Monday, September 24, 2018
We loaded our car and went to the main lodge for breakfast. Isaac mentioned that he intended to feed us like royalty, and I realized we might want to mention that we're vegetarians since I think people tend to assume the royals like a lot of meat in the morning. 🤣 There were cereals (like Corn Flakes) set out and one jug of hot milk, so that was the first time I had hot cereal.
There were also some bars of Weet-Bix, eggs, baked beans, and fresh bread. I didn't eat much. While Isaac certainly added some excitement to our trip, I could've done without some of his comments. When he asked about our vegetarian history and Francisco explained when he stopped eating meat, Isaac responded "she tricked you" and laughed. He apparently wanted to go on and have a philosophical conversation about vegetarianism, so he asked "how do you know plants don't feel pain?". I found it far too early to be made to feel like I had to defend my moral positions in life. 😝
I carried a lot of tension with me through Lesotho, and I was glad that our time in the country was coming to an end. We pulled up to the border crossing to go back to South Africa and handed over our passports. The lady at the booth rifled through them and asked where our entry stamp was. We explained that we had just been waved through at the border, and no one had said anything. I think we effectively snuck into the country without meaning to. There was obviously something we needed to do when we were arriving into the country the day before, but we didn't know what. She almost was going to fine us, but after thinking it over, she ended up stamping our passports, saying "you owe me", and letting us go on.
This was another big day of driving, around 8 hours.
We worked in a couple of stops, including the Golden Gate Highlands National Park. It looked like fire had swept through the area at some point.
We stopped at the Golden Gate Vulture Hide, but we weren't lucky enough to actually spot any vultures.
Just carcasses.
We stopped at the Sterkfontein Dam.
Somehow, Google Maps ended up taking us the wrong way to the Royal Natal National Park, so we had to abandon our plans to visit there. We pulled up to a gate and informed the guy posted there where we were trying to get, and he just said "well, you're lost then." We wanted to argue that this is where our GPS told us to go, but obviously this guy would know better lol.
Our next failed attempt was to hike Rainbow Gorge in the Maloti-Drakensberg Park, but apparently you need 4WD to get there, at least from the direction we were approaching. This was definitely a day of failures, but at least we were out of Lesotho safely and we were about to check in at our first South African hotel, the
Protea Hotel by Marriott Hilton. We used our Marriott points to cover the rest of our lodging on this trip (excluding Kruger).
It was a great hotel. A little swanky, and it included welcome drinks in the lobby. Francisco was like "why haven't we been staying in places like this all along?" 🤣 This was our first of four Protea hotels across South Africa, and it was a lovely introduction to the Protea brand. The hotel was nicely decorated with an almost European exterior, and our room was very quiet. There was free Wi-Fi with a cap, but we encountered two Proteas that didn't offer any in-room Wi-Fi, so this was somewhat more acceptable.
We went out to enjoy a leisurely dinner and ended up at
Artisan Cafe down the street.
We had the Cheesy Foccacia for an appetizer, which was much larger than we were expecting. We still had room for the Funghi Pizza for dinner.
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