Semonkong
Semonkong is the place of smoke: a village of stone and thatch at two thousand two hundred and seventy-five metres in the highlands of Lesotho, named for the spray of the Maletsunyane falls, which drop a hundred and ninety-two metres in a single leap into a gorge a few kilometres from the houses — the highest single-drop waterfall in southern Africa, and the site of the longest commercially run abseil in the world, two hundred and four metres down the rock beside the water. It is reached from Maseru in three hours by a road that climbs over the pass the Basotho named God Help Me; it is a place of shepherds in blankets and balaclavas, of Basotho ponies that carry visitors to the falls and, over two days, to the further falls of Ketane and Ribaneng, of a lodge on the river that has become a small legend for its donkey pub crawl and its bakery, and of a plateau where the snow lies in July and the falls freeze into a pillar of ice.
The traveller comes up from Maseru with the morning, or on from the Sani Pass over the roof of the country, and takes Semonkong at pony pace: the ride or the walk to the top of the falls for the view down the gorge and the rainbows in the spray; the two-hour trail to the base for those with knees, or the abseil for those with nerve, which is booked at the lodge and done with a guide and a great deal of rope; a day on a pony over the plateau to a shepherd's post and back; the village on foot — the store, the bakery, the wool, the greeting; a Maluti beer by the fire; and, for the traveller with days, the two-day trek to Ketane, sleeping in a village on the way, which is the Lesotho that has not changed.
The Guide's honesty: the highlands are cold — the nights freeze in winter and are cool in summer, and the traveller packs for a mountain, not for Africa —; the road over the pass is asphalt now but the storms close it and the pony treks are for those who can sit a horse for four hours; the abseil is safe and serious and not for the vertigo; Lesotho is poor and honest and runs on the maloti and the rand alike; and the falls at first light from the rim, with the smoke rising out of the gorge and the whole plateau silent around them, are one of the quiet wonders of the continent, which is why the Guide keeps this page high and warm.