Katse Dam, Lesotho

We made a quick international getaway to Lesotho this weekend, and, in Carol’s words: “We had a dam good time.”😝

The Lesotho Kingdom’s Katse Dam has been on my “must-see” list for a while now… According to Wikipedia, it’s Africa’s second largest dam and is part of the Highlands Water Project which supplies a lot of water to South Africa. Mohale Dam and the Ash River Tunnel Outlet near Clarens are also part of the project. (I’ve blogged about them previously.)

We arrived just in time for the 2pm guided tour into the Katse dam wall… It’s massive! Tons of concrete and time went into the construction of that wall. This weekend the dam was 71% full. I never realized how many households had to be relocated due to the building of this dam. It sounds as if it was very traumatic for the families involved. They even had to relocate old graves.

We took a leisurely drive via the Ficksburg border into Maputsoe. The towns are busy and dirty but as soon as you get passed that bit of chaos, the scenery becomes beautiful and peaceful. We followed the winding road up the mountains to the top of Africa. The temperature dropped 10 degrees from the bottom to the top. We had yummy snacks and a warm coffee flask so we were well prepared.

We stayed at Katse Lodge in Katse Village for the night where we feasted on our left-over padkos and some cold Maluti beer for supper. (Marc drank my share of the beer too.😉) In the morning we woke up early to go fishing. It was very cold! (That’s good for catching trout…not so good for wearing slip-slops.) My feet froze before I caught anything, but Marc caught 1 small trout and Lionel caught 3! Next time we’ll catch the big ones. 😄

What a lekker Katse dam experience!!