This past weekend I went up north, out of Accra (the capital city) and up to the Volta region of Ghana. It. Was. Incredible. As soon as I left the city, I realized that trying to explore Ghana without leaving Accra would be as impossible as trying to explore Canada without leaving Toronto. Ghana has naturally beautiful scenery and a rich cultural history; I'm saddened because I know that I cannot possibly see everything the country has to offer in only three months.
My traveling party consisted of two other CLA interns (Tharani and Myriam, who are both placed at WiLDAF), two non-CLA interns from CEPIL (Thomas and Taylor), and another miscellaneous friend (Mike, the roommate of one of the non-CLA CEPIL interns). From left to right, it's myself, Taylor, Tharani, Myriam, and Mike. Thomas is in the back.
We were a motley collection at the beginning of the trip, but by the end of the weekend we were all pretty tight. We even bought matching bracelets, which (when brought together) magically summoned a mango, Captain Planet-styles.
Friday was spent at the immaculate Paradise Mountain Lodge. From Accra, the length of the journey was approximately 5 hours. The lodge is located at the top of a mountain (no, seriously), so you can either pay an exorbitant amount to taxi up the hill (no thanks) or you can use your feet. We opted for the later. It took us about 45 minutes of hiking uphill before we could even see the lodge, and even then it was pretty far off in the distance. If you look really hard in the picture, you can see the red roof of the building.
By the time we reached the hotel, it was too late to go down and back up the mountain. Instead, we opted for the hotel's "nature walk" (imagine that I'm using sarcastic air quotes). The nature walk actually turned out to be a four hour long ordeal, at points requiring us to rappel short distances down cliff faces. The "map" (again, note the sarcastic air quotes) was not very helpful; we almost got lost in the African jungle (we figured that we could find enough water and fruit to survive the night, but it was definitely not Plan A).
Thankfully, we found our way back before sunset. As it turned out, we were heading in the complete opposite direction of where we should have been. A farmer heard us moving through the jungle, and kindly pointed us back in the right direction. We spent a very enjoyable, if quiet, night at the lodge. We were the only guests there for the night, so we had the place to ourselves.
On Saturday morning, we woke up at sunrise (6:00am) to visit the Tafi Atome Monkey Sanctuary. Apparently, the monkeys are only active when it's early in the morning (this makes me the anti-monkey). Disclosure: I had never been a big fan of monkeys. I didn't understand why everyone made such a fuss over them. They spread disease and fling poop. I thought they were wildly overrated (much like the sitcom Seinfeld and the province of British Columbia). But ... I was wrong about monkeys. Within 10 minutes of our arrival at Tafi Atome, our guide made this odd kissing noise. Suddenly, we were surrounded by roughly a dozen monkeys. They wanted our bananas. They wanted our bananas badly. The greedy little monkeys scampered down from their perches with remarkable agility. They were peeling and eating the bananas while they were still in our hands! It was really awesome to watch how quickly and efficiently they moved. I'm officially a convert; monkeys are awesome.
Saturday afternoon was spent traveling to the Wli Falls. There are actually two waterfalls in which visitors can swim - the "Lower Falls" and the "Upper Falls". We had arrived too late to make it to the Upper Falls before sundown, but we had enough time for the short hike to the Lower Falls. The water fell from a dizzying height; walking through the waterfall felt like trudging through a hurricane.
Sunday was the hike to the Upper Falls. The hike itself was incredibly beautiful, but also fairly grueling. It was two full hours of almost entirely uphill climbing. I had a waterfall of sweat dripping off my face that was almost as voluminous as the one at our destination. It was definitely worth the trip, though. The Upper Falls probably weren't as spectacular as the Lower Falls, but it felt infinitely more rewarding. Also, since we were able to make it so high, we were able to view some truly incredible landscapes.
All in all, it was a pretty incredible weekend.
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