Clattering through Lesotho's Maluti mountains in a convoy of helicopters, the Taoiseach yesterday saw some of the most breathtaking scenery in all of Africa.
Behind the superficial picture-postcard image he also encountered some of the severe poverty and hardship in this state, whose total expenditure last year of £320 million amounts to less than one-third of the income tax cuts announced in last month's Irish Budget.
Mr Ahern also witnessed the work being carried out by Ireland Aid, whose £6 million allocation for spending here this year will fund water supply projects, rural development, health and the productive sector as well as attempts to stabilise the country politically.
The welcome for the Taoiseach throughout the day was greater than anything he could hope for at home, even at a Fianna Fail Ardfheis. At the airport, children draped a garland of red carnations around his neck, which he wore rather awkwardly as he inspected a guard of honour. In the mountains, groups of peasant women gathered to sing in African harmonies wherever his helicopter touched down. Laughing children surrounded him and his partner, Ms Celia Larkin, at every stop, and a group of 30 uniformed nurses sang and danced in step when he visited a hospital.
This is unlikely to happen at an Irish hospital in the near future.
At heights of close to 10,000 feet, the helicopters carrying Mr Ahern and his party virtually skimmed mountaintops and escarpments before giving views of valleys and gorges far below.
The Taoiseach, who had had an exhausting overnight journey from Ireland, occasionally dozed, but the exhilarating nature of the trip ensured that these periods of rest were brief.
"Ye must be knackered", said one of the first men to greet him as he walked from his helicopter at Paray Hospital, deep in the mountains. Mr Greg O'Connor, who runs the hospital laboratory, is from Cork, and Ireland being a small place, Mr Ahern knew his uncle, and later in a speech wished his grandmother well in an operation she is about to undergo.
"What is it like for you up here?" asked Mr Ahern. "Yerra, it's a lovely spot, fresh air, the lot", said Mr O'Neill. To an outsider, there appeared to be little else going for the place, a remote village high in the mountains.
The air is fresh, all right, but very thin at such altitude. Walking at normal pace brings on a tightening of the chest. During the winter, the entire area gets snowed in, becoming impenetrable and inhospitable, with temperatures as low as minus 20.
During heavy rains from July to October the rivers flood, and children attempting to cross them to get to school are sometimes washed away and drowned. One of the Irish programmes involves the building of footbridges across rivers to prevent accidents of this type. Mr Ahern visited one such bridge in the mountains and remarked later that, if it was necessary to show taxpayers that their money was being put to good use, "it's a radical benefit to get small children safely from their mud cabins to their schools".
We landed again, this time at a village where Ireland Aid has funded a water supply. Previously, the village women walked down the side of a long, steep hill, winter and summer, to bring containers of water back up. Now there are taps in the village.
Mr Ahern performed a ceremonial turning on of the tap. He cupped his hands, splashed some water on his face, drank some, then took more in his hands and offered it to the children who had surrounded him, following which he splashed the remainder over them. The children hesitated at first, but then smiled and laughed along with the Taoiseach.