Each week we get 2 off days, one for rest and one for adventure. The weekends are filled with youth group, barbecues, Sunday school, and grocery shopping, so our off days are on Mondays and Tuesdays. Monday was relaxing. Some of us went to town, some of us hiked, and we all watched movies while lounging on the couch. There was one part of the day that did induce a little stress, and that was planning our adventure day. 6 people with different budgets and different ideas of adventure means it took us all day to come to an agreement on what to do. After talking to our host, we decided that he would drive us into the big mountains at 5 am so we could spend the whole day hiking. I spent the rest of the night making granola bars, sandwiches, and packing fruit for our trek.
At 4:30 am, I rolled out of bed and threw on my backpack. We piled in the car and set off. The sun was rising, and it hadn’t come above the mountains yet, so we could see the crescent moon and stars as we drove. Around 5, Peter dropped us off on the side of the road and recommended we walk the Maloti trail, or venture down the mountain to find the trail back to Roma. We decided to go with the Maloti trail, since it was visible from where we were standing. The guys all wanted to find the biggest mountain and find a way to the top, so we set off.
2 miles into the Maloti trail, we came into a valley with 4 freshly painted green buildings. The closer we got we could see men watching us. As we approached the buildings, we noticed the trail (which was really just a very uneven, rocky road) ended, and a man wearing an old pea coat with missing buttons and plaid pajama pants met us. This man was quick to tell us to get out of there. He told us we were in dangerous mountains, and we could be attacked by locals. While he urgently told us to forget what we saw, another man wrapped in a blanket wearing rain boots and a winter hat, complete with pom pom, emerged. At first we were apprehensive, but we turned around anyways and started climbing a mountain next to the buildings. Right after we started climbing, the pea coat man yelled at us. Casey is the friendliest guy I know, and while we were all making Breaking Bad jokes, he walked back down to see what else this guy had to tell us. From his conversation, we gathered that we were on a military base, and we should get the heck out of these mountains as fast as possible. Hunter was still convinced this was a meth lab, considering how secluded it was and the “uniforms” of the men we met, but nonetheless we marched out of there at a much faster pace than when we entered.
About 10 minutes into our hike back to the road, we noticed we were being followed. We were not welcomed or trusted. Somewhere along the trail the men knew a shortcut, and we met up with them again at the top of a hill. It was at this point I realized the man wrapped in a blanket was carrying a metal rod. The guys casually created a barrier between Shea and I while Casey started casually talking again. He got their names, and they commented on his height. This led to a conversation about the NBA and Michael Jordan for the rest of our trek to the road. Once we got back to the road we had a snack break and formed a new plan, all before 8 am. It was obvious from the road that there was a “Restricted Area” sign, which also said trespassers would be prosecuted. We were the definition of dumb Americans.
The next 4 hours were spent walking to the nearest town (cluster of homes is a better description), flying and losing Hunter’s drone, waiting for a bus that never came, throwing dried poop at each other, and then finally giving up on our adventure day and calling Peter to pick us up. We laughed our way through the day, and we are still laughing about our misfortune on Tuesday. We may not have hiked up a large mountain, but here in Lesotho you are always in the mountains, and the story we have now is much better than any view we could have seen.
