Jurassic Park

From Ts’ehlanyane National Park we cycle to Leribe, where we stay over for a day. Like most bigger towns in Lesotho it is a mixture of large and small shops (all with exactly the same range of products) telephone shops, shacks, grotty stalls with vegetables and herbs, broken up streets that consist mostly of potholes and African hair saloons on the sidewalks with roofs made of plastic or corrugated iron. Lovely, we only have to watch out not to break our ankles.

Today we are happy with all the telephone shops, because we are going to make a phone call to Sarin, Peter’s daughter. It’s her nineteenth birthday today, hooray! However, in the telephone shops people tell us to go to the Telkom-shop, the official government office for international calls. No problem. Because of last night’s thunderstorm, the official tells us that most landlines are down. All right, shame. The only choice left to us is buying a telephone card and try to make a call from one of the many phone booths. Strangely enough, they’re supposed to be working although they are landlines as well. We find a booth that’s not next to a loud banging stereo and start dialling, exciting! The first two times we’re unlucky, the line seems to be dead. The third time we finally get connected, listen to a computer tape and don’t understand a thing that’s being said; with ten Maloti less on the card we try another time. Again without success. We ask the lady in the office for help and reluctantly she accompanies us to the booth, and dials the required number. Again ten Maloti vanish without getting connected to Sarin. In the afternoon we try to phone Peter’s sister with the request for congratulate Sarin. Yes, of course we loose the last ten Maloti on the card without speaking to Sylvia either. Phoning in Lesotho appears to be the fastest way of getting rid of your money. What a disaster, and we don’t even like making telephone calls! Internet connections are not available in Leribe, so finally we give up on trying to congratulate Peter’s daughter.

We decide to spend the rest of the afternoon going to Tsikoane, about ten kilometres west of Leribe. Tsikoane is one of the places in Lesotho where footprints of dinosaur have been found. Cycling into the small village we’re looking for some kind of sign of the site, but we look in vain. In our best Sesotho, but actually mainly in English, we ask the local people for directions. They all point at the rock-cliffs that rise high above the village and landscape. Right, it takes some to get some. We drag the bicycles up the mountain, between huts, cows and astonished people. Like always two young guides appoint themselves to us, without asking. Usually we don’t like being guided by young boys that appear out of the blue, but today we are going to need them desperately. It turns out that there is no path up to the mountain; at the Roman Catholic church we leave our bicycles behind, guarded by boy number three, and start climbing behind our guides. Through bushes, over big boulders and via slippery water ditches we climb higher and higher. In front of us, the high rock wall is like an unconquerable fortress without ropes and mountain climbing material. Yet, before we reach the summit, our guides David and Gift shout enthusiastically that we have reached the place.

We don’t have a clue and see no traces of anything that looks like Jurassic park. They look up and point; we don’t expect to see anything there and so see nothing. Is this some kind of trick? The ground and boulders around us don’t show any sign of whatever kind of dinosaur, and what’s the use of looking skywards, to the overhanging cliff?
Still heaving from the tough climb and not wanting to be impolite, we look up again. WOW!!!

We see them. We look. We stare. It’s hard to believe, is this real? At the underside over the overhanging cliff the footprints of real big animals are abundant and perfectly visible. But, at the underside of a rock? Apparently the original mud prints have been petrified and are attached to the upper rock, when a one time the lower rocks fell down because of erosion or just million years of gravity. The footprints are about forty by fifty centimetres long and wide, and they have the shape of a three toed birds foot. But then absurdly huge!
For how long have they been hanging here and for how long will it stay like this? One small earth tremor and the whole thing will come down. And then everything will have disappeared and be gone forever.
Before this happens we look up again, take our cameras as fast as possible and start snapping, and snapping…