an hour and I was completely soaked.

That was the night I became sick. I woke up multiple times with a fever, headache etc...the cold weather and painfully loud thunder wasn't doing any help either. The entire next day I spent sitting in bed reading and poppin' pills.

My health came back somewhat, with the help of tylenol, and I was able to go on a few hikes around the gorgeous Lesotho mountain range and managed to arrange an amazing 1-day-long horseback ride through the Makhoarane Plateau with a Basotho guide. After Malealea, I took a bus to a place called Semongkong to visit the Maletsunyane Falls, which is probably one of the most beautiful waterfalls I've ever seen.

Then I remembered Horse the Band was playing in Grahamstown on the 11th...the last show of the tour. So the next day, I got on a bus from Semongkong to Maseru, and then from Maseru to Bloemfontein, South Africa. By the time I arrived in Bloem it was too late to keep going to Grahamstown but it was only the 9th so I had plenty of time. I met a Basotho guy, Tsepo, on the minibus from Maseru to Bloem who was studying graphic design in Bloem and offered for me to crash at his place for the night. The next day I went to a hospital in Bloem to get a check up and see what I had, seeing as it had been about 8 days and I was still really sick. I went and the doctor did X-rays, blood tests and a throat swab, and told me he'd phone me with the results.

5 hours ago I arrived into Grahamstown and met up with a friend of mine that's studying at Rhodes University, where I'm staying right now.

3 hours ago, the doctor phoned and told me I have something called Glandular Fever.

10 minutes ago, somebody here at the rez told me that Horse The Band bitched out and isn't come to play in Grahamstown. Meaning I essentially wasted two days on a bus, not to mention I left Lesotho prematurely. Fuck Horse.

I don't really know where I'm going at the moment, I think I'll spend a few more days in G-Town and try and rest up, and eventually I'm planning on going to Swaziland to get a visa for Mozambique...anyhow, I'll try and keep everybody posted, but I have the feeling that as soon as I leave South Africa, this blog is going to get 10,000 times harder to do.

Peace!

Madagascar in Photos

Here are some pictures I took in Madagascar, the scenery is gorgeous and completely unlike anywhere else on earth that I've been. The pictures obviously don't do it justice, but these should give you an idea.

Bush Taxi's in Madagascar

Here's a photo-update along with a pasted version of the post I made in Facebook a while back.

Hey everybody, so I just found an internet café for the first time in a week, and I thought I'd update errrbody.

Right now Christina (danish girl I'm travelling with) and I are in Diego Suarez, which is a large-for-madagascar city in the very northern tip of the country. It's really rainy here because of the cyclone season, and actually just 2 days ago Cyclone Hubert hit the east coast a few 100km south killing 14 people, and injuring 38,000.

The "taxi-brousse" (bush taxi, kind of like a minibus) ride here was absolutely horrendous. We got to the station in Antsohihy (450km south of Diego) at about 11am where the bus driver said the bus left in an hour, would get into Ambanja at 4pm or 5pm and then reach Diego Suarez "at the veeeeerrry latest 9pm".... So we didnt leave the station till 2:30pm, didnt get into ambanja until 7pm, and then the bus driver decided he needed to eat, so we waited in ambanja until 9pm before we even left. Anyways, it turns out the road had recently been hit with a cyclone and was completely destroyed, forcing us to drive at approx. 10km/hr.

Then at 2:30am(!!) still about 100km from Diego, our driver pulled the car over to the side of the road, and started to fucking sleep! Hahaha, me and christina and the other people in the bus couldnt believe it. Unprepared and unwilling to sleep in a minibus, and because he wouldnt talk to us, we decided to just talk loudly and annoy the bus driver so he couldn't sleep. Anyhow, about a half hour later of us talking loudly, and him occaisionally looking up at us with hatred, he said some angry words in malagasy and started up the car. We got to a hotel at 5am, a full 8 hours late.

Now, we're just kind of resting, and waiting for the Cyclone warning to pass so we can head on.

I've tagged some people I thought might be interested, and I'm thinking that once I get to a city with a decent internet connection I'll start a blog or something. anyways hope everybodys doing great,

take it easy.Aidan (+261 330 722 319 my madagascar cell)

South Africa

Alright, so this is my first post. I tried to write a post about the last two months and realized that waaaaay too much has happened, and I'm waaay too lazy to write the 50 or so pages that would be needed to cover it all...so unless I get some real motivation, those experiences will have to wait.

Christina took a flight to Nairobi on the 24th to go return back to her volunteering situation in Tanzania. I went with her to the airport and tried to buy a ticket there to anywhere, turns out it wasn't that easy, 1) they don't sell tickets at the Antananarivo, Madagascar airport, and 2) they don't sell one-way tickets at the office in town without proof of onward travel. So I went back to Tana (abbreviated form of the Madagascan Capital) and tried to figure out what to do. I decided that between the two african destinations out of Tana (Nairobi and Johannesburg) that I wanted to go to Jo'burg. So I went on the internet and booked a bus ticket from Jo'burg out to Mozambique just to make the border control happy. Then I bought my ticket leaving the 26th at 2:45pm from tana to jo'burg. I showed up at 12:30 and got through customs blah blah blah, waited untill 3:45pm without any indication as to what was going on, and then a South African Airways representative came out and said "the flight's been cancelled"...needless to say, everybody was pretty pissed off, especially when someone asked "when will it leave?" and she hesitated before saying "maaaaaybe tomorrow" hahah. Typical Madagascar response.

Anyways, S.A. Airways took us to a hotel which was waaaaay nicer than any of the places I've been staying, and so I got pretty comfortable in my room with A/C and a TV and hot water etc... later on that night I was down in the bar having a few beers with some South Africans who were also on the same flight when the waiter came and said "everybody pack your bags, the plane is leaving in 20 mins". At this point, most people were pretty drunk and the idea of going back to the airport seemed ridiculous.I started thinking though, this meant that I'd be arriving into Jo'burg at about 1:30am and would have no place to stay. Jo'burg is one of the roughest cities in a country with the 2nd highest murder rate in the world, and arriving by myself at 1:30am didn't sound like the best idea. So I asked some of the guys I was having a beer with if they knew any hotels in town, or if they wanted to split a cab etc... then this guy, Louis, told me that I could come stay with him no problem, but that he lives about 50km outiside of Jo'burg in a city called Pretoria. So we arrived at the airport and were picked up by his wife and father. It was about a one hour drive in to their house from the airport, and thats where I spent last night. My first impression of South Africa has been great, the people are extremely friendly and I've also been really shocked at how developed it is. Looking at the roads, and street signs, street lights, shopping malls etc...it looks like it could easily be Europe or North America or where ever.

I'm stoked to start touring the country a bit, and also, for those who know the band, Horse the Band is currently touring South Africa and Mozambique so I'm going to try and see them at least once while I'm here.