Burkina and Mali

My roommate and I are taking off for two weeks in Burkina Faso and Mail. PEACE!

A little update

Hey all, I've been out and about traveling through Ghana for the last 8 out of 9 days. I'll try not to drag on too much, but here are the highlights:
Last weekend CIEE sponsored a group trip to the Volta Region, which is northeast of Accra in the jungle covered mountains (beautiful, possibly my favorite part of Ghana). It was a pretty low key trip. As usual, one of the perks of the trip was the swanky accommadations--pool, AC, hot water, meals included. Saturday we went to a monkey sanctuary and saw some mona monkeys hanging out in the woods. They are the small ones with long tails that fly back and forth in the tree tops and like to eat bananas. Sunday we headed further north to Wli Falls, repudately the highest waterfalls in West Africa. It was a nice 30 minute walk though the forest to the base of the sheer mountains that the falls come over. We spend the afternoon swimming in the rocky pool underneath the falls. It was gorgeous and the water was freezing...being cold, not something I'm used to here!
We were back in Accra Sunday night, and I had one day to get all my stuff together before heading out for a six day trip up north on Tues.
Tues at approx 5:30 AM (woah) began trekking up north with 3 other chickies, Carrie, Claire, and Chrissy (or, the 3Cs as I like to call them). It was a rather uneventful day. For those of you with a map of Ghana in front of you, we made it to the one horse town of Wenchi (the name is fitting really) and spent the night there. Wednesday we were told to be back at the trotro yard at 8 to catch a car up to Bui National Park. Haha. Joke's on us, the trotro to Bui didn't leave until after 4 PM! We litterally sat in the yard for 8 hours...its always kind of interesting to see how people react to these kinds of stressors... I passed the day sitting on a sac of yams reading Poison wood Bible, which I would highly recommend by the by. Anyway, we reached Bui sometime after dark and managed to get a room there (when our guide book was published there were no accomodations in Bui, but there were plans to build some so we werent entirely sure there would be somewhere to stay!). We turned in early as there's not really much to do out in the middle of now where with no electricity, running water, or food. Plus, we were getting up early for hippo gazing on Thurs. Thurs we trekked six kilometers to the Black Volta River. My sandal (and only pair of shoes) broke about 4 Ks in... We spend about 4 hours out on the river in fishing canoes checking out the hippos. The river is gorgeous. Its quite shallow in some points so we had to get out walk through it while the canoes where pushed beside us. In other places, it flows in to deep pools--thats where the hippos hang out. We saw 3 pods of hippos. Mostly they just hang out under the water with their eyes, ears, and noses poking out, but occasionally they come up and make wierd hippo noises and tossle about. We also spend Thurs night at Bui as there was only one car out of there per day, and it leaves at 530 AM. I had the joy of showering off the 2 previous days filth using water in a bucket and a fanta bottle in the dark :) Friday we set off at 5:30 and spent the whole day traveling westwards. That was quite an experience... |The highlight being our second tro tro on which I was pinned to the wall for five and a half hours in trotro the size of large van full to the brim with 27 people, 8 chickens, and a goat in it in the middle of the midday heat. The most uncomfortable, claustrophobic experience of my life. Though we were lucky that we were able to catch transport from all the major junctions (the roads and routes up north arent as often traveled), and we made it to the town of Laribanga by 5 PM. Laribanga is a small town, approx 4,000 people, in the Northern Region. It's of some signifcance for two reasons. First, it is home to the oldest mosque on Ghana (and one of the oldest in West Africa). It's made of mud and sticks and quite distinct architecturally. Secondly, its located 6 km from Mole National Park, the country's biggest game preserve. We got to Laribanga and met these two brothers who seem to be the head honchos of the town and run and inn there where you can sleep out on the roof. The invited us up and in (literally) so we passed an hour or so up on the roof waiting for the bus to Mole. Of course (like everything in Ghana), the bus was late and we didn't get to the park until after dark. We were hoping to spend one night there treating ourselves to a nice room, real showers, and decent food in Mole and then a second night with the brothers in Laribanga. However, when we showed up to the park hotel there were no rooms left, and you cant really leave to go back to Laribanga because its dark, kinda far away, and you've already paid an entrance fee to the park. They managed to scrounge up some mats, and they put us up on the floor of the girls dormitory. In addition, the running water sucked so there were only bucket showers, and the only food being served was chicken and rice (wow, thats what i eat everday!). Finally, it was all rediculously expensive and overpriced. So, not quite the treat we thought it was going to be. However, Saturday morning, we went on a Safari walk in the park. We saw elephants, warthogs, deer, antelope, and baboons. It was pretty sweet. Then we walked the 6ks from the park back to Laribanga to check out the mosque. Since it was early afternoon and we'd done about all there was to do we thought we'd try and get on the road. However, there's only reliable transport out of Laribanga once per day, at 4:30 AM. Fortunately (sorta) ,we were able to hop in the back of a truck heading to the next town. WOW! Truck bed, dirty road, flying like crazy, bone crunching, ribs jarring internal organs. There we hopped on a trotro that wasnt really a trotro as it had been rented to a boys under 12 soccer team heading to a tourney in Tamale. We road 65 km on a dirt road with 19 12 yr old boys! The trip took us over 3 hours as the car moved no faster than 12 mph and broke down once! I had a window seat and when we got out, I can honestly say I was the dirtiest I've ever been in my whole life. I was literally covered from head to toe in a layer of redbrown dust, eyelashes included! Plus, I had some real sweet sweat stains on my sides and back from my waist to my knees, my heels were black from the tires I was sitting on in the first truck, and my toes were wrapped in bandages 'cause my new pair of flip flops (yellow and too big) were giving me blisters. Haha! Oh, my! From Domonga Junction we were able to catch a car south to Techiman where we spent the night. Sunday, we traveled the rest of the way to Accra with a stop in Kumasi for a nice meal. Of course, the resturant we wanted to go to was closed on Sundays, but eventually we found a placed. I dropped 70,000 cedis on the first real food I'd had all week. Thats only about 8 bucks, but it's the most expensive meal I've had in Ghana. Okay, so thats it for my latest adventure. Now it's back to the books!