Kome Caves

We went to Kome caves this past weekend:

The drive was fairly NOT straight forward, but fortunately we didn't make any wrong turns, just that Google sent us down a rough terrain and we had to find a new route. We ended up getting some instructions from local village kids who directed us.

Also had to take some dirt road on the way there, and tested my driving skills (first time driving on left side of the road).

Kome Caves

Material these caves are made from - clay

The caves themselves looked surprisingly artificial.  It looked plastic!  But actually they used wood as a scaffold and put clay over it to make it look like little cave huts. 

Inside the largest cave

The tour guide provided some interesting history. The most interesting was how the caves were a refuge to hide against cannibals. Apparently toward the east were some cannibals and there is a place called the gap of traditional dress, which was so named because that's where the cannibals hang all the traditional dress of the girls they ate. And the bottle caps twinkle in the breeze.  Another landmark is the mountain of trapping. That was named for the place where cannibals set traps for their prey. When we asked why they eat humans and not animals, the tour guide said it's because humans are slower. O_o

Kome caves are named for the first person who discovered them. Mr. Kome was flying away from a war when he discovered the caves in 1824.  The cave houses built there are still the same houses built then. And now the ppl living there are descendants of the lion, leopard, and cat clans while the kids are in the 6th generation.

National plant of Lesotho - Spiral Aloe

There is also a hill named the hill of drowsiness.  That's because Mr. Kome is a traditional medicine man and he put traditional medicine there so that when enemies reached that cave, they would fall asleep and when they woke up, they forgot where they were going and only where they were from.  So they just return to where they came from.

Afterwards, we went to Teyateyaneng (TY for short), where we saw traditional weaving take place. Apparently each of these large blankets take 4 weeks to make!  The ladies take one threat at a time and place it one on top of each other. These are really expensive, so I only got osme coasters for souvenir.