Ghana

On to Ghana, the whole point of the trip. We got to Accra and headed to, brace yourselves, the mall. We know this sounds strange to you all back in civilization but it is hard to understate how relaxing it was to escape Africa for a day by going to a western style shopping complex. There was a super modern movie theatre there which we hit and then, being starved for big screen movies in English as we are, exited only to turn right around and go in for second film. It felt like being in America until we picked up Brian at the airport when the plane was hours late. Oh wait, that feels like America too.

The next day we hit the beaches that were the whole point of the trip. We went straight to a place on the western coastline called Butre because it looked a bit more isolated. It was. It was deserted, in fact. We stayed for three nights in treehouses sipping beer and eating fish, you can’t get much further away than that.

After the beaches we saw the slave castles at Elmina and Cape Coast (where Barack Obama had been last year), which was another sobering affair. Again, it was difficult to comprehend the depths of misery that occurred in such a beautiful place.

North of Cape Coast we went to Kakum National Park and walked the canopy walk. That proved a welcomed bit of levity after the coastal forts. It was incredible. We were 100 feet in the air over the rainforest canopy looking through and down on the jungle. Predictably, we did not see elephants tromping below since it is a crowded tourist attraction where people make plenty of noise but it was still fantastic.





Did we mention that most of our food was out of plastic bags or on sticks? (Susan's boyfriend, Brian)




Up to Kumasi. We ran into some Peace Corps friends in the Kumasi Zoo. West Africa is a small place. We looked for the rotting manatee exhibit there but they do not seem to be as progressive as the Bamako Zoo. It was actually pretty good.

Then we walked through the biggest market in West Africa. We had to do this just because Mark would point out every market he saw. Why? If you have ever read a guidebook for West Africa, the markets take center stage as they are the only attraction in most spots. Reading the myriad ways to describe the same old thing which we are forced to endure every time we want to buy tomatoes was kind of annoying. We wanted to read about anything but markets. Alas, there are few sights. Suffice it to say that the Kumasi marche it was, as billed, a buzzing hive of activity, vibrant and colorful as ever with a pulse and electricity found in few other places in the world. Ugh.

On to Mole National Park. It was a really sweet experience, like how you picture Africa in your head. We stayed for two nights and saw more monkeys, baboons, warthogs and antelope than you can shake a stick at as they walked through the camp. Pretty cool. The only drawback was that it was crowded with loud students from the U.S.A. Gapers.

We did not have that problem up at the Wechiau Hippo Sanctuary, in the northwest of the country. We had been told that this was a less travelled part of Ghana and that was accurate, we had it to ourselves. We were out for hours in a canoe looking for hippos but it seemed like we would have no luck until the very last second. We checked one more spot and there they were, seven big ‘ole hippos. It was a pretty good sighting since the population in that part of the Black Volta is only eighteen. That's actually the second biggest population in Ghana, soon to be first when a new dam drowns the others.

We were all quite road weary at that point and after another night in relaxing Bobo, we went our separate ways. Susan and Brian went on to Mopti and Sam and Mark returned to Bamako. With two laps of West Africa now in the books, we were ready for our own bed and some clean clothes.