Day 10 - Golden Gate Park and into Lesotho (2/10)

We'd planned to travel down from Lindley (or thereabouts) into Lesotho via the capital, Maseru, but our hosts at last night's B&B sang the praises so loudly of Golden Gate Highlands Nature Park that we felt that we had to!  And lovely it was too

From there then, we entered Lesotho via the most northerly border at Caledon's Poor and saw straightaway some Basotho countryside

A quick introduction to Lesotho ("the Kingdom in the Sky" because of its lofty altitude; apparently, it has the highest "lowest point" of any country in the world [1400m] and is the only country to be entirely above 1000m; I'd have expected Nepal or maybe Bhutan to contest this title but allegedly not...). 

Anyway, that potted early history : originally, the Sotho-Tswana people lived in what is now Free State in South Africa.  They were a peaceful farming people, minding their own business, so, when the Zulus started attacking villages and the Voortrekkers encroached on their land, they fled up into the Lesotho mountains. Under Zulu attack, local tribes banded together for protection and, by 1824, the marvelously named Moeshoeshoe had established himself as king and founded a mountain fortress at Thaba Bosiu.  In fear of the Boers' rapidly increasing presence in the area, Moeshoeshoe sought protection from the British government and, in 1868, Basotholand (as it was then called) became a protectorate of the British Empire; it was granted independence on 4 October 1966 (maybe we'll be here for Independence Day).